Roundtrip & Repositioning Rate Calculator

A spot load isn't origin to destination in isolation — it's the carrier's current position, the deadhead-in, the delivery, and wherever the truck goes next. See the rate this offer actually pays once deadhead dilutes it, the real buy-rate floor for the whole trip, and the dead-market premium or reload-market discount hiding in the reload leg.

Lane & Legs

Enter this to skip the automatic distance lookup entirely.
Carrier's current position to pickup. 0 if the truck is already at the shipper.

Post-Delivery Leg (optional — models the reload or repositioning trip)

Client-side convenience only: seeds the reload rate above. Submitted for GTM labeling and result-page display only -- never changes the math.
Empty miles after delivery -- to the next pickup, or just to get home/out of a dead market.
Seed this from the market-strength picker, or type your own. With the defaults below (1.95 + 0.30 = 2.25 base), the seeds are: Hot 2.48, Balanced 2.14, Soft 1.69, Dead 1.13 -- derived from your cost inputs, not from market data.

Carrier Economics

Editable assumption -- commonly cited all-in operating costs run roughly $1.80-$2.10/mi; adjust to the carrier profile. This tool sources no market data.
Profit per mile driven the carrier needs to say yes.

The Deal (optional — evaluate a carrier's ask and/or your broker margin)

Used only when a sell rate is entered above.
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How This Tool Works

Effective rate: a posted linehaul only pays the loaded miles, but the carrier drives the deadhead-in too. Effective RPM spreads the same revenue over every mile of the move, and the roundtrip view extends that math through the reload leg — deadhead-to-reload plus the next load — so the whole trip gets priced, not just the visible one.

Two floors, one zone: each floor is carrier cost plus required profit per mile — the this-load floor over just this move's miles, the roundtrip floor over all miles net of expected reload revenue. The negotiation zone runs between them: a positive gap is the dead-market premium a carrier needs to haul into a weak reload market, a negative gap is the reload-market discount a strong destination lets you capture, and the verdict places an actual ask against that zone.

Related tools: Already know your empty miles? Cost them first with the Deadhead Mileage Calculator — this tool prices what those miles mean for the buy rate. Once a load is booked, run it back through the Freight Margin & Gross Profit Calculator to confirm the margin held. For lane-level rate benchmarking beyond a single load, see the Freight Lane Rate-Per-Mile Analyzer, and pair any of these with the Fuel Surcharge Calculator when a lane's FSC needs to be broken out separately from the all-in buy rate used here.

Estimates are computed entirely from the assumptions you enter above; no live market data is sourced or implied. Carrier operating costs vary widely — the defaults are editable placeholders, not benchmarks. Actual rates depend on market conditions, capacity, and the governing broker-carrier agreement.

This tool was created by Ben Crittenden, a Project Management Professional (PMP) with experience in web development and systems administration.