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Fleet Management Statistics (2026)

Last updated: July 2026. Figures on this page come from ATRI, ATA, FMCSA, Penske, and Verizon Connect research, and are reviewed and updated annually.

30+ fleet management statistics for 2026, every figure cited to its original source.

Running a fleet in 2026 means managing the tightest margins the trucking industry has recorded in years. The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) found that most carrier sectors operated below a 2% margin in 2024, and truckload carriers actually lost money on average. Against that backdrop, every empty mile, every hour of detention, and every insurance renewal matters.

This page collects the fleet management numbers that matter most: per-mile operating costs, industry scale, vehicle utilization, downtime, compliance, insurance, and technology adoption. Each statistic is cited to its original publisher, primarily ATRI, the American Trucking Associations (ATA), FMCSA, Penske Truck Leasing, and Verizon Connect's annual Fleet Technology Trends research. Where a figure comes from an older report, we say so in plain language rather than passing it off as current.

This is one page in a larger series. For the headline numbers across every category, from theft recovery to fuel and safety, see our full GPS tracking statistics roundup. Here, we go deeper on the operational side of fleet management specifically.

What Does It Cost to Operate a Truck per Mile?

ATRI's Operational Costs of Trucking research is the industry's benchmark for per-mile economics, built from real carrier financial data. The 2025 update, covering the 2024 operating year, shows a strange squeeze: total costs eased slightly, yet nearly every non-fuel line item climbed.

The average marginal cost of operating a truck was $2.260 per mile in 2024, down 0.4% from 2023. That small decline came almost entirely from cheaper fuel. For fleet budgeting, $2.26 per mile remains the most defensible baseline figure available.
Source: ATRI, An Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking: 2025 Update (2025)

Non-fuel operating costs rose 3.6% to $1.779 per mile in 2024, the highest level ATRI has ever recorded. Strip fuel out of the equation and the cost picture gets worse, not better. Equipment, labor, and insurance are doing the damage, and none of those pressures reverse quickly.
Source: ATRI, Operational Costs of Trucking 2025 Update (2025)

Truck and trailer payments hit a record $0.390 per mile in 2024, up 8.3%. Equipment finance is now the second-largest cost center after fuel for many carriers. High equipment prices and interest rates pushed this line item to its highest point in the study's history.
Source: ATRI, Operational Costs of Trucking 2025 Update (2025)

Driver wages rose 2.4% in 2024, half a point below inflation, while driver benefits rose 4.8% to $0.197 per mile. Real driver pay effectively fell, but total labor cost still climbed because benefits grew twice as fast as wages. Fleets can't count on labor costs flattening out.
Source: ATRI, Operational Costs of Trucking 2025 Update (2025)

Truckload carriers ran an average operating margin of -2.3% in 2024, and every sector except LTL posted margins below 2%. The average truckload carrier lost money on operations. That's the core reason cost-per-mile visibility, and the tracking data behind it, has moved from nice-to-have to survival tool.
Source: ATRI, Operational Costs of Trucking 2025 Update (2025)

Cost center	2024 cost per mile	Change
Total marginal cost	$2.260	-0.4% vs 2023
Fuel	$0.481	~21% of total (based on ATRI data)
Truck & trailer payments	$0.390	+8.3% vs 2023 (record)
Repair & maintenance	$0.198	-2.0% vs 2023
Driver benefits	$0.197	+4.8% vs 2023
Truck liability insurance	$0.102	+18.6% vs 2021 (record)
All non-fuel operating costs	$1.779	+3.6% vs 2023 (record)

Source: ATRI, Operational Costs of Trucking 2025 Update (2025); repair & maintenance line as reported by Fleet Maintenance (2025); insurance figure from ATRI insurance research via Fleet Equipment (2026). Fuel share is derived from ATRI's published totals.

Related: fuel is the single largest line in that table — see our fuel savings statistics for what tracking data does to that number.

How Big Is the US Trucking and Fleet Industry?

Scale numbers from the American Trucking Associations frame everything else on this page. Trucking isn't a niche; it's the backbone of US domestic freight, and it's dominated by small fleets, not megacarriers.

