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    Freight Broker Profit Margin Calculator

    Find your floor margin and your goal margin, price in the real costs — factoring, insurance, 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 — we already filled in the hard parts — and we'll show you both, in real dollars.

    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–$2,500.

    loads / wk

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

    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 15–20%. 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.