When a shipper asks, "What is your rate?" do not guess. Price the lane from your real costs: fuel, loaded miles, deadhead miles, and your time. A rate built on your numbers lets you say yes with confidence — and hold your line without being rude when a lane does not pay.
Never quote before you know the load
The first rate question often comes fast, sometimes on the first call. The safe answer is honest: "Let me look at the lane and my costs and I will give you a real number today — I do not want to throw out a guess and then come back and change it."
Shippers respect that. A guessed rate that changes later marks you as shaky. Before you price, get the facts: pickup and delivery towns, loaded miles, pickup and drop times, weight, and whether the load ties your truck up waiting. Every one of those changes what the lane is worth.
Think in cost per mile — all your miles
Your truck costs money on every mile, not just loaded ones. Start with what a mile costs you: fuel, tires, oil, repairs, insurance, truck payment, permits, and the rest, spread over the miles you run. You do not need a perfect figure. You need an honest one that is yours, not a number you heard at a truck stop.
Then look at the whole trip, not just the loaded leg.
- Loaded miles from pickup to delivery
- Deadhead miles to get to the pickup
- Deadhead miles from delivery to your next load or home
- Hours lost to waiting, loading, and slow docks
A short loaded run with a long empty run to reach it can pay worse than a longer lane that starts next door. Price the full circle your truck actually drives.
Time is a cost too
Two loads at the same rate are not the same load if one takes a day and the other takes two. A load that loads Friday and delivers Monday eats your weekend earning days. A drop that holds your trailer for a day takes your trailer out of work.
Ask about detention — pay for waiting past a fair window — before you agree, not after you have sat six hours at a dock. Ask calmly and early: "After two hours, what do you pay for waiting time?" Shippers who plan well answer without blinking. The answer also tells you how they run their dock.
Leave room to say yes
Pricing is a talk, not a wall. Give a rate you can truly run at a profit, with a little room to move if the shipper offers something back — steady weekly loads, quick pay, easy loading hours, or a return load. A bit less per load can be a good trade for work you can count on every week.
What you never trade away is your floor: the number below which the lane costs you money. Know it before the call, and do not cross it to win a load. A lane that loses money does not get better with volume. It just loses more, faster.
Put agreed rates in writing, even a short email: lane, rate, what is included, and waiting pay. Clear writing prevents the one fight that kills good shipper relationships — two people remembering two different numbers.
The short version
Price from your own cost per mile, counted over every mile — loaded, deadhead in, and deadhead out — plus your time. Never guess a rate on the spot. Know your floor, leave a little room to trade for steady work, and put the agreed rate in writing.