Cost per kilometre

Why a cost rate does not have the same structure everywhere

The total is rarely the interesting part. What is interesting is what it consists of — because that determines which lever moves anything at all.

• Where the driver wage dominates, every hour not lost at a ramp pays off.
• Where financing and tyres dominate — high interest rates, poor roads — the useful life of the vehicle decides more than the fuel price.
• Where tolls form the largest block, the choice of route is the lever, not the driving style.

That is why the calculator shows the shares and not just the total. The capital share from depreciation and interest sits beside them as its own figure: with double-digit interest rates it is regularly larger than fuel — which makes the question of driving style secondary to the question of financing.

The calculation

The point about empty running

The costs arise on all kilometres, but only the loaded ones are paid for. At an empty running rate of 15 per cent every paid kilometre has to carry around 18 per cent more than the plain cost rate — at 25 per cent it is already 33 per cent. That conversion is missing from most calculations and explains a good part of the gap between the calculated and the achieved result.

You enter all values yourself. The calculator deliberately holds no country or market defaults: fuel prices, wages and interest rates differ too much to store sensibly. The calculation runs entirely in the browser.