Troubleshooting
The profit, margin, or pay numbers look wrong
Symptom: a load scored red that you know was good, the margin does not match your own arithmetic, or two screens disagree.
1. Check which miles are being used
The single most common surprise. The calculator works on total miles — loaded plus deadhead to pickup plus deadhead back out to freight.
A load at $2.85 a loaded mile can be $2.11 a total mile. Both numbers are on the result, and the watchouts spell out the gap. If your own figure disagrees, you are almost certainly comparing a loaded-mile rate to a total-mile rate.
Check the return deadhead in particular. A high value on a dead-end lane will sink a load that looks fine on paper, and it should — the empty ride home comes out of that load.
2. Check whose costs it used
The result says what it was costed against: your fleet defaults, or a specific truck and driver.
Assigning a driver and truck switches the calculation to their MPG, maintenance cost, and pay rate. The same rate can score green for one truck and red for another. That is the point, but it surprises people the first time.
3. Check for estimated inputs
Where a number was estimated rather than entered, the watchouts say so and name the source — for example a deadhead inferred from a driver's last check-in.
If the truck is somewhere else, type in the real deadhead. An estimate driving a rejection is worth thirty seconds of checking.
4. Check your settings are your real numbers
Settings → Operations. Every calculation inherits these:
- Fuel price and MPG from years ago will be wrong by a wide margin.
- Fixed monthly costs at 0 means overhead is not being charged at all — every load will look better than it is.
- Maintenance at 0 does the same, more quietly.
- Margin thresholds decide the colour. If everything scores weak, compare your thresholds against what your lanes actually pay.
5. Estimated versus actual profit
- Estimated profit is what the calculator projected at screening time.
- Actual profit includes the expenses entered against the load — fuel, tolls, lumper, detention paid, repairs.
They diverge whenever expenses have not been entered. A load showing a much worse actual than estimate usually means real costs landed on it; a load showing none may just mean nobody entered the receipts.
6. Dashboard, scorecards, and reports disagree
They are counting different things on purpose:
| View | Counts |
|---|---|
| Dashboard | Today, including loads still in flight |
| Driver and broker scorecards | A date window, delivered loads only |
| Lane analysis | A date window, by state pair |
A load cancelled or still rolling appears on the dashboard and not in the scorecards. That is correct, not a discrepancy.
7. Driver pay does not match the settlement
Check, in order:
- The driver's pay method and rate on their page — per mile, percent, or flat.
- Whether the driver has no rate of their own, in which case the company default is used.
- The lines on the statement. Load earnings are only part of it; advances, lease, insurance, fuel card, and escrow all move the total.
- Per-mile pay is calculated on loaded miles.
8. Counter-offer numbers do not match the saved calculation
They are not supposed to. The broker-terms panel re-prices live to answer "what if they agree to this?" and saves nothing. The stored calculation only changes when you run it again.
When to contact support
Send the load or opportunity, the number you expected, the number shown, and how you worked yours out. That last part is what makes the difference findable.
Related
Still stuck?
Email support@dynamanic.io with your company name, what you did, what happened — quoting any message on screen — and when, with your timezone.