Dr. Paul Borosky, DBA, MBA
Business Consultant & Fractional CFO
IBISWorld Counts 92,257 Food Trucks and $1,536 of Profit Each. A Full-Time Truck Is Nothing Like That.
That $1,536 is IBISWorld's own published figure and it is correct for what it counts, which is every registered business in the code, including the seasonal, the weekend-only and the ones that never opened a window (IBISWorld, Food Trucks in the US, July 2025). In the plans and engagements that cross Dr. Paul's desk, a full-time truck clusters closer to $350,000 of annual revenue at a net margin near 6.8 percent, which is about $23,800 to the owner. Across a 264 day service year that is roughly $90 of profit per service day, and you will work fourteen hours for it. Your crew will make more per hour than you do. The distance between those two numbers is what this page is about.
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Last Updated: 9/6/2026 · Reviewed by Dr. Paul Borosky, DBA, MBA
Start Here
What the Data Actually Says
Two sets of numbers, kept apart on purpose. The published industry figures carry a source and a year. Dr. Paul's figures carry his name and no citation, because they come from his own client work.
Revenue. IBISWorld puts the whole category at $2.8 billion of revenue across 92,257 registered businesses, which works out to $30,720 of revenue per business (IBISWorld, Food Trucks in the US, July 2025). That is the arithmetic middle of every registration in the code. In the plans and engagements that cross Dr. Paul's desk, a full-time truck clusters closer to $350,000 of annual revenue, with most of them landing somewhere between $250,000 and $500,000. Both numbers are real. They are counting two different populations, and the rest of this page is about which one you are joining.
Margin. IBISWorld reports a 5.0 percent profit margin for the category and $141.7 million of total profit, which is $1,536 per registered business (IBISWorld, Food Trucks in the US, July 2025). Net margin is simply what is left of every sales dollar after every cost, including the owner's own wage. On the full-time trucks Dr. Paul works with, that figure sits nearer 6.8 percent, and on $350,000 of revenue it comes to about $23,800 for the owner. A truck is structurally leaner than a brick and mortar restaurant because there is no dining room to rent, heat or staff. It is also much smaller.
Average ticket. Dr. Paul works from a range of $12 to $16 per customer, and the $14.00 ticket used in the examples further down this page sits in the middle of that range. There is no reliable national average ticket for food trucks, so treat any figure quoted to the penny with suspicion. Pull 90 days of your own point of sale data and use your own number instead.
You will see "$2.8 billion industry, 92,000 businesses" quoted everywhere, usually followed by somebody dividing one by the other. IBISWorld has already done that division and publishes the answer: $30,720 of revenue and $1,536 of profit per business, at a 5.0 percent margin (IBISWorld, Food Trucks in the US, July 2025). Those figures are not wrong. They are exactly right for what they count, and what they count is every registered business in NAICS 722330, including the truck that opens eight Saturdays a summer and the one that was registered, insured and never opened its window at all. The revenue definition is a narrow one, too. The National Food Truck Association's broader estimate of total mobile food sales runs $14 billion to $20 billion. So keep the $1,536. Just know that it is the middle of a population that is mostly not the business you are planning to build.
Behind the Denominator
Why the Average Is So Low
If a disciplined truck can clear $500,000, why does IBISWorld's average registered business show $30,720 of revenue and $1,536 of profit? Four reasons, and the first one is the denominator.
The 27 Percent Problem
Here is what Dr. Paul sees in almost every food truck plan that crosses his desk.
The owner projects a net margin around 27 percent. There are three plans in his files from three different states, written years apart. All three land between 25 and 28 percent.
The full-time trucks in his own files land nearer 6.8 percent. IBISWorld's published figure for every registered business in the category is 5.0 percent. Neither one is anywhere close to 27.
Nobody is lying. They model a good day and run it out twelve months. The number that matters is the average day, and almost nobody models that one. The distance between a projected margin and a real one sits underneath most of the reasons a food truck closes. Four reasons that gap exists.
The Denominator Is Full of Part-Timers
IBISWorld spreads $2.8 billion of category revenue across 92,257 registered businesses, which is how the report arrives at $30,720 of revenue and $1,536 of profit per business at a 5.0 percent margin (IBISWorld, Food Trucks in the US, July 2025). That count includes a huge volume of seasonal and weekend operations. Trucks that open eight Saturdays a summer at farmers markets. Trucks registered for a single festival season. Trucks that were registered and never opened at all. They are real businesses on paper and they sit in the denominator with everybody else. So the gap between $1,536 and what a disciplined full-time truck returns is not an error in the data. It is the distance between a registration and an operation, and closing that distance is the entire job.
