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    Freight Broker Profit Margin Calculator

    Find your floor margin and your goal margin, price in the real costs like factoring, insurance, and the BMC-84 bond, and see what a full year of profit actually looks like.

    How a freight broker makes money

    You don't own trucks. A shipper pays you to move a load, you pay a trucker less to haul it, and you keep the difference. That's the whole business.

    The trick is knowing two numbers: the most you can pay a trucker before you lose money, and what to aim for so you actually make good money.

    Fill in the boxes below and we'll show you both, in real dollars. We already filled in the hard parts.

    Your business

    Start with these three. Don't know a cost further down? Our starting numbers are real 2025-26 averages. Leave them be.

    $/ load

    The all-in rate your customer agrees to pay to move one load. A typical dry-van load runs $1,800 to $2,500.

    loads / wk

    Loads you move in a normal working week. A solo broker working the phones might book 8 to 15.

    weeks / yr

    Knock off your vacation and holidays. Most office/sales roles take about 4 weeks off, so 48 is a solid default.

    %of the load

    Most brokers aim for 15 to 20%. Slide this up or down and watch your profit change below.

    = keep about $360 on a $2,000 load

    Here it is in plain dollars

    A shipper pays you $2,000 to move one load. You pay a trucker to haul it. Whatever's left is your pay, but your bills come out of it too. So the only question that matters is: how much can you pay the trucker?
    The line you can't cross
    Pay the trucker
    no more than $1,910
    on this $2,000 load
    Why that number? You have to keep at least $90 out of this load just to pay your own bills. That's your floor, about 4.5% of the load ($2,000 × 4.5% = $90). Pay the trucker even a dollar more than $1,910 and you lose money moving this load. Good news: the more loads you book, the more you can pay, because your monthly bills split across all of them.
    What to actually aim for
    Pay the trucker
    about $1,640
    and keep $360, that's your 18.0% goal
    You keep $360 up front, but after your bills come out (the list below), the money you really pocket on this one load is about $270.31.
    And what do you bill the shipper? You send them an invoice (a bill) for the rate they agreed to: $2,000. You pay the trucker their $1,640 on your own. The gap between the two is your pay. That's the whole business.
    Do that all year long
    $129,750 a year
    about $10,813 a month, on roughly 480 loads

    The bills that come out of your pay

    For a whole year, on about 480 loads:

    Your pay before billsthe gap between what shippers pay and what you pay truckers$172,800
    Factoring: the fee to get paid fastusually the biggest one−$24,000
    Sales commission−$0
    Bad-debt cushion (a shipper stiffs you)−$4,800
    Insurance−$6,150
    Your bond (BMC-84)−$1,500
    Load boards & software−$3,000
    Office & other bills−$3,600
    What you actually keep$129,750

    The one thing to remember: you aimed to keep 18.0% of the load, but after your bills you really keep 13.5%. That's normal, just don't forget it.

    The biggest bite is factoring ($24,000 a year here), because it's taken out of every dollar, not just your pay.

    The fix is simple: charge a little more, pay the trucker a little less, and book more loads.

    These are planning numbers. Insurance and bond prices change a lot based on your credit, the freight you haul, and your claims history. Get real quotes before you commit. Costs have been going up across the board.

    Become a broker

    Like the numbers? Learn to actually run them.

    This is the math behind a real brokerage. The Foundation Freight course takes you from zero to your own authority (sales, carrier vetting, contracts, and the back office) taught by people who broker freight every day.

    Explore the course

    Veteran-owned. No $5k-guru nonsense.