"Anything over two bucks." "Don't move for less than $2.50." "Freight under $3 is charity." Every one of those answers is describing a specific truck, with a specific payment, specific insurance, and a specific month's miles — usually the truck belonging to whoever's talking. None of them is describing yours.
Why there’s no magic number
Two trucks haul the same load at the same rate. One has a $2,200 payment, the other's paid off. One buys fuel at 6.0 mpg, the other at 7.2. One ran 11,000 miles last month, the other sat a week waiting on a part and ran 7,000. The rate that makes the first driver money loses it for the second — a rate is only good or bad relative to a cost, and costs differ by fifty cents a mile between well-run trucks.
Market averages have the same problem from the other side: they describe the middle of everyone else's freight, on lanes you may never run, for cost structures that aren't yours. Useful for spotting trends; useless for deciding this load.
The benchmark that works: your floor
The floor is the minimum a load must pay so the trip covers itself and the days it consumes earn what you decided a day must earn:
Divide by all miles for a floor per mile driven, or by loaded miles to compare with what a broker quotes. Every input is yours: your bills, your miles, your fuel, your target.
With the numbers from the cost-per-mile guide — $1.43 a mile to operate and a $100-a-day profit target — a two-day, 820-mile trip (40 empty + 780 loaded) needs $1,372.60 minimum: about $1.67 per mile driven, or $1.76 per loaded mile. Offers above it make money; offers below it don't, no matter how the per-mile number looks on the board.
Get your floor in two minutes
The free required-rate calculator runs this exact math with your bills, miles, fuel and profit target — no signup. Start with the cost per mile calculator if you don't know your cost number yet.
Open the required-rate calculatorThe three zones every rate falls into
- Below your operating cost. The load loses cash outright. Taking it should be rare and deliberate — usually a short hop that prevents a longer, more expensive deadhead.
- Between operating cost and your all-in floor. The truck is covered but your wage and profit aren't fully there. This is the repositioning zone: getting home, escaping a dead market, covering fixed costs in a slow week. Fine as a tactic, fatal as a habit.
- Above the floor. The load pays the truck, pays you, and hits the day's profit target. This is the only zone that builds anything.
A "good rate" is simply a rate in the third zone. That's the entire answer — everything else is context.
Why the same rate is good one week, bad the next
Your floor moves, because your cost per mile moves. Sit a week waiting on a part and the same fixed bills spread over fewer miles — the cost-per-mile guide's example jumps from $1.43 at 10,000 monthly miles to $1.60 at 7,000. A rate that cleared your floor in a busy month quietly stops clearing it in a slow one.
That's not a reason to panic; it's a reason to recompute. A floor you calculated in January is describing a truck that no longer exists by June. Fuel moved, insurance renewed, the miles changed. The floor is a living number, and treating it like one is what separates pricing from guessing.
Rate per mile vs revenue per day
One more trap: the per-mile number is blind to time. A 200-mile load at $3.00 grosses $600 and consumes a day; a 550-mile load at $2.10 grosses $1,155 in the same day. The "better rate" earned half the money. On short freight, let revenue per day have the final word — that's why the floor formula charges every day on the truck, not just every mile. The rate-per-mile guide has the full comparison.
Gross rate vs rate to the truck
Last check before you judge any rate: is it gross, or to the truck? Factoring at 3% and dispatch at 5% turn a $2.00 offer into $1.84 delivered. Judge offers by what reaches the business — and make sure the floor they're clearing is the real one.
A floor that updates itself
AxleVault keeps your cost profile and a ten-second daily mileage log, recomputes your cost per mile every morning — sit days counted — and checks every load against your live floor. Free for 14 days, no card required.
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