See whether a clinic, lab, pharmacy, or STAT route covers its paid wait, loaded labor, vehicle cost, temperature-control supplies, and overhead. After using this, you can now see contribution margin per vehicle-hour, which used to take a spreadsheet that hid waiting time.
Route offer
Loaded labor should include payroll burden and non-driving paid time. Consumables can include coolers, labels, gel packs, and spill-kit allocation. Deadhead is the unpaid run to the first stop and back from the last; leave it at zero if the route starts and ends at your door. These are your inputs, not industry standards.
Contribution margin
$0.00
Enter the offer and route economics.
Direct cost
$0.00
Margin rate
0.0%
Margin / vehicle-hour
$0.00
Cost / stop
$0.00
Billable wait
0 min
Deadhead cost
$0.00
Break-even / stop
$0.00
Target margin / stop
$0.00
Break-even $/mile
$0.00
This is contribution margin before taxes and owner draw. A positive result is not a guarantee that the contract is worthwhile. See the full margin guide with a worked example, how this calculator compares to a fleet dispatch platform in this calculator vs. Onfleet, or what a spreadsheet misses in this calculator vs. a spreadsheet.
Common questions
What counts as billable wait time on a medical courier route?
Only the minutes beyond the grace period built into your contract. Enter total wait time and the grace period separately — the calculator subtracts one from the other and pays the difference at your loaded labor rate, the same as any other hour on the route.
Why is overhead calculated as a percentage of revenue instead of cost?
Overhead here is a share of the route's revenue, not a markup on your direct costs — enter the percentage of admin, insurance, and facility cost this one route should absorb. That way a large, high-revenue route carries a proportionally larger share of fixed cost than a small one, which a flat per-route overhead figure would not.
What is the difference between contribution margin and margin per vehicle-hour?
Contribution margin is the dollar amount left after labor, vehicle cost, consumables, and overhead are subtracted from revenue. Margin per vehicle-hour divides that figure by the hours the route actually occupies, including billable wait, so you can compare two routes with different time commitments rather than only their total dollars.
Should deadhead miles go in "total miles" or their own field?
Their own field. Total miles is the driving the route pays for; deadhead is the unpaid run from home to the first stop and back from the last, and it burns the same fuel and occupies the same hours. Keeping them apart matters in a negotiation — billable miles are a rate conversation, deadhead is a routing one, and a route whose deadhead is the problem is fixed by a different stop order or a closer starting point rather than by a higher price. On the worked example, 40 deadhead miles and 70 minutes turn a $151.80 margin into $90.33: 40% of the margin, invisible until it has a line of its own.
What should I quote for this route?
The "break-even / stop" and "at target margin / stop" figures. Because overhead here is a percentage of revenue, raising the price also raises the overhead that price has to carry, so break-even is a fixed point rather than a sum of costs. On the worked example the route costs $118.20 in labor, vehicle, and consumables but needs $131.33 to break even — $21.89 a stop — and $28.14 a stop to clear a 20% margin. Those are the numbers to counter with; the offer on the table is what you compare them against.
How far can fuel and maintenance rise before this route stops working?
That is the "break-even $/mile" line: the vehicle cost per mile at which contribution margin reaches zero, holding the price and everything else fixed. On the worked example the route survives up to $5.06 a mile against the $0.72 entered, so fuel is not what threatens it. It reads $0.00 when the route loses money even if driving were free — that is a pricing problem rather than a fuel one, and the break-even per stop is the line to read instead.
Does selecting Scheduled, STAT, or Dedicated change the calculation?
No — route type only labels the copied summary text; every dollar figure comes from the revenue, stops, miles, time, and rate fields you enter. If a STAT route pays more for the same stops and miles, enter its higher revenue and time commitment directly rather than relying on the dropdown to adjust anything.
What does "Copy share link" send, and does anything leave my browser?
It copies the current page's address with every route field, including route type, encoded after a # in the URL. A browser never sends the part after # to a server, so pasting that link into a text or email is the only way the figures travel — opening it re-runs the same route immediately, so a dispatcher or accountant sees the exact offer you priced rather than just the margin you tell them.