Most owner-drivers set a day rate by asking what the bloke down the road charges.
This works it out the other way round — from the money you want to keep.
Your numbers
What it costs you to trade
Change any of these. They are yearly figures.
Left at zero on purpose — put your own figures in.
Fuel is the one that catches people: if your rate is supposed to cover it, it belongs here.
Total cost of trading, a year£3,138
Which is this per chargeable day£13.64
Starting your own haulage company
One-off costs to get on the road. Separate from the yearly figures above,
because paying for a licence once is not the same as paying for insurance every year.
Cash you need to spend£0
Plus money you must be able to prove you have
£8,000
Standard National: £8,000 for the first vehicle, £4,500 for each
one after. This is not spent — DVSA requires you to show it is available, and it has to stay
available. It is the reason most applications fail.
Set to 0 and start-up costs are left out of the day rate.
Day rate you need to charge
£225
Excluding VAT. Round it up, never down.
£22.50an hour, door to door
230chargeable days a year
£51,749turnover you need
—
This is one of twelve
The full calculator sits in the Owner-Driver Admin Pack, alongside the forms that keep you
paid, safe and audit-ready when you're running your own unit.
Daily walkaround check & defect report
Driver day sheet
Compliance document checklist — 40 documents with expiry dates
Fuel log — Excel, totals built in
Invoice template — with a rate card and an overdue tracker
Day rate calculator — Excel, with an eleven-rate comparison
Going self-employed — the first 30 days, in the order they matter
Health & safety policy
Driver risk assessment
RAMS template
Safe systems of work
Accident and incident report
One payment of £39.99. Yours to keep,
reuse, and put your own name at the top of.
