You own the truck. Don't haul freight that doesn't pay.
LoadMerit estimates a load's profit with transparent assumptions — cost per mile, effective rate per mile, deadhead, and risk — before you say yes. Free, no account, no load board required.
Decision-support software · You make the final call
Why it matters
The margins are thin. The math shouldn't be a guess.
Three things quietly turn a load that looks fine into one that costs you. LoadMerit puts a number on each before you commit.
Your real cost per mile is higher than you think
Fuel, truck payment, insurance, maintenance, tolls — plus the pay you're actually working for. Miss any of it and a 'good' rate quietly loses money.
Find your cost per mile →Deadhead eats the load before you leave
A great loaded rate can be a bad load once you spread it across the empty miles to get there. Effective RPM — not loaded RPM — is the number that pays your bills.
Loaded vs. effective RPM →Brokers know their number — now you know yours
Every offer has a floor you shouldn't go under and a fair counter above it. LoadMerit gives you both, so you're not negotiating on a gut feeling.
How to build a counteroffer →How owner-operators use it
One minute per load, before you call the broker back
Enter the offer
Lane, loaded and deadhead miles, offered rate, equipment. Diesel auto-fills weekly from the EIA — no load board, no account.
See the whole picture
Effective RPM, gross profit, deadhead %, and a risk score — then a plain Book / Negotiate / Pass call with the math behind it.
Counter — or pass without second-guessing
Get a defensible counteroffer and your minimum acceptable rate. Book the good ones, walk from the rest, and stop leaving money on the table.
Before the next load
Your floor is built from line items
A rate is only good or bad against a number you own. These are the lines that set it — including the two most cost sheets leave out.
Fixed bills, spread over honest miles
Truck payment, plates, permits, parking. Divide them by the miles a slow quarter actually produces, not the miles a good one did.
Build your cost per mile →Insurance is priced on you, not the truck
Two operators with identical equipment get different quotes. Experience, record, radius, and commodity move the premium more than the truck does.
What the policies actually cover →Know which taxes are a cost line
Where they apply, IFTA and the 2290 are owed on miles and equipment, so they sit in the stack. Income tax is charged on profit — it shapes your rate target instead.
Taxes and IFTA, plainly →Factoring fees belong in the stack
On a 620-mile run at $2.10/mi, a 3% fee is about six cents a mile (example costs). Small until it moves your break-even past a rate you would have booked without thinking.
Price factoring per mile →Start with the free load calculator — no account, and it answers the question on its own. If you want to practise the decision rather than just check one load, the training scenarios use synthetic loads with scored feedback. Paid plans add comparison, settled-rate records, fuel logs, and reports for your working week. The calculator stays free.
Transparent by design
Every number shows its work
The engine is deterministic — the same inputs always give the same answer, and no figure is ever calculated by AI. See exactly how the recommendation and risk score are built.
LoadMerit is not a freight broker, motor carrier, dispatcher service, transportation intermediary, load board, or transportation management system. LoadMerit does not arrange transportation, book loads, dispatch trucks, represent carriers, represent brokers, negotiate on behalf of users, or participate in freight transactions.
LoadMerit does not guarantee income, employment, carrier clients, broker relationships, freight availability, load acceptance, business success, or profitable outcomes. Any examples, scenarios, or calculations are illustrative and depend on user-entered assumptions and changing real-world conditions.