Haulage Cost Calculator

Total Cost/Ton describes the fuel, labor, and maintenance cost of moving one ton over the haul route -- a per-cycle economics figure that doesn't depend on how many total tons the operation moves in a day. Daily Tonnage instead only affects Trucks Needed, which answers a completely separate question: how many trucks does the fleet need to move that daily total, given how many tons a single truck can haul per shift.

Each percentage point of average grade adds roughly 2% to the effective haul distance used in the fuel calculation, so a route with a 15% grade burns noticeably more fuel per ton than a flat route of the same physical distance -- the grade factor compounds with distance and fuel price, so steep, long hauls see the largest fuel cost impact.

No -- Labor Cost/Ton is calculated purely from the driver's hourly rate, shift length, and how many tons a truck can move per shift (which depends on cycle time, itself driven by distance and grade), with no reference to fuel cost anywhere in that calculation. A diesel price spike raises Fuel Cost/Ton and, through it, Total Cost/Ton, but the labor line on your cost breakdown stays exactly where it was before the price change.

This calculator doesn't model the bigger truck's own operating cost scaling with payload -- it spreads the same fixed per-shift labor cost across more tons per trip when payload rises, which mechanically lowers Labor Cost/Ton. In practice, larger haul trucks do have proportionally higher fuel and maintenance costs, so a full economic comparison between truck sizes should weigh that against this calculator's labor-cost effect.