They Never Ran a Daily Number
Most owners have never calculated what the truck has to earn on a Tuesday. They park where it feels busy and hope. If you cannot say how many paying customers you need before the day turns profitable, you are not running a business. You are running a lottery with a generator. That calculation lives in what a food truck has to earn each day.
They Priced Off the Truck Next Door
Copying the taco truck's $11 plate is copying a cost structure you have never seen. Their debt, their supplier terms, their unpaid family labor, their portion sizes, all invisible to you. If your ingredient cost runs 40 percent higher than theirs, you lose money on every ticket, and volume just gets you there faster. Start with how to price a food truck menu instead.
They Take Every Event Offered
Event fees run $200 to $1,500 a day. Owners hear "10,000 people expected" and say yes without running the math. Then it rains, and they eat the fee, the labor, and 200 pounds of prepped protein. Run the break-even customer count before you sign the agreement, not after you pack up.
The Trap
Revenue Is Not Pay
A line forty people deep is not money in your pocket. It is cash moving through your hands on the way to somebody else. Here is the order it leaves in.
- 25% to 35%
Food and packaging
Ingredients plus the paper boat, the foil, the sauce cup, the utensil packet, the napkins. In a restaurant, plates get washed. On a truck your plate leaves with the customer every single time. Price it in or it comes out of your pay.
- 25% to 35%
Crew labor and payroll taxes
Wages plus roughly 10 percent in payroll taxes on top. This line must include a market rate wage for your own hours. If the truck only shows a profit because you work eighty hours free, you did not buy a business. You bought a job with worse hours.
- Arrives regardless
Commissary rent
Most jurisdictions require a licensed commercial kitchen for prep and overnight parking. The bill comes whether it rained or not.
- Arrives regardless
Insurance
General liability for slip-and-falls and foodborne illness, plus commercial auto for the vehicle. A personal auto policy will deny a business use claim, every time.
- Arrives regardless
Permits, POS and software
Health inspections, fire safety plan reviews and vending permits amortized monthly, plus your point of sale and subscriptions.
- Interest only
Loan payments
The interest portion is a profit and loss expense. The principal is debt reduction on your cash flow sheet, not an operating cost. Owners mix these two constantly and it distorts the whole picture.
- Non-cash
Depreciation
Your CPA spreads the truck's cost across its useful life to reduce your tax bill. It is a legitimate expense and it is not cash. The money left your account the day you bought the vehicle. For a real read on what the truck generated this month, look at operating cash flow before depreciation.
- What is left
Owner pay
Near 6.8 percent on the full-time trucks Dr. Paul works with. Everything above depends on the seven lines before it.
A busy window and a profitable window are different things. Plenty of exhausting days lose money.
Dr. Paul Borosky, DBA, MBAWhich Number Are You?
Three Honest Profiles
In consulting work Dr. Paul sorts food truck owners into three profiles. Read them honestly and find yours.
The Hobby Truck
Friends loved the brisket, so the savings went into a used truck. No concept test, no financial model, no location commitments.
- Opens when the weather is nice
- Prices copied off a local diner
- Personal and business accounts mixed
- Food cost unknown
The Job With a Generator
This owner is exhausted and heroic. Fourteen hour days, every prep shift, every service, every cleanup. Sales are decent. But nothing is written down, nobody is cross-trained, and the whole operation stops the day the owner throws out their back.
- Makes a wage that covers the bills
- Business captures no profit and holds no reserves
- Cannot be sold, because it is the owner
The Business
Every repeatable action is documented, from the opening generator check to the exact script at the window. The crew is cross-trained. Anyone can drive, prep, cook, and run the POS.
- Produces clean numbers on days the owner is not on it
- Three to six months of operating capital in reserve
- Menu priced off cost, not off the neighbors
- Street service feeds catering and corporate bookings
The Consulting Inflection Point
The realization is not "I need a better recipe."
It is "I do not own a business, I own a job." That is the moment most owners call a consultant, and getting out of it is structural, not culinary. Write the standard operating procedures. Cross-train the crew. Manage the percentages instead of the register. Owners who finish that work are the only ones for whom adding a second truck is arithmetic instead of ambition.
