The Numbers

What it costs to put one truck on the road for a single mile — everything in. Two years ago it was lower.

Everything that isn't fuel — payments, insurance, repairs, wages — hit a record high, up 3.6% in a year.

Truckload carriers lost money in 2024 — the industry's first operating loss since 2019. You're not imagining the squeeze.

Truck and trailer payments hit a record — up 8.3% — before you've turned a wheel or hauled a load.

Driver pay is the single biggest line in your cost — close to half of every dollar it takes to run a truck.

On average, about one in six miles is run empty — burning fuel and hours with no revenue attached.

Insurance alone now costs about a dime for every mile you run — a record, and still climbing.

Commercial auto liability premiums rose this much from 2021–2024 — while heavy-truck crash rates actually fell 2.6%. You're paying more for being safer.

Liability premiums per mile are up roughly this much over the past eight years.

What a typical owner-operator pays for insurance in a single year.

The median 'nuclear' verdict over $10M against a trucking company in 2022 — about 50% higher than in 2013.

Average verdicts over $1M exploded from $2.3M (2010) to $22.3M (2018) — while inflation ran 1.7% a year.

The mean plaintiff award and settlement against trucking firms between June 2020 and April 2023.

The negligence types that statistically drive verdicts higher include improper hiring and onboarding — file failures, not road failures. A current driver file is a legal defense.

Smaller carriers have been forced out of business by a single catastrophic verdict.

About 95% of fleets bill detention fees — but fewer than half of those invoices are ever paid. This is the money Clear exists to collect.

Detention cost the industry $3.6 billion in direct expenses and $11.5 billion in lost productivity in 2023 — over 135 million lost hours.

Nearly four in ten stops ended in detention; drivers lost 117–209 hours a year — about 15 days of legal driving time.

Federal investigators found detention strips this much from driver earnings every year.

Detention runs over $500 per trailer per week — roughly $390,000 a year for a 15-trailer fleet.

The average cost to replace one driver (range $2,243–$20,729). Every driver who stays is money you didn't spend.

Large truckload carriers have run about 90% annual turnover for years. A 50-truck fleet at 80% turnover burns $320k–$600k a year on churn.

About 40% of driver turnover happens in the first 90 days — and administrative friction is a consistently cited reason drivers quit.