What does one delivery actually cost you?
Most operations compare a driver's hourly wage to a courier fee and conclude the wrong thing. This works out the fully loaded number — every cost that exists because you deliver, divided by the deliveries you completed.
Fully loaded cost per delivery
$0.00
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What this number is for
Cost per delivery is the only figure that tells you whether delivery is making or losing money, and it is the one almost nobody computes. Total deliveries measures how busy you were. Driver wages measure about half of what a driver costs. This measures the thing itself.
Run it monthly and watch the trend rather than the absolute. The trend tells you whether growth is helping or whether you are simply buying more of an expensive habit.
The costs people leave out
Three omissions account for most of the difference between a comfortable number and a true one.
Payroll costs on top of wages. Employer taxes, workers’ compensation, benefits and paid time off routinely add 15–30% to the wage line. A driver at $22 an hour does not cost $22 an hour.
Idle time. The paid hours that exist whether or not there are deliveries to make. This is why the same operation has a very different cost per delivery in a quiet month, and why density matters more than pay rates.
Management. The dispatcher’s morning, the recruiting, the training, the time spent chasing a failed delivery. It is real labour spent on delivery, and it belongs in the number.
Then look at stops per driver-hour
The calculator shows this alongside the cost, because it is the lever. Most of your delivery cost is fixed the moment a driver leaves the depot, so the way the number falls is by fitting more completed stops into the same paid hour — better grouping, better sequencing, fewer failed attempts, less time lost per stop.
Local fleets typically sit between two and six stops per driver-hour. Moving from three to five cuts cost per delivery by roughly a third without touching anybody’s pay, which is why planning and routing show up in a cost conversation at all.
Compare it against the alternative
Once you have the number, put it next to what a courier would charge for the same deliveries, including peak multipliers on the days you would have hit them. The in-house vs courier calculator does that comparison directly, and the answer is often different for your base load than for your peak.
What should be included in cost per delivery?
Everything you spend to get goods to doors: driver wages plus employer payroll costs, vehicle lease or depreciation, insurance, maintenance, fuel, phones and software, and the share of a dispatcher or manager’s time spent on delivery. Leaving out idle time and management is the most common way this number comes out flattering and wrong.
Why is my cost per delivery so different between months?
Because most of the cost is fixed once a driver is out. Wages, the van, the insurance and the paid hour do not fall when volume does, so a quiet month spreads the same cost over fewer deliveries. Run this for a busy month and a quiet one — the gap is the real story.
What is a good cost per delivery?
There is no universal number: a dense urban route with ten-minute stops and a rural round with forty-minute drives are different businesses. The useful comparison is against your own trend, and against what a courier would charge you for the same work.
How do I lower it?
Almost always by raising stops per driver-hour rather than by cutting pay. Density is the lever — better grouping, better sequencing, fewer failed attempts and less time lost per stop. A fleet that moves from three to five stops an hour cuts cost per delivery by roughly a third with the same people.
More free tools
Other numbers worth running.
These numbers, measured for you.
PrivateMile computes cost per delivery, stops per driver-hour and driver pay from work actually completed — not from the plan. 15-day trial, no card.
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