Most expense lists are alphabetical, which is tidy and useless. Trucking costs behave in four different ways — monthly whether you drive or not, per mile when you do, annually on a calendar, and occasionally out of nowhere — and books organized by behavior tell you things an alphabetical pile never will. Here's the list, sorted the useful way.
How to use this list
Walk it once with last month's bank statement and mark what applies. The fixed section becomes the top half of your cost-per-mile calculation; the per-mile section becomes the bottom half; the annual section becomes calendar reminders; the occasional section becomes the reserve you fund per mile. Nearly all of it is a legitimate business expense — the deductions guide covers the tax side.
Fixed monthly bills — due whether you roll or not
- Truck payment (or lease payment)
- Trailer payment or rent
- Insurance — liability, cargo, physical damage, bobtail/non-trucking, occupational accident
- ELD subscription
- Phone and data
- Load board subscriptions
- Bookkeeping / accounting software or service
- Truck parking (home base, and monthly reserved spots)
- Dispatch service (if flat-fee; percentage dispatch belongs with per-load fees)
- Business entity costs — registered agent, state LLC fees paid monthly
- Health insurance, if the business pays it
Total these and divide by your real monthly miles: that's the fixed half of your cost per mile, and it's the half that gets worse every week the truck sits.
Per-mile costs — they happen when the wheels turn
- Fuel — the biggest line in the business; diesel price ÷ your real mpg
- DEF
- Maintenance reserve — PM services, repairs, the money set aside for what's coming
- Tire reserve — a $5,500 set over 150,000 miles is about 3.7¢/mile, accruing now
- Tolls (lane-dependent; some operations barely see them, some eat them daily)
- Scales and weigh fees
- Truck washes and trailer washouts
Annual and quarterly obligations — the calendar costs
- Form 2290 / HVUT — up to $550/year for most heavy trucks, due by August 31 for most
- Plates / IRP registration — often several hundred to a couple thousand a year, apportioned
- UCR registration
- IFTA license and decals, plus whatever the quarterly return settles
- State permits (weight-distance states like NY, NM, KY, OR have their own filings)
- Annual DOT inspection
- DOT physical / medical card (every two years, or more often)
- CDL renewal
- Drug & alcohol consortium enrollment
- Tax preparation
- Quarterly estimated tax payments — not an expense, but a cash-flow event on the same calendar; the set-aside guide covers the dates and amounts
Divide each annual figure by twelve and fold it into the fixed bucket, so it costs you a little every month on paper instead of a lot one month in cash.
Occasional and irregular — the ambush section
- Repairs beyond the reserve — turbo, injectors, aftertreatment, transmission, the tow to the shop
- Roadside breakdowns — and the load that had to be repowered
- Lumpers (reimbursable sometimes; recorded always)
- Lodging when the truck's in the shop
- Fines and citations — not deductible, still a cost
- Factoring fees and quick-pay discounts — a percentage of gross that behaves like a per-load cost
- Broker/load-board transaction fees
- Downtime itself — not a bill, but every sitting week raises the fixed cost of the miles you do run
Nothing here is actually a surprise — every truck eventually does all of it. Funding a per-mile reserve converts the ambush into a scheduled cost, which is the entire difference between a bad week and a shutdown. The set-aside guide covers sizing it.
If you’re just starting
First-year operations carry lines that established trucks don't: authority filing and the BOC-3, new-authority insurance premiums (the expensive kind), down payments, the escrow some factoring companies hold, base plates bought mid-cycle, and the cash cushion for the 30–60 days before receivables actually pay. None of it changes the list above — it just all arrives at once, before revenue does.
The two lines everyone forgets
First: your own pay. It's not "what's left over" — it's a cost of operating the truck, and books that skip it can't tell whether the business works. Second: the replacement truck. The one you're driving is being used up at some cents per mile right now; the reserve is how that shows up honestly. Both are worked into the cost-per-mile guide.
Put the list to work
Feed your fixed bills and per-mile costs into the free cost per mile calculator to see what a mile really costs you — then let the required-rate calculator turn it into the minimum every load must pay. In the app, the same lines become live bookkeeping categories with receipts attached. Free for 14 days, no card required.
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This guide is general information, not tax advice. Tax rules change and interact with your specific circumstances. AxleVault is bookkeeping software, not a tax advisor — talk to a professional who knows trucking before you file.