Dr. Paul Borosky, DBA, MBA
Business Consultant & Fractional CFO
Run the Numbers and the Two Trucks Cost Within $147 a Year of Each Other.
The illustrative new truck and the illustrative used truck land $147 apart across a year on payment, fuel and maintenance combined. The used truck saves on the note and spends it back on repairs.
On these particular prices, rates and assumptions, the three biggest operating lines nearly cancel. That does not mean new and used trucks generally cost the same. It means that in this scenario the decision turns on cash and risk instead. The new truck needs $25,400 more at purchase, and the used truck can hand you a $25,000 repair bill in a month when you do not have it.
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Last Updated: 9/9/2026 · Figures last verified 9/9/2026 · Reviewed by Dr. Paul Borosky, DBA, MBA
Start Here
What question are you really answering?
Not which truck is cheaper. Which truck your business can survive.
Owners compare payments. A $1,770 payment feels obviously better than a $3,739 payment, and the conversation usually ends there.
It should not, because the payment is one of three numbers that move together. A newer truck gets better fuel economy and needs less repair. An older truck gets worse fuel economy and needs more. At $5.60 diesel, a mile per gallon is worth real money, and repair and maintenance costs across the industry are up 45 percent since 2019.
Convert both trucks to a total annual cost and the comparison becomes honest. Convert it to cost per mile and it becomes decision-ready.
Dr. Paul's Insight
The payment is not the cost.
Dr. Paul sees owners choose a truck on the monthly note the way people choose a house on the mortgage payment, and it produces the same kind of mistake. Put both trucks in a financial model with payment, fuel and maintenance in the same table, and the truck that looked cheap frequently is not. The model is not there to tell you what to buy. It is there to stop the payment from making the decision on its own.
The Money
What does each truck cost over a year?
Three lines move: the payment, the fuel and the maintenance. Everything else is the same truck doing the same work.
Worked example: 100,000 miles a year, diesel at $5.60
Dr. Paul's Insight
The fuel and maintenance savings really do offset the payment. That is the part owners get wrong in both directions.
Dr. Paul finds owners split into two camps and both are half right. New truck buyers point to better fuel economy and lower maintenance and they are correct. Used truck buyers point to the lower fixed cost and they are correct too. What the model shows is that at current diesel prices those two effects very nearly cancel, which is why this decision should be made on cash position and risk tolerance rather than on which camp sounds more sensible.
The Operation
Downtime is the cost nobody puts in the spreadsheet.
A repair bills you twice. Once at the shop, and again for every day the truck is not earning.
On this truck, a day the wheels do not turn gives up roughly $475 of contribution, which is revenue less the fuel, maintenance, tires, tolls and factoring you avoid by not running, spread over a 250-day working year. A week in the shop is about $2,400. The payment, the insurance and the plates keep running through all of it.
That is the real argument for a newer truck, and it is not visible in a cost per mile table. Industry data shows miles between breakdowns fell from 38,249 to 36,891 in a single year, and that is a fleet average on trucks averaging 3.6 years old. One large lessor reports that repair cost and fuel economy start to turn somewhere around 450,000 miles on the equipment it tracks. That is a useful planning marker, not a universal threshold, and where your truck turns depends on its spec, its duty cycle and how it was maintained.
A warranty is not a discount. It is a transfer of risk, and whether it is worth the premium depends on the coverage, the exclusions, the deductible and the claim caps as much as on your bank balance. What a thin reserve changes is your tolerance for the risk, not the policy's expected value.
Buy the maintenance records, not the truck. A documented service history on a higher-mileage unit is worth more than low mileage with no paperwork, because it tells you what has already been replaced and what has not.
Do This
Matching the truck to your cash position.
Three situations, three answers.
If you have strong credit and cash for a real down payment, the new truck is defensible. In this scenario it costs about the same to run, it comes with warranty coverage during the years the business is most fragile, and it holds resale value better. Trade reporting in mid-2026 put two-year value retention for Peterbilt and Kenworth at roughly 50 to 54 percent, which is a market snapshot rather than a guarantee.
If you have moderate cash and decent credit, buy used and fund the maintenance reserve fully from day one. The used truck only wins if the reserve exists. Without it you have bought a cheaper truck and a bigger risk at the same time.
If you have thin cash or subprime credit, buy less truck than you can technically finance. At 15 to 30 percent with 50 percent down the note itself becomes the problem, and no fuel economy fixes a payment you cannot make in a slow month.
One timing note. EPA standards applying to 2027 model year heavy-duty engines are expected to raise new truck prices, and a 2026 reconsideration proposal is in play. Published forecasts of the increase vary widely, from roughly $8,000 to $12,000 per truck up to $20,000 to $30,000, which tells you these are industry estimates rather than a known price. Check the current status of the rule before you time a purchase around it.
Do This
What Dr. Paul Would Do
Dr. Paul would build the five-year total cost of ownership for both trucks in the same model, with the loan payment, fuel at a realistic MPG, maintenance by truck age, expected downtime and resale value in the same table. Note that the payment already contains the interest, so do not add an interest line beside it in a cash comparison. Buying a new truck or a used truck can be the difference between profit and loss, and the only way to see that in advance is to run the scenarios.
He would use honest fuel economy. New trucks do get better mileage and do need less maintenance, and used trucks do carry lower fixed cost. Both are true, and at current diesel prices they very nearly cancel each other out.
He would then decide on cash and risk rather than on cost per mile, because the cost per mile came out even. The questions that remain are how much cash the purchase takes, how much reserve is left afterward, and how many months of a bad repair the business can absorb.
And he would inspect the service history before the odometer. A truck with records is a known quantity. A truck without them is a bet.
The trucking business plan template includes the Excel model this comparison runs in. For help running the scenarios against your own credit terms and lanes, look at the consulting and business plan writing options.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
The four questions Dr. Paul gets most on this one.
What mileage is too high on a used semi truck?
Should I finance the truck or pay cash?
Does a new truck get better financing terms?
How much should I budget for repairs in year one?
Next Step
Put the Whole Truck in One Forecast
Every figure on this page came out of one financial model: the miles, the empty miles, the fuel price, the payment, the reserve and the rate, all in the same place, with the owner's own pay in as a cost line. Change one input and the projections move with it. That is the difference between a number you can defend to a lender and a number you remembered.
Everything on this page sits inside a larger system. Start at owner-operator trucking for the wider planning framework.
Trucking Business Plan Template
The Word plan and the Excel financial model built for a trucking company. Change the miles, the rate and the fuel price and the projections move with them.
Consulting and Business Plan Writing
Dr. Paul builds the model with you, in your numbers, and tells you what it says. Fifty states and Canada.
How to Write a Trucking Company Business Plan in Ten Steps
Ten steps, plus a complete sample trucking company business plan you can work from.
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 owners 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 How to Write a Trucking Company Business Plan in Ten Steps, and publisher of over 1,000 business-focused videos on YouTube. For over 14 years, he has helped trucking and small business owners turn a busy operation into a profitable one.
About the Numbers on This Page
The dollar figures on this page are illustrations of a calculation, not projections for any business, and they show cash available to the owner before personal income taxes rather than accounting profit. Insurance, repair, tire, dispatcher and factoring figures are industry averages from published data, not quotes. Every number here is an estimate, so get your own quotes and run your own figures before you decide anything.
Sources: ACT Research used Class 8 retail price, July 2026. ATRI Operational Costs of Trucking, 2026 Update. NACFE Annual Fleet Fuel Study, December 2024. Price Digests via Overdrive, June 2026. FTR Transportation Intelligence, September 2026.