QuoteMinute

Methodology

This site is about money that moves on paperwork, so the numbers on it have to be checkable. This page says where they come from, how the calculations work, and — just as importantly — what is not here.

We publish arithmetic, not benchmarks

The most common thing in this niche is a page that tells you a fee "typically runs $200–$400." We do not do that, because we have not measured it and neither, in most cases, has the page saying it. Chase those ranges and they usually trace to another blog citing a third.

What we publish instead is the calculation, with its inputs named, so you can run it on your own numbers. When a figure on this site is ours rather than a source's, it is labeled as our calculation at the point it appears, with the inputs stated. If a number is not labeled and not linked to a source, treat that as a defect and tell us.

The two datasets we actually use

There are only two, and both are public and free to check.

  • Cost per mile — ATRI. The American Transportation Research Institute's Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking. Its 2026 update (2025 data) puts the industry-average marginal cost at $2.336 per mile, and $1.854 per mile excluding fuel. We use it for anything expressed as the cost of a truck's time or empty miles. ATRI, July 2026.
  • Diesel price — EIA. The U.S. Energy Information Administration's weekly retail diesel series, used for fuel-surcharge arithmetic. EIA weekly series.

Both are industry averages, not your costs. An owner-operator running paid-off equipment and a fleet financing new tractors do not share a cost per mile, and neither matches the average. Every worked example on this site says to substitute your own figure, and means it.

How regulations are quoted

Regulations — the CFR parts — are quoted from the eCFR, the continuously updated text, and never from a printed annual edition, which can be more than a year stale on the day it ships. Before a CFR section is quoted we read its amendment credit, the bracketed line that says when the paragraph last changed.

This is not a theoretical precaution. Two finished pages were held back in August 2026 for quoting 49 CFR 379.1 and 370.1 accurately from an edition revised in 2024 — after FMCSA had amended both. A superseded quotation is the most expensive error available here, because it looks impeccably cited and is wrong.

Statutes are different, and we do not claim the same process for them. The U.S. Code is not published on the eCFR, so where we quote a statute — 49 U.S.C. § 80113 or § 14706, for instance — there is no amendment-credit line of the kind above to read. We cite the paragraph and link the section, which means the link opens the whole section: you may need to scroll to the paragraph named in the citation.

Before a page goes live we also run an automated check that looks for each quoted fragment in the sources that page cites. It is a drafting aid, not a guarantee — it does not record which source matched a given fragment, it cannot tell two paragraphs of the same section apart, and fragments it cannot place are reviewed by hand rather than deleted. Where a quotation matters to a decision you are making, open the linked source and read it there.

Sourcing rules

  • Every statistic, rate or claim of fact links to its source where it appears, and the sources are listed again at the foot of the page.
  • A statistic found in another article is followed to its primary source. If the primary source does not exist, the statistic does not go on the page.
  • Rates are ranges with conditions, never point estimates.
  • Source links are followed links. We do not tag the government and industry-body sources our pages rest on as links we don't vouch for.
  • Where a competitor is named, the claim cites their own page with the date it was read — and if they are right about something, we say so.

Dates, and what goes stale

Every page carries a real last updated date, and citations to time-varying data carry the date they were read. Two things on this site age at different speeds: regulatory text changes rarely but matters enormously when it does, while the diesel price changes weekly. A fuel-surcharge example computed against a specific week's EIA reading is an illustration of the arithmetic, not a current quote, and says so where it appears.

What this site does not have

Stated plainly, because a methodology page that only lists strengths is marketing:

  • No rate database and no proprietary data. We do not have lane rates, and nothing here is derived from private volume.
  • No survey. Where you see a claim about what operators do, it is either sourced or it should not be there.
  • No paid keyword or market data behind topic selection at the time of writing.
  • No case studies or customer results, because there are no customers yet. The quote desk is not shipped; the free email quote parser is.

Corrections

If a number here is wrong, or a regulation has moved since we quoted it, tell us and we will fix it and date the fix: hello@quoteminute.com. Corrections about superseded regulation are especially welcome — that is the failure mode this site is most exposed to, and an outside reader will sometimes see it first.