The Arithmetic
Two Trucks, Same Bills
Both trucks below carry an identical illustrative cost structure: $6,000 a month in fixed costs with no owner pay, 30 percent food and packaging, 25 percent crew labor, and a $14.00 average ticket. That leaves 45 cents of every dollar to cover the fixed base. This is a teaching model, not an industry statistic.
| Line Item | Truck A (drifting) | Truck B (disciplined) |
|---|---|---|
| Customers per day | 25 | 65 |
| Daily revenue | $350 | $910 |
| Monthly revenue | $7,700 | $20,020 |
| Contribution at 45 percent | $3,465 | $9,009 |
| Less fixed costs | $6,000 | $6,000 |
| Monthly result | Loss of $2,535 | $3,009 owner pay |
| Annual owner pay | $0 | $36,108 |
Truck A is 19 customers a day short of break-even. Not 200. Nineteen. That is one more lunch stop on the schedule, or a $3 lift in the average ticket, or a location that was benched two months ago and never replaced.
Truck B is not doing anything exotic. Sixty-five customers over a five hour service window is 13 an hour. It is a committed schedule, a tight menu, and a number the crew can see.
The most common flaw Dr. Paul finds in food truck financial models is owner compensation treated as leftovers. The model pays the supplier, the commissary, the insurer and the crew, and whatever survives is called owner pay. Hope is not a compensation plan. Lenders reject these models on sight, because an underwriter knows an unpaid owner is a default risk who will eventually walk away exhausted. Calculate what you actually need to live on, build it into your monthly fixed base as a hard line, and size your daily customer target around covering it. A business that cannot tell you what it paid its owner last month is not being measured. It is being hoped over.
Do This
Five Steps, In Order
Pull 90 days of POS data
Calculate your real average ticket. Not a guess based on your most popular combo.
Add up every fixed bill
Everything that arrives whether you open or not. That is your fixed base.
Cost one plate completely
Food and packaging, to the penny. How to price a food truck menu walks through a full recipe card.
Divide fixed costs by your contribution margin, then by service days
That is your daily number. What a food truck has to earn each day runs the whole calculation.
Write it on an index card and tape it next to the POS
A number nobody can see is a number nobody hits.
If your food cost is the line you do not trust, start with what food cost percentage a food truck should target. Not open yet? Start with what it costs to start a food truck.
FAQ
Common Questions About Food Truck Income
The four questions Dr. Paul gets most about what a food truck actually earns.
Do food trucks make good money?
How much profit does a food truck make per day?
What percentage of food trucks fail?
Is a food truck more profitable than a restaurant?
Want the real number for your truck instead of the average?
Call or text (321) 948-9588Next Step
Stop Running on the Average
A full-time truck in Dr. Paul's working range pays its owner about $23,800 because most owners never separate what the business collects from what it keeps. The template does that separation for you: set your average ticket, your costs and your volume, and it builds the statements a lender expects and the numbers you actually manage against.
Everything on this page sits inside a larger system. Start at the food truck business hub for the whole picture: the industry as it stands today, the eight Organize steps, the business plan and financial model, the five numbers that decide profit, marketing, and when to add the second truck.
Food Truck Business Plan Template
An editable Word plan and an Excel financial model. Set your average ticket, your costs, and your volume, and it builds a 12 month profit and loss statement, a 5 year pro forma, a break-even analysis, and a valuation based on cash flow.
Dr. Paul Directly
Consulting and Business Plan Writing
Dr. Paul writes every plan himself. No hand-offs, no junior staff. Fourteen plus years helping food truck and small business owners turn a busy operation into a profitable one.
The Food Truck Business All-in-One Handbook
The full Organize-Plan-Grow system in book form. The eight steps before you buy anything, the five numbers that decide whether a truck makes money, and the growth decisions that come after.
Dr. Paul Borosky, DBA, MBA
Business Consultant & Fractional CFO | 14+ Years | 1,000+ Clients Served
Dr. Paul Borosky, DBA, MBA, business consultant and fractional CFO, is dedicated to making CEOs stronger, sharper, and more effective. He is the founder of Quality Business Plan, creator of Dr. Paul's Organize-Plan-Grow™ Strategy, author of numerous published books on Amazon including The Food Truck Business All-in-One Handbook, and publisher of over 1,000 business-focused videos on YouTube. For over 14 years, he has helped food truck, restaurant, and small business owners turn a busy operation into a profitable one.
Dollar figures on this page fall into two groups and are labeled as such throughout. Published industry figures are sourced to IBISWorld, "Food Trucks in the US", NAICS-US 722330, July 2025, and to the National Food Truck Association for the broader mobile food sales estimate. The $350,000 revenue figure, the roughly 6.8 percent net margin, the approximately $23,800 owner take-home and the $12 to $16 average ticket range are Dr. Paul's working ranges from his own client engagements, not published statistics. All other figures are illustrations used to show a calculation, not projections for your business. Industry figures are presented to the best of our knowledge based on publicly available information at time of publishing and may change over time. Always verify current details before making business decisions.