Truck cost per kilometre calculator

How much does a truck cost per kilometre?

A 40-tonne tractor and semi-trailer costs €1.42 per kilometre in Spain according to the transport ministry’s Observatorio for July 2026. In Italy the indicative MIT items for October 2026 add up to €1.87 to €4.44 per kilometre. Your real cost depends on mileage, fuel use and the driver, which is why every starting value can be changed.

How to use it

Start from the kilometres the truck really covers in a year: it is the figure that matters most, because the fixed costs are divided by it. Then replace the starting values with those from your accounts: lease or depreciation, insurance, the driver’s cost to the company, average consumption from fuel records.

For Italy, consumption, AdBlue and overheads start empty: MIT publishes no value for them. While they are empty the total leaves them out, and the page says so under the result.

The diesel price is net of VAT, because a haulier reclaims it. If you do not, enter the pump price.

The formula

Cost per km = (fixed costs per year + km × running costs per km − excise refund) / km

• Fixed costs: depreciation or lease, insurance, taxes, driver, subsistence and allowances, overheads.
• Diesel per km: consumption in l/100 km divided by 100, times the price per litre.
• Other running costs: AdBlue, tyres, maintenance and repairs, tolls.
• Excise refund (Italy): litres used times the refund per litre, which the customs agency publishes in euros per 1,000 litres.

A worked example: the average Spanish truck

With the July 2026 Observatorio values and diesel at the price the Observatorio itself uses, the calculator returns its result to the cent.

• Fixed costs: 22,616.02 depreciation and financing, 8,710.65 insurance, 944.49 taxes, 37,501.03 driver, 17,830.77 allowances, 10,429.03 indirect costs. Total €98,031.99.
• Diesel: 35 l/100 km at €1.2901/l net, that is (1.6312 − 0.0702) / 1.21, gives €0.4515 per km, €54,183.47 over 120,000 km.
• AdBlue, tyres, maintenance and tolls: €18,660.22.
• Total: €170,875.68 a year, divided by 120,000 km: €1.4240 per km.

With the Weekly Oil Bulletin diesel price of 9 November 2026 (€1.569/l net) the same truck rises to about €1.52 per km: eleven thousand euros more a year on fuel alone.

The Italian excise refund

Hauliers running vehicles of 7.5 t or more, Euro 5 or newer, recover every quarter the difference between the standard diesel excise and the reduced rate for commercial diesel, €403.22 per 1,000 litres. For fuel used from 26 to 30 September 2026 the refund was €219.68 per 1,000 litres.

Example: 100,000 km at 30 l/100 km is 30,000 litres. At €219.68 per 1,000 litres the refund is worth €6,590.40 a year, about 6.6 cents per km.

Two caveats. The standard excise changed several times in 2026, so the refund changes from one period to the next: the starting value is the latest published, not an average. And the notice for the fourth quarter of 2026 is not out yet.

What it leaves out

The MIT values do not share the same tax basis: diesel is calculated with VAT, tolls since 2026 without. The calculator does not separate empty from loaded kilometres and does not compute loan interest: if you pay a lease, put it in the depreciation field. For France the Comité national routier publishes cost indices that we could not read, so France is not included.

Further reading: EU driving hours rules for truck drivers (Regulation 561/2006), with examples, Drivers’ hours and tachograph fines by country.