Trucking, drayage, LTL, ocean, air and rail. Every figure here carries the source it came from and the date it was checked, because the numbers in this industry move and most of the ones you will find are quoted from memory. We start with the trucking numbers below because they are the ones we have finished.
Most startup guides give you a single total. The total is not the useful part. One line item is bigger than every other line combined, and knowing which one is the difference between shopping hard in the right place and shopping hard in the wrong one.
Insurers price experience, and under two years you are the risk. Every published average you will find is the left panel. You are the right one until somebody quotes you.
Your equipment, your lane, your authority age. It returns the line items above with your own numbers, so you can see which one is about to hurt.
Why this exists. Every quote in this industry is a range, and the range is wide enough to be useless until you know which end you sit at. A single averaged total hides the one line that decides whether the first ninety days work.
A new carrier buys all of these before it can legally move freight for money, and the order is not optional. Get one wrong and the next one stalls.
Each is a category where the published answer is a range and the seller has every reason to quote you the wrong end of it.
Rates, advance percentages, recourse versus non-recourse, and what the fuel card is really worth per gallon.
Compare rates → MoneyWhy a new authority pays double, and the gap between the federal minimum and what a broker will actually accept.
See the bands → OperatePer seat, per month, and what a three-person brokerage desk ends up paying across two platforms.
Compare seats → ComplyWhich devices are still registered, which were removed, and how long you have before a removal puts a driver out of service.
Check a device →Ranges are published as ranges. Freight pricing is quoted in bands because it genuinely varies by lane, equipment, credit and authority age. Collapsing a band to one number reads better and is less true, so this site publishes the band and names what moves you inside it.
Regulatory facts cite the agency, per row. Where a figure comes from FMCSA it links the specific page and the date it was read, never a footnote naming the agency collectively. A default value on a field that varies is how a compliance page tells somebody they are legal when they are not.
We take commissions and they do not buy position. FreightProbe earns referral commissions from some services named here, disclosed on every page carrying one. Rate shopping is the entire value of this site: a factor at 1.5 percent against one at 5 percent is real money on every invoice you will ever run. A page that ranks them dishonestly is worth nothing to you and therefore nothing to us.
FMCSA does not endorse any ELD, and neither do we. The registry is self-certified by the manufacturer. This site reports what the list said on the day it was read.
When FMCSA removes an ELD from the registered list, carriers running it have 60 days. We send the device names and the deadline, and nothing else.
Only when a device is actually removed · unsubscribe in one click · we never sell your address
Freight is not one market and the cost question is not one question, but it is always the same question: what does this actually cost, and who actually pays it. Each mode gets the same treatment as the trucking numbers above.
Everything about the method and the money is a page, not a paragraph in a footer. Two of these exist specifically so a reader can check us rather than trust us.
Figures compiled 29 August 2026 from FMCSA registration and ELD publications, published carrier startup-cost breakdowns, and vendor rate cards. Each is restated with its individual source on the page that covers it. Ranges are the sources' own.