An empty truck cost is easy to miss because nothing arrives on an invoice. The truck payment still draws from your account, the insurance premium still renews, and the only change is that revenue stops. If you run a fleet, knowing what an empty truck costs you per week turns "we're short a driver" into a number you can act on. Here is a way to calculate it with published industry data, using stated assumptions you can swap for your own.
Start with the cost of running a truck
The American Transportation Research Institute's 2026 operational cost report, which covers 2025 data, put the average cost of operating a truck at a record $2.336 per mile. Excluding fuel it was $1.854 per mile. The lines that matter most for this exercise, per mile, are:
- Driver wages: $0.818
- Driver benefits: $0.210
- Fuel: $0.482
- Repair and maintenance: $0.215
- Tires: $0.050
- Truck and trailer payments: $0.404
- Insurance premiums: $0.106
ATRI's average truck covers about 85,991 miles a year, which works out to roughly 1,654 miles a week. Use that as a baseline, then replace it with your own average weekly miles.
Separate the costs that stop from the costs that don't
When a truck sits without a driver, some costs stop and some keep running. This split is the part most fleets get wrong.
Costs that keep running (roughly fixed). At 1,654 miles a week, the truck and trailer payment is about $668 a week ($0.404 x 1,654) and insurance is about $175 ($0.106 x 1,654). That is roughly $843 a week, or about $120 a day, before you count permits, parking, telematics or the rest of your overhead. Treat the per-mile figures as an approximation here, since in reality these costs are set per month or per year rather than per mile.
Costs that stop (variable). Wages, benefits, fuel, maintenance and tires only occur when the truck turns. Adding those lines gives $1.775 per mile, or about $2,935 per week at 1,654 miles. Tolls also stop, but we have left them out to keep this simple.
A worked example: one empty truck for one week
Now add revenue. Assumption: your truck grosses $4,200 a week, or about $2.54 per mile. That figure is ours for illustration, not an industry statistic, so use your own settlement data.
- Revenue the truck would have earned: $4,200
- Variable costs you avoid by not running it: about $2,935
- Contribution you lose: about $1,265 per week
That $1,265 is the money the truck would have contributed toward the $843 of payments and insurance and toward your overhead and profit. With the truck parked, the fixed costs continue and the contribution vanishes. A truck that sits for three weeks while you search for a driver costs you close to $3,800 in contribution, and that does not include recruiting spend or the cost of a late or refused load.
Scale it to your fleet
Take a 20-truck fleet and assume 10 percent of seats are empty at any time, which is two trucks. At $1,265 a week each, that is about $2,530 a week, or roughly $131,000 a year in lost contribution. Even if you cut the vacancy rate to 5 percent, you recover about $65,000. Run the same math with your own revenue per truck and your own number of empty seats. Most owners find the result is larger than they expected.
Why the empty-seat problem keeps coming back
Turnover is the reason seats open in the first place. ATRI reported that driver turnover improved to 44.2 percent in 2025, down from 48 percent in 2024. That is better, but it still means a fleet of 20 should expect to replace close to nine drivers a year if it matches that rate. Every one of those replacements is a gap, and the length of that gap is something you can control.
Five ways to shorten the time a truck sits empty
- Track days-to-seat. Record the date a seat opens and the date a replacement drives their first load. Most fleets track cost per hire but not the days of lost revenue between those two dates.
- Call applicants fast. Applicants apply to several carriers at once. A same-hour callback beats a next-day callback when the driver is comparing offers.
- Keep your pipeline warm. Maintain a list of qualified drivers who said "not yet" so you can reach out the day a seat opens, not the day you start advertising.
- Prepare orientation logistics in advance. Booking travel, scheduling drug screens and having paperwork ready removes days between "yes" and the first load.
- Fix the early exits. A driver who leaves within 30 days sends you back to the start. Review pay clarity, home-time promises and dispatcher communication in the first weeks.
Key takeaways
- Fixed costs such as truck payments and insurance keep running when a truck is empty, so the loss is the contribution the truck would have earned.
- Using ATRI cost data and our stated assumptions, one empty truck can cost roughly $1,265 a week in lost contribution.
- Two empty seats in a 20-truck fleet add up to about $131,000 a year under the same assumptions.
- Days-to-seat is the number to track.
- Replace our assumptions with your own revenue per truck and weekly miles before you make any decision.
When it makes sense to hand recruiting off
Once you know what each empty week costs, the question becomes whether your team has the time to run job ads, callbacks, screening and orientation logistics while also managing dispatch and compliance. If recruiting competes with everything else on your desk, seats stay open longer. Outsourcing that work to a dedicated recruiting partner can shorten the gap, and you can compare the fee against your own weekly number before you decide.
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