Permits and licensing
Permits and licensing are the recurring registrations an interstate carrier must maintain, including apportioned plates, the IFTA license, the UCR registration and the federal heavy vehicle use tax.
Last reviewed · by the Fleetchart team
These arrive annually or quarterