How Much Do Owner-Operators Actually Make After Expenses? (2026)

By Erkan Ozturk — owner-operator, HAWD Trucking LLC (USDOT 4436030), Chattanooga TN · Last updated July 11, 2026

What does the average owner-operator make after expenses in 2025?

The most useful public answer comes from ATBS, the accounting and tax firm that processes the books of thousands of owner-operators — real profit-and-loss statements, not survey guesses. For 2025, their client average was a net income of $71,800 on roughly 95,000 miles. Their top third averaged about $166,000. Same trucks, same freight market, more than double the money.

A methodology note, because honest numbers deserve honest context: these are annual aggregates of client data. “Net income” here is a business figure — revenue minus operating expenses — before the owner’s income tax and self-employment tax, and definitions vary between sources. An average also hides the spread: some owner-operators netted far less than $71,800 in 2025, and the top third shows how far the other direction runs. Use the figures as landmarks, not as a forecast for your truck.

Where does the money go between gross and net?

Net income is not a mystery; it is one subtraction, repeated all year:

netProfit = rate − totalExpenses

totalExpenses = fuel + fixed(cpm×totalMiles) + variable(cpm×totalMiles) + percentFees + directCash(tolls, lumper, other)

To see where the dollars actually go, here is a full gross-to-net waterfall on an illustrative year: $200,000 gross on 95,000 miles at 7.5 MPG, with diesel at the EIA weekly U.S. on-highway average of $4.578 per gallon, published July 6, 2026. This is illustrative arithmetic — pick-a-number assumptions run through the formulas above — not survey data. Every cell can be recomputed from the assumption column.

Seventy cents of every gross dollar left before the owner saw anything — and this year had no breakdown, no blown tire on the turnpike, no month of soft freight. For scale, ATRI’s “An Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking: 2025 Update” (July 2025, 2024 data) put the industry’s average total marginal cost at $2.260 per mile. That fleet figure includes driver wages and benefits, which is why it sits above the $1.47 cost line here: for an owner-operator, the wage is the net. Which lines are fixed and which scale with the odometer — and why that changes how you cut them — is its own page: what are fixed vs variable costs in trucking?

How does owner-operator net income compare to company-driver pay?

Carefully, or not at all. A company driver’s wage arrives with things an owner-operator’s net income still has to buy. Comparing the two headline numbers side by side without adjusting for that is the same napkin math that misprices loads — the structure of each dollar is different:

For the company-side benchmark, the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes a median wage for heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers in its Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics series, occupation code 53-3032. Pull the current figure straight from the source (BLS OES 53-3032) and set it against owner-operator net income adjusted for the rows above. The honest comparison is net-to-total-compensation, not net-to-wage — an owner-operator carries costs a company driver never sees.

Why does the top third make more than double the average?

Not luck, and not secret freight. The spread between $71,800 and $166,000 is about $94,200 a year — roughly $1,811.54 a week over 52 weeks. That is not one decision; it is the compound interest of many small ones, and most of them are cost decisions. The same subtraction that built the waterfall above runs on every single load, and it starts with your own cost per mile:

baseCPM = fixedCPM (weeklyFixed ÷ weeklyMileGoal) + variableCPM + fuelCPM (price ÷ MPG)

A dated snapshot of what one load decision is worth. On July 11, 2026, a real $1,350 load from Erie, PA through Buffalo, NY to Boston, MA — 458 loaded plus 93 deadhead miles, $210 in tolls, 7.5 MPG, EIA diesel at $4.578/gal (published July 6, 2026), 3% dispatch plus 3% factoring, $0.96/mi operating costs, 1.5 hours at the dock — looked like +$804 and roughly $64/hr estimated on the broker’s napkin (rate minus fuel and tolls). The full math came back +$194, about $15.50/hr estimated over 12.5 on-duty hours. A $610 gap on one load — a third of that $1,811.54 weekly spread, hiding in a single yes. Whether a given rate clears your bar in the first place is covered in what is a good rate per mile for owner-operators?

The pattern in the ATBS spread is the pattern in that one load, repeated. Drivers who know their number — fuel cost per mile, fixed cost per mile, the real price of deadhead and dock hours — price loads against it and let the weak ones go. Drivers who run on averages and instinct haul the $610 gaps without ever seeing them. Don’t be the average driver.

How do you find out what your own number is?

Everything on this page is industry-scale: useful for calibration, useless for a Tuesday-morning rate call. Your net income for 2026 will be set by your truck payment, your insurance, your MPG, your weekly miles, and the rates you accept — so the working number to build first is your own cost per mile, line by line: how do I calculate cost per mile for a semi truck? The gap between the average and the top third is measured in cost per mile — the number LoadWizz’s free wizard computes for you. The rest of the math — break-even, deadhead, tolls, dollars per hour — lives in the Learn library. Use it, or don’t. The truth doesn’t change.