Tow Motor Club Call Calculator — Accept or Decline a Dispatch

1. Your truck's cost (optional helper)

Type your own figures. The helper turns them into a cost per billable hour and a running cost per mile; nothing here is assumed to be true for your business.

Truck and equipment payment, $/month

Insurance, $/month

Other overhead (yard, software, phone), $/month

Hours on duty per month

Share of on-duty hours that are billable, %

Driver wage, $/hour

Payroll burden on wage, %

Fuel price, $/gallon

Truck miles per gallon

Maintenance and tires, $/mile

2. The call

Deadhead miles to the pickup

Loaded miles (pickup to drop)

Miles back to where you would be otherwise (optional)

On-scene and wait minutes

Average driving speed, mph

Weather slowdown on total time, %

After-hours wage premium, %

This is an after-hours call

3. The offer and the club

Offered flat payout, $

Loaded miles included in the flat payout

Per-mile payout beyond included miles, $

Club or platform fee, % of payout

Fixed fee per job, $

Expected chargebacks and adjustments, % of payout

Days until you are paid

Your cost of waiting for money, % per year

4. Your decision rule

Minimum profit margin to accept, % of payout

Profit per truck-hour you expect from a cash call, $

Type your numbers, then click Evaluate. The example numbers are placeholders, not rates.

Result

Measure	Value

Profit by deadhead miles and wait minutes

Each cell is profit in dollars for that deadhead and wait, with everything else as typed. Green meets your rule, red does not.

Copyable summary

Batch: rank several calls

One call per line: label, deadhead miles, loaded miles, wait minutes, total payout, and optionally y for after-hours. Comma, tab, semicolon or pipe separated; a header line is skipped. The truck, club and decision settings above apply to every line, and the payout is the total the club offers for that call.

Calls

Paste calls, then click Rank.

The model, and what it leaves out

Cost per billable hour is (payment + insurance + overhead) divided by billable hours per month, plus the driver wage with burden. Fuel (price over mpg) and maintenance are per mile.
Truck-hours are (deadhead + loaded + return miles) over your average speed, plus on-scene minutes, stretched by any weather slowdown. Your time back to the yard counts only if you type return miles.
Payout is the flat amount plus the per-mile rate for loaded miles beyond the included miles. Kept is payout times (1 minus fee, chargebacks and the carrying cost of waiting for pay) minus any fixed fee.
Profit is kept minus job cost. Break-even payout is the payout at which profit is zero. Minimum acceptable payout is the larger of the payout that meets your margin threshold and the payout that matches what a cash call would earn over the same truck-hours.
Decline means a loss, a margin under your threshold, or profit per truck-hour under your cash-call figure. The thresholds are yours; none is a recommendation.
Reconciles. Break-even payout gives zero profit exactly, and the batch numbers equal the single-call numbers for the same inputs.
Not modelled: state or municipal rate rules, storage and lien fees, tolls, equipment wear beyond your per-mile figure, tax, whether a club penalises declines or drops your rating, and the chance a cash call actually turns up.

Common questions

Should I accept a motor club dispatch or wait for a cash call?

Compare what the dispatch leaves you per truck-hour, after the club's deductions and the cost of running the truck, with what you expect a cash call to leave you per truck-hour. This calculator does that arithmetic on numbers you type: the cost of the job, profit, profit per truck-hour, the break-even payout and the minimum payout that meets both your margin threshold and your cash-call alternative.

What is my cost per hour for a tow truck?

Add the truck payment, insurance and overhead you pay per month, divide by the hours the truck is actually billable, and add the loaded driver wage. Fuel and maintenance are counted per mile. The helper on this page does exactly that with your own figures; it assumes nothing about your costs.

Why does deadhead matter so much?

Deadhead miles and wait time are truck-hours and fuel you spend before and after the paid miles. A payout that covers a short tow can lose money once a long drive to the pickup and an hour on scene are counted. The sensitivity table shows profit for each combination of deadhead miles and wait minutes.

How do I compare several calls at once?

Paste one call per line as label, deadhead miles, loaded miles, wait minutes, total payout and an optional after-hours flag. The batch mode uses the truck and club settings above and ranks the calls by profit per truck-hour.

Does this tell me what rates I may charge?

No. Towing and roadside rates, storage and lien rules and motor-club contract terms differ by state, municipality and contract. This tool is arithmetic on numbers you type. It is not legal, rate-setting or financial advice, and it does not know any club's actual terms.

Is my data uploaded anywhere?

No. Everything runs in your browser and nothing you type is sent or stored on a server.