How to Calculate Your True Profit as an Owner-Driver in Australia
Most Australian owner-drivers calculate profit wrong. Here is the correct way to work out your real take-home on any load including fuel, empty kms and GST.
Most Australian owner-drivers make the same mistake. They look at the rate offered, subtract the fuel cost they can roughly remember, and decide whether a load is worth taking based on whatever is left.
The problem? That number is almost always wrong. And usually it is wrong in a way that costs you money.
This guide walks you through the correct way to calculate your real take-home profit on any load — the same method used by the most profitable owner-operators in Australia.
Why Your Current Method Is Probably Wrong
When a broker or a customer offers you $2,300 for a Melbourne to Wollongong run, most drivers think about it like this:
Revenue: $2,300
Fuel: maybe $400
Profit: roughly $1,900
But that is not your profit. That is not even close to your profit.
Here is what the number actually looks like when you account for every real cost:
Revenue: $2,300
Fuel (loaded kilometres): $420
Fuel (empty return kilometres): $168
Tolls: $45
Tyre wear: $52
Maintenance allocation: $78
Finance repayment (daily allocation): $80
Insurance (per job allocation): $30
GST you must remit to the ATO: $209
Actual profit: $1,218
That is a difference of $682 from the rough estimate. On a single job. Multiply that across 200 jobs a year and you are talking about $136,000 in profit that was never actually there.
The 8 Costs Every Owner-Driver Must Track
To calculate your true profit you need to account for all eight of the following costs on every single job.
1. Fuel — loaded kilometres
This is the cost of the diesel you burn driving the loaded kilometres. Calculate it as:
(kilometres driven / 100) x litres per 100km x fuel price per litre
Example: 300km, 35L/100km, $2.20/litre = $231
2. Fuel — empty kilometres
This is where most drivers get burned. The kilometres you drive without a load — usually the return trip — still cost you diesel. They generate zero revenue but they are very real costs.
A 300km loaded run with an 80km empty return costs you fuel on all 380km. That extra 80km at 35L/100km and $2.20/litre adds $61.60 to your costs that most drivers never factor in.
3. Tolls and road charges
Do not estimate this one. Get the actual toll cost for your route using a tolling app or the Linkt calculator before you accept any job. Sydney and Melbourne runs especially can have $80 to $150 in tolls that wipe out a significant chunk of your margin.
4. Tyre wear
Tyres are one of the biggest hidden costs in trucking. A set of steer tyres for a semi can cost $2,000 to $3,000 and they wear down every kilometre you drive.
A reasonable estimate for a B-double or semi-trailer is 4 to 6 cents per kilometre in tyre costs. On a 1,000km run that is $40 to $60 that belongs in your cost calculation.
5. Maintenance and repairs
Your truck requires regular servicing, parts and repairs. These costs are real even if you are not paying them on this particular job. The correct approach is to calculate a per-kilometre maintenance rate based on your annual maintenance spend and your annual kilometres.
If you spend $15,000 per year on maintenance and drive 150,000km that is 10 cents per kilometre. On a 300km job that is $30 in maintenance cost that should be allocated against that job's profit.
6. Finance repayment
If you have a truck on finance your repayment does not pause between jobs. Every single day your truck is on the road it is accumulating finance cost whether it is loaded or empty or sitting still.
Divide your monthly repayment by the number of working days in the month to get your daily finance cost. Allocate that daily cost to every job based on how many days or hours the job takes.
7. Insurance
Same principle as finance. Your insurance premium is a fixed cost that runs continuously. Calculate a per-day or per-job allocation and include it in every profit calculation.
8. GST
This one catches a lot of owner-drivers by surprise at BAS time. If you are registered for GST — which you must be if your turnover exceeds $75,000 per year — then one eleventh of every dollar you invoice belongs to the ATO.
On a $2,300 job that is $209.09 that you must remit to the ATO. It is not your money. It never was your money. But if you spend it before your BAS is due you will have a very bad quarter.
Always strip the GST out of your revenue before calculating your real profit.
The Formula
Here is the complete formula:
Real profit = (Revenue divided by 1.1) minus fuel loaded minus fuel empty minus tolls minus tyre wear minus maintenance minus finance allocation minus insurance allocation
Run this on every job before you accept it. Not after.
How Long Does This Actually Take?
If you are doing this manually with a calculator and a notepad it takes 5 to 10 minutes per job. That is 5 to 10 minutes most drivers skip because they are busy and they trust their gut.
TruckProfit does this calculation in under 30 seconds. You enter the rate, the distance, and your saved cost defaults. The app does the rest and tells you immediately whether to take the load, negotiate the rate, or walk away.
What a Good Profit Looks Like
As a guide for Australian owner-drivers in 2026:
A strong load: 30% or higher margin, $60 or more per hour
A marginal load: 15% to 30% margin, $35 to $60 per hour
A load to avoid: below 15% margin or below $35 per hour
These are guides not rules. Your numbers will depend on your truck type, your fixed costs and your market. But if you are consistently running below 15% margin you are not building a sustainable business — you are slowly going backwards.
Start Calculating Properly Today
The difference between the most profitable owner-drivers and the ones who struggle is not luck and it is not the loads they get offered. It is whether they know their real numbers.
Run your next load through the TruckProfit calculator before you accept it. It is free, it takes 30 seconds, and it might save you from a run that looks like $1,900 profit but is actually $1,218.