The US trucking industry generated $906 billion in gross freight revenues in 2024. That's approaching a trillion-dollar industry, which is why even fractional efficiency gains, a percentage point of fuel here, a point of utilization there, translate into enormous dollar amounts across the sector.
Source: ATA, American Trucking Trends 2025 (2025)

Trucks moved 72.7% of US domestic freight tonnage in 2024, a total of 11.27 billion tons. Nearly three of every four tons of domestic freight travel by truck. Rail, air, and water combined handle the remainder, which is why fleet operating costs ripple through the price of almost everything.
Source: ATA, Economics and Industry Data (2025)

14.89 million single-unit and combination trucks were registered in the US in 2023, about 5% of all motor vehicles. A relatively small slice of the vehicle population does an outsized share of the economic work, and each of those trucks is a candidate for tracking and utilization data.
Source: ATA, from FHWA data (2023)

Nearly 580,000 active US motor carriers were registered with FMCSA as of June 2025, and 91.5% of them operate 10 or fewer trucks. Fully 99.3% run 100 or fewer. Fleet management is overwhelmingly a small-business discipline, which shapes everything from technology pricing to who actually buys tracking systems.
Source: ATA, Economics and Industry Data (2025)

3.58 million truck drivers were employed in the US in 2024, within a trucking-related workforce of 8.4 million. Roughly one in every twenty American workers touches trucking in some way. Driver-facing decisions, pay, scheduling, monitoring, therefore affect a workforce larger than most states' populations.
Source: ATA, American Trucking Trends 2025 (2025)

Utilization, Downtime & Driver Turnover Statistics

The most expensive truck in any fleet is the one that's moving empty, sitting at a dock, or parked in the shop. These figures put hard numbers on the utilization gap, and they're the numbers GPS and telematics data most directly attack.

Fleets ran 16.7% empty (deadhead) miles on average in 2024, with just 0.93 drivers per truck. One in six miles earned nothing. Fewer than one driver per truck means equipment sits idle too. Together these two figures define the industry's utilization problem better than any others.
Source: ATRI, Operational Costs of Trucking 2025 Update (2025)

Unplanned downtime costs a truckload carrier about $637 per truck per day in lost revenue. Penske derived that from average truckload revenue of $4,457 per truck per week in 2024. A truck in the shop for a week has quietly burned more than $4,400 before the repair bill even arrives.
Source: Penske Truck Leasing, The True Cost of Downtime (2024)

Drivers were detained beyond their scheduled time at 39.3% of all stops in 2023. The problem hit women drivers (49.1% of stops) and refrigerated loads (56.2%) hardest. Detention is the utilization killer fleets control least, which is why timestamped arrival and departure data has become standard evidence in detention billing disputes.
Source: ATRI driver detention research, via Inbound Logistics (2023)

Driver detention cost for-hire trucking more than 135 million lost hours, $3.6 billion in direct expenses, and $11.5 billion in lost productivity in 2023. Add those up and detention rivals fuel theft, cargo theft, and crashes combined as a drain on the industry. It's also almost invisible without location data.
Source: ATRI detention research, via Inbound Logistics (2023)

Driver turnover costs fleets an estimated $7,000 to $10,000 per departing driver. Recruiting, onboarding, and lost productivity add up fast, and turnover interacts with everything above: detention and poor scheduling are consistently cited drivers of quits.
Source: National Transportation Institute, cited by Penske Truck Leasing (2024)

ATA's 2019 analysis put the driver shortage at 60,800 drivers at the end of 2018, projected to reach 160,000 by 2028, with 1.1 million new drivers needed over the following decade. Those are pre-pandemic projections from ATA's 2019 report, and ATA has since reframed the issue as driver quality and retention rather than raw headcount. Either way, the 0.93 drivers-per-truck figure above shows the seat-filling problem hasn't gone away.
Source: ATA, Truck Driver Shortage Analysis (2019)

Compliance & Insurance: What Do ELDs and Liability Cost Fleets?

