CARRIER TOOLS / FIRST RELEASE
Pay by the hour.
Price by the mile.
Find the freight rate that covers driver pay, every operating cost, and your profit. Or work backward from today’s revenue to see what hourly wage it supports.
Built from FOPT’s hourly pay frameworkYour pay model.
One truck or a group of trucks. Enter complete workweeks, review the results, and export your scenario.
Files are processed in your browserExample only. Replace sample driver and truck records with your own complete workweeks. Entries stay in this tab unless you choose “Save here,” which stores them on this browser. No records are uploaded to the website.
START WITH THE DRIVER
Build your pay model.
Shared assumptions apply to all entered driver workweeks. Driver hours include driving, other work, and detention once each.
Employer burden applies to modeled hourly and overnight pay. Benefits are added separately. Use complete employer workweeks; this is a planning model, not payroll processing. The overtime setting is your modeled policy and must be reviewed against applicable requirements.
REQUIRED TOTAL RATE / LOADED MILE
$2.94Includes linehaul, fuel surcharge, and collected accessorials.
WORK BACKWARD FROM YOUR REVENUE
$38.90
Maximum base hourly wage at your target margin, with the same work hours, burden, benefits, and overnight pay.
WHERE THE MONEY GOES
The full cost of the work.
- Hourly wages + overtime
- $2,100.00
- Overnight pay
- $150.00
- Employer burden + benefits
- $550.00
- Truck costs + shared overhead
- $2,700.00
- Total modeled operating cost
- $5,500.00
- Target profit at required revenue
- $970.59
60 paid hours · 2,200 loaded miles · 300 empty miles · 1 driver workweeks · 1 truck workweeks · 1 distinct workweeks
TIME HAS A COST
What waiting does to payroll.
This is the added modeled payroll cost of the entered detention hours, including any overtime they create. It is already included in total costs. Idle fuel, equipment time, and lost future loads are not added here.
Current gross pay baseline: $4,780.00 total operating cost using the same burden and benefits. Hourly model difference: $720.00. Enter all current gross compensation, including existing detention and overnight pay. No turnover or safety savings are assumed.
TRY THE WAGE, SEE THE RATE
What changes at a different wage?
| Base hourly wage | Total cost | Required loaded-mile rate | Profit at entered revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| $25.00 | $5,080.00 | $2.72 | $2,270.00 |
| $30.00 · selected | $5,500.00 | $2.94 | $1,850.00 |
| $35.00 | $5,920.00 | $3.17 | $1,430.00 |
| $40.00 | $6,340.00 | $3.39 | $1,010.00 |
Bring the whole workweek.
Enter records below or import the CSV templates. Export reviewed weekly totals from your ELD, dispatch, accounting, and payroll systems, then arrange them into these columns. This release does not connect directly to ELD accounts or interpret raw duty-status event files.
DRIVER HOURS & CURRENT PAY
One row per driver, per workweek.
“Other work” excludes driving and detention. Reclassify detention out of other work before entering it here. Use your employer’s workweek start date consistently. Review ELD totals against actual paid work; do not treat every off-duty entry as unpaid work or every elapsed hour as payable.
For team operations, use a separate row for each driver and one truck row. A driver assigned across multiple trucks in the same week must be consolidated to one reporting truck for this release. Do not split that driver’s week and restart overtime.
| Workweek start | Driver ID | Truck ID | Driving hours | Other work hours | Detention hours | Nights away | Current gross pay ($) | Remove |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
TRUCK COSTS & REVENUE
Count the equipment once.
One row per truck and workweek. Enter actual costs for that week, allocating monthly or annual expenses consistently. Fuel includes idle fuel. Exclude driver wages, benefits, and shared fleet overhead here: those are added in the pay model.
“Collected accessorials” includes detention actually received. Leave disputed or unpaid invoices out of that field. Keep revenues and costs aligned to the same workweeks. For owner operators, include your own labor in a driver row. Choose a consistent operating-cost basis; do not count both equipment principal payments and depreciation as the same expense. This is an operating model, not a tax or cash-flow statement.
| Workweek start | Truck ID | Loaded miles | Empty miles | Fuel ($) | Maintenance / tires ($) | Equipment ($) | Insurance / permits ($) | Other truck costs ($) | Linehaul revenue ($) | Fuel surcharge ($) | Collected accessorials ($) | Remove |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Import replaces one table at a time after preview. Up to 10,000 rows per CSV; only 25 rows display per page. Multiple workweeks are supported. Results use weighted totals, not an average of individual rates. No live fleet synchronization is included.
BEFORE YOU ACCEPT IT
Does this load work?
For one driver, within one employer workweek. Uses the wage, overtime, burden, and profit settings in your pay model. Include all driving, loading, waiting, fueling, and other paid work in load hours.
Fixed allocation should cover equipment time, insurance, overhead, and the load’s share of benefits. Other load costs should include tolls and overnight pay with its employer burden. Exclude these from your variable mile cost to avoid duplication. Split loads crossing workweeks before calculating; this checker does not allocate them automatically.
THIS LOAD NEEDS
$1,451$3.63 total revenue per loaded mile
TEST THE DELAY
Four more hours?
At the same other costs, four extra paid hours require $254.12 more total revenue to preserve your target margin. Add any extra idle fuel, equipment time, or overnight costs separately.
THE MATH IS OPEN
Cost first. Profit next. Then the rate.
Required revenue = total modeled operating cost ÷ (1 − target margin). Required total loaded-mile rate = required revenue ÷ loaded miles. Affordable wage uses the revenue left after the target profit, nonlabor costs, benefits, and overnight compensation, divided by overtime-adjusted wage hours and employer burden.
FOPT’s article supplies the starting pay framework. Your entered records determine the results. No promised turnover savings, crash reductions, or future detention collections are used to make a scenario work. Confirm your pay policy and work-hour treatment before using results for actual compensation.
Need help reviewing your records? Talk to Micheal