It got more expensive to keep a truck on the road in 2025.
A new report finds it cost $2.336 per mile to operate a truck last year, which was 3.4% higher compared to 2024.
The American Transportation Research Institute today released its 2026 Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking, and said 2025’s cost per mile was the highest in the history of the annual study.
Excluding fuel, costs rose by 4.2% to $1.854 per mile.
Topping the list of the most dramatic increases were:
ATRI found only two line-items rose at below the rate of inflation: fuel and, for the second year in a row, driver pay.
Still, driver compensation reached a new milestone in 2025, according to the ATRI study.
In 2025, the industry spent a per-mile average of $0.818 on driver wages and $0.210 on driver benefits, for a total of $1.028, 3.3% higher than in 2024. This was the first year in which combined compensation costs averaged above one dollar, according to ATRI.
In 2025, driver wages rose by 2.5% while inflation rose by 2.7 percent, very similar to 2024, when wages rose by 2.4 percent while inflation rose by 2.9 percent
Truck and trailer procurement costs varied by fleet size amid high prices and low freight volumes. Small fleets spent less on trucks and trailers in 2025 than in 2024, while truckload fleets with more than 1,000 trucks spent 16.1 percent more. First-quarter 2026 data show a continuation of most 2025 cost trends.
Faced with rising costs and stagnant rates, carriers executed their largest reduction in freight capacity since the start of the freight recession in 2022 – reducing truck counts by 2.4 percent and leaving another 10 percent of trucks unseated on average.
Other key metrics show the impact of this prolonged downturn on operations. Average truck age and annual mileage increased, deadhead mileage remained elevated, and non-driver staffing levels were cut by 7.8 percent.
Despite these austerity efforts, carrier profitability remained poor, ATRI said.
Operating margins in the truckload and refrigerated sectors improved slightly but were still below 1.05, while tank carriers averaged 4.05. Only LTLs and fleets with more than 1,000 trucks had healthy – but flat year-over-year – margins in 2025. Flatbed carriers, however, had an average operating loss of -0.5%.
The full report is available on ATRI’s website here.
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