Knowing the cost per mile for all your expenses adds up to success.

Robert Saberhagen of Lehigh Acres, Fla., has been in the moving business 30 years, an owner-operator the past three. Leased to Bekins, he moves household goods in the summer, trade shows in the winter and a steady stream of numbers all year long.

Those numbers are his costs, his revenues and his miles. In order to manage them, Saberhagen tracks them religiously. He passes them to his accountant, who sends him more numbers in the form of monthly profit-and-loss statements. Saberhagen scrutinizes those numbers as well in order to better manage his operation. To Saberhagen, trucking is a numbers game.

“Your accounting is your No. 1 priority,” Saberhagen says. “If you don’t know where your money is going, you’re going to go broke. It’s that simple.”

Knowing your overall cost per mile and all your subsidiary costs per mile – fuel costs, maintenance costs, insurance costs, even food and drink costs – is vital to running a successful business, says Indianapolis accountant Gary Aitken, who has specialized in owner-operators for 36 years.

“It affects your operation of the truck, your payment of estimated taxes, your retirement planning – every aspect of your business,” Aitken says. “And yet, most owner-operators don’t have any idea of their cost per mile.”