Excel template
Freight Tracking Excel Template
A spreadsheet that works out profit per trip, cost per kilometre and the empty-kilometre ratio on its own. Download it without signing up.
No sign-up, no email. The file downloads directly.
The file has three sheets
The only thing you enter is trip rows; the other two sheets fill themselves.
01
Trip Log
One row per trip. You fill the white cells; the six columns with a blue header are formulas and calculate themselves.
02
Summary
Total freight, total cost, profit, average margin, total empty kilometres and average cost per kilometre. You enter nothing.
03
How to use
Which columns are formulas, why empty kilometres are kept separate, and what cost per kilometre is for.
Which columns do you need?
Most templates record the trip but never work out the profit. The last group is what makes the difference: without the cost lines kept separately, profit per trip cannot come out.
Trip
- Trip no
- Date
- Customer
- Collection
- Delivery
- Plate
- Driver
Distance
- Loaded km
- Empty km
- Total km (formula)
Money
- Freight
- Fuel
- Tolls
- Driver cost
- Maintenance + depreciation
- Other
Calculated for you
- Total cost
- Profit
- Margin
- Cost per km
- Empty km ratio
Empty kilometres get their own column on purpose. Kept together with loaded kilometres, a trip looks profitable while the fleet ends the month unprofitable — only the split shows the gap.
Where does Excel stop?
You do not have to give up Excel. For an operation starting with one vehicle a spreadsheet is faster than most software: you add a column, change a formula, ask nobody's permission. This template was built for exactly that.
Where Excel stops is not the arithmetic but concurrency. The moment two people write to the same file, versions diverge; what the driver knows in the field only reaches the sheet when somebody carries it there by hand; and to see your current cost while quoting you have to open another file. As trips add up, what is lost is not accuracy but timeliness.
The second limit is reporting to authorities. While the trip sits in a spreadsheet the regulatory notification is filed on a separate screen; the two records drift apart over time, and most missed filings come from exactly that drift.
Related reading
How Do You Run Dispatch Planning in Excel?
What breaks dispatch planning in Excel isn't the spreadsheet — it's two people filling the same one with different decisions at the same time.
How to Calculate and Reduce Empty Miles in Trucking
The empty-miles ratio is a fleet's invisible cost: here is the formula, why empty running happens and how operations cut it down.
How to Calculate Profit per Truck
The vehicle is what earns, not any single trip: the full per-truck chain from revenue to net profit, item by item, with a worked monthly example.
Where Does Excel Break Down in Trip Tracking?
Excel is the right tool at small scale; the problem is never the file itself, but what happens once more than one person writes into it.
Frequently asked questions
- Where can I download a freight tracking Excel template?
- Straight from the link on this page. You do not need to sign up or leave an email address. The file is .xlsx and opens in Excel, LibreOffice Calc and Google Sheets. It contains three sheets: the trip log, a summary and usage notes.
- Which columns are in the template?
- Trip details (trip no, date, customer, collection, delivery, plate, driver), distance (loaded km, empty km, total km), money lines (freight, fuel, tolls, driver cost, maintenance and depreciation, other) and six calculated columns: total km, total cost, profit, margin, cost per km and empty km ratio.
- How do you calculate trip profitability in Excel?
- Profit per trip is the freight rate less that trip's total cost. Total cost is the sum of fuel, tolls, driver cost, maintenance and depreciation, and any other lines. Margin is profit divided by the freight rate. All three come as formulas in the template; you only enter the lines.
- Why are empty kilometres kept separate?
- Empty kilometres produce no revenue but they do produce fuel, wear and driver hours. Kept in the same column as loaded kilometres, individual trips look profitable while the fleet ends the month unprofitable. A separate column puts the ratio on the summary sheet; the lower it is, the more of the same total distance is earning.
- When should you move from Excel to software?
- Not because of the arithmetic, but because of concurrency. When more than one person writes to the same file, when field information has to be carried into the sheet by hand, and when you start opening another file to find your current cost while quoting, you have reached Excel's limit. As trips add up, what is lost is not accuracy but timeliness.
The day you stop filling this in
In Seferi these rows are not typed: the request is read, the quote goes out, an approved job becomes an order, and when the trip closes the cost writes itself into place. The same table, filled without you filling it.
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