Two forces reshaped fleet compliance economics over the past decade: the ELD mandate, which made hours-of-service logging electronic and essentially universal for interstate carriers, and a liability insurance market that keeps hardening even as trucks get safer.

Hours-of-service violation rates fell from 1.19% of inspections in December 2017 to 0.83% in January 2018, then to 0.69% by April 2018 as the ELD mandate took effect. Violations nearly halved within five months of enforcement. It remains one of the clearest before-and-after datasets on what electronic logging did to compliance behavior.
Source: FMCSA data, via DISA Global Solutions (2018)

Truck liability insurance premiums rose 18.6% from 2021 to 2024, reaching a record 10.2 cents per mile, even as heavy-truck crash rates fell 2.6%. Safer trucks, higher premiums. ATRI's May 2026 insurance research documents a market where fleets pay more regardless of their own crash performance, making documented safety data one of the few negotiating levers left.
Source: ATRI insurance cost research, via Fleet Equipment (2026)

Per-mile liability losses increased an average of 33.1% from 2021 to 2024, and excess coverage layers rose even faster: 34% for the $5-10 million layer (to 1.58 cents per mile) and 45% for the $10-15 million layer (to 1.05 cents per mile). Nuclear-verdict exposure is inflating the top of the coverage stack fastest. Carriers buying high-limit coverage are absorbing the steepest increases in the industry.
Source: ATRI insurance cost research, via Fleet Equipment (2026)

Related: GPS tracking ROI statistics covers what telematics data does to insurance and claims costs in detail.

How Many Fleets Use GPS Tracking and Telematics?

Adoption data answers a simple question: is fleet tracking still an early-adopter tool, or table stakes? The trend line from Verizon Connect's annual surveys is unambiguous, and the gap between large and small fleets is the most interesting number in the set. Fleets evaluating options can see how these systems work on our fleet tracking page.

80% of fleet professionals now use GPS fleet tracking, up 11 percentage points in a single year. Verizon Connect's 2026 Fleet Technology Trends Report (published November 2025) shows adoption jumping from roughly two-thirds to four-fifths of fleets. Non-adopters are now a shrinking minority competing against data-equipped rivals.
Source: Verizon Connect, 2026 Fleet Technology Trends Report (2025)

A year earlier, 69% of fleets used GPS tracking, and 62% of users reported improved efficiency. The 2025 edition of the same survey (543 respondents) provides the trend baseline. Taken together, the two editions show the fastest year-over-year adoption jump in the survey's recent history.
Source: Verizon Connect, 2025 Fleet Technology Trends Report (2025)

46% of fleets have adopted video telematics, up 10 percentage points since 2023. Dash cameras and AI video are following the same adoption curve GPS tracking rode a decade earlier, driven largely by insurance and claims-defense economics.
Source: Verizon Connect, 2026 Fleet Technology Trends Report (2025)

93% of fleets with more than 50 vehicles use telematics, versus 52% of fleets with three or fewer vehicles, according to an Expert Market survey. That 41-point gap is the adoption story in one number: large fleets treat telematics as standard equipment, while the smallest operators, who make up 91.5% of all carriers, remain the underserved segment.
Source: Expert Market, Fleet Management Statistics (2025)

77% of fleet professionals cite rising costs as their top concern, for the fifth consecutive year. Cost pressure, not innovation for its own sake, is what's driving the adoption numbers above. Fleets are buying visibility because the margin math in the ATRI section demands it.
Source: Verizon Connect, 2025 Fleet Technology Trends Report (2025)

What do fleets that adopt tracking actually report?

