← Vending machine route margin calculator
Route listings and machine sellers quote sales. Sales are the easiest number to produce and the least useful one to own. Here is the same machine described in gross revenue and in what actually reaches you.
Open the free route margin calculator
A snack machine sells 42 units per restock at $1.75, with $0.55 of product cost per unit, on a 15% commission split with the location. You visit four times a month: 12 minutes restocking, 20 minutes of round-trip drive, 8 miles. Your own time is worth $22 an hour, cashless sales cost 2.6%, shrink runs 3%, and the machine amortizes at $15 a month.
| Per visit | Amount |
|---|---|
| Gross revenue (42 × $1.75) | $73.50 |
| Cost of goods, including 3% shrink | $23.79 |
| Location commission (15% of gross) | $11.03 |
| Card processing (2.6%) | $1.91 |
| Your labor (32 min at $22/hr) | $11.73 |
| Mileage (8 × $0.67) | $5.36 |
| Machine cost, amortized | $3.75 |
| Total cost | $57.57 |
| Net profit per visit | $15.93 |
| Margin | 21.7% |
| Monthly profit (4 visits) | $63.71 |
The machine turns over $294.00 a month and hands you $63.71. Notice what the second-largest deduction is, after the product itself: not the commission, not the card fees — your own time, at $11.73 a visit. Most back-of-envelope vending maths prices that at zero, which is exactly what makes a marginal location look like a good one.
Hold the sales completely constant — same 42 units, same price, same commission — and move only how far away the machine is:
| Round-trip drive | Labor | Mileage | Profit / visit | Profit / month | Effective hourly |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 minutes (2 miles) | $6.23 | $1.34 | $25.45 | $101.79 | $89.82 |
| 20 minutes (8 miles) | $11.73 | $5.36 | $15.93 | $63.71 | $29.86 |
| 35 minutes (15 miles) | $17.23 | $10.05 | $5.74 | $22.95 | $7.32 |
Same machine, same sales, and the third row is a job that pays $7.32 an hour. A busy location an hour away is routinely worth less than a quiet one on a loop you already drive. This is the first thing to evaluate about a placement offer and the last thing the pitch mentions, because the owner making the offer does not bear the drive.
Commission comes off gross revenue, before any of your costs. So it is a slice of the whole pie taken out of a margin that was only ever a sliver of it:
| Location commission | Profit / visit | Profit / month |
|---|---|---|
| 0% | $26.95 | $107.81 |
| 15% | $15.93 | $63.71 |
| 25% | $8.58 | $34.31 |
Moving from 15% to 25% costs the location 10 points of their revenue share and costs you 46% of your remaining profit. That asymmetry is worth naming out loud in a negotiation: a split that sounds like a small concession on their side is often most of the margin on yours.
Three locations of the quality above produce $191.13 a month. Reaching $3,000 a month means adding 45 more, for 48 in total.
| Figure | Value |
|---|---|
| Locations | 3 |
| Average profit per location | $63.71 |
| Total monthly profit | $191.13 |
| Target monthly income | $3,000.00 |
| Gap | $2,808.87 |
| Additional locations needed | 45 |
That number is not a verdict on the business — it is a verdict on locations of this quality, and it moves fast. Better commission terms, higher-volume placements, or a tighter route each cut it substantially; worse terms push it past what one person can physically service. The point of computing it is that "how many machines do I need?" has an answer, and it is worth having before buying the first one rather than after the tenth.
Look again at where the money goes: on a 20-minute drive, one visit is about 32 minutes of committed time returning $15.93, or $29.86 an hour. That is a fair rate for skilled self-employed work — and it is a wage, not a passive return. The 35-minute row earns $7.32 an hour for the same work. The business is real. Any pitch that leaves the operator's hours out of the arithmetic has left out the largest line.
Far less than its sales suggest. A machine selling 42 units a visit at 1.75 dollars, restocked four times a month, grosses 294 dollars a month. After cost of goods, a 15 percent location commission, card processing fees, shrink, mileage, your own restock and drive time, and the machine's amortized cost, it nets 63.71 dollars a month. That is a 21.7 percent margin, and the single largest deduction is not the product, it is your time getting there and back.
Because the drive is a fixed cost per visit that sales volume does not reduce. The same machine, selling exactly the same 42 units, nets 101.79 dollars a month on a 5-minute drive, 63.71 dollars on a 20-minute drive, and 22.95 dollars on a 35-minute drive. Nothing about the location's sales changed across those three figures. A busy machine an hour away can easily be worth less than a quiet one on your existing loop, which is why route density is the first thing to evaluate about an offer and the last thing an owner's pitch mentions.
More than most route pitches imply. At 63.71 dollars of monthly profit per location, three machines produce 191.13 dollars a month. Reaching 3,000 dollars a month from locations of that quality means adding 45 more, for 48 in total. That number moves fast with location quality: better commission terms, higher volume, or a tighter route can cut it substantially, and worse terms can push it beyond what one operator can physically service. Running your own numbers before buying a machine is the difference between a route business and an expensive hobby.
It comes off gross revenue before any of your costs, so it bites harder than its percentage suggests. On the same machine, no commission leaves 107.81 dollars of monthly profit, a 15 percent split leaves 63.71 dollars, and a 25 percent split leaves 34.31 dollars. Going from 15 to 25 percent removes nearly half the remaining profit, because the commission is a share of revenue while what you keep is a much smaller share of the same revenue. A location asking for a higher split is asking for a far larger fraction of your margin than of their own sales.
Their own labor, first and most expensive. Restocking and driving are work, and pricing them at zero is what makes a losing location look profitable. After that: card processing fees, which are a percentage of every cashless sale; shrink and spoilage from theft, jams, and expiry; mileage as a real vehicle cost rather than just fuel; and the machine's own amortized cost, since a machine bought once still has to earn back its replacement. Leaving any of these out inflates the profit on every location equally, so the ranking between locations stays plausible while every number in it is wrong.
Not in the sense the phrase is usually sold. The arithmetic here is dominated by the operator's own time: on a 20-minute drive, restocking one location is about 32 minutes of committed time for 15.93 dollars of profit, an effective 29.86 dollars an hour. That is a reasonable rate for skilled self-employed work, and it is a wage rather than a passive return. On a 35-minute drive the same visit works out to 7.32 dollars an hour. The business is real; the passivity is not, and any route pitch that omits the operator's hours is omitting the largest line.
The calculator takes your own units, prices, commission split, drive time and labor rate, reports profit per visit and per month with the effective hourly rate, rolls a list of locations into route profit, and says how many more a target income needs. It runs entirely in your browser.
Open the free route margin calculator
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