47% of GPS fleet tracking users achieved positive ROI in less than one year. Nearly half of adopters pay back the investment inside twelve months, per Verizon Connect's 2025 survey. For a technology decision, that's an unusually short payback window.
Source: Verizon Connect, 2025 Fleet Technology Trends Report (2025)

GPS tracking users report 16% labor cost savings, up from 10% in 2021, plus 16% maintenance cost savings. Reported savings didn't just persist as adoption spread; they grew. Verified hours and mileage-based maintenance scheduling are the mechanisms users cite most.
Source: Verizon Connect 2025 report, via Fleet Maintenance (2025)

Users report 22% accident cost savings, double the 11% reported in 2021, and 57% report improved driver safety with 49% seeing fewer harsh-driving and speeding events. The safety line is where reported gains have grown fastest, which connects directly back to the insurance pressure documented above.
Source: Verizon Connect, 2025 Fleet Technology Trends Report (2025)

Fleets using Samsara's full AI safety solution saw roughly 73% lower crash rates over 30 months. Vendor-reported, but based on Samsara's own connected-fleet data rather than survey responses. It's among the largest safety effects any telematics provider has published.
Source: Samsara, 2025 Year in Review (2026)

Samsara-connected fleets drove more than 90 billion miles in 2025, averaging 10.7 MPG, a 4% year-over-year improvement. The dataset's scale matters: 90 billion miles is a meaningful fraction of all US commercial driving, making the fuel-economy trend hard to dismiss as sample noise.
Source: Samsara, 2025 Year in Review (2026)

GSA Fleet activated more than 19,000 telematics devices in a single push in 2022, avoiding about $1,455,000 in installation costs, and its telematics-enabled leased fleet passed 60,000 vehicles. The federal government's own fleet arm treats telematics as default equipment, a useful data point for public-sector fleet managers building a business case.
Source: GSA news release (2022)

Back in 2018, a Teletrac Navman survey of 2,400 respondents found 77% of fleets used telematics for vehicle tracking but only 29% for fuel monitoring, and 26% saw reduced accidents. The dated figure is worth keeping for contrast: fleets historically bought tracking for location first and left fuel and safety features underused. The 2025-2026 savings numbers above suggest that's finally changing.
Source: Teletrac Navman, Telematics Benchmark Survey (2018)

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does it cost to operate a commercial truck per mile?

$2.260 per mile on average in 2024, according to ATRI's Operational Costs of Trucking 2025 Update. Fuel accounted for roughly $0.481 of that, based on ATRI data, while non-fuel costs hit a record $1.779 per mile. Truck and trailer payments were the fastest-growing line at $0.390 per mile, up 8.3%.

What percentage of fleets use GPS tracking?

80% of fleet professionals use GPS fleet tracking as of Verizon Connect's 2026 Fleet Technology Trends Report, up 11 points from 69% the year before. Adoption skews by size: an Expert Market survey found 93% of fleets with more than 50 vehicles use telematics versus 52% of fleets with three or fewer.

How much does truck downtime cost per day?

About $637 per truck per day in lost revenue for a truckload carrier, per Penske Truck Leasing's downtime research, which is based on average truckload revenue of $4,457 per truck per week in 2024. That figure covers lost revenue only, before repair costs, towing, or substitute equipment.

How common are empty miles and driver detention?

Fleets averaged 16.7% empty (deadhead) miles in 2024, per ATRI, meaning one mile in six generated no revenue. Detention compounds the problem: ATRI research found drivers held past their scheduled time at 39.3% of all stops in 2023, costing the for-hire industry $3.6 billion in direct expenses.

How much have trucking insurance costs increased?

Truck liability insurance premiums rose 18.6% from 2021 to 2024 to a record 10.2 cents per mile, according to ATRI's May 2026 insurance research, even though heavy-truck crash rates fell 2.6% over the same period. Per-mile liability losses climbed 33.1% on average, with high-dollar excess layers rising up to 45%.

Are trucking companies profitable right now?

Barely, if at all. ATRI found truckload carriers averaged a -2.3% operating margin in 2024, and every sector except LTL ran margins below 2%. That squeeze is a major reason 77% of fleet professionals told Verizon Connect that rising costs are their top concern, for the fifth straight year.

Sources & Methodology

Every statistic on this page was verified against its original publisher in July 2026 and is reviewed annually. We prioritize primary research organizations (ATRI, ATA, FMCSA, GSA) and named industry surveys with disclosed sample sizes, and we label the data year for each figure, including older studies kept for historical contrast. Derived figures, such as fuel's share of total per-mile cost, are labeled as based on the source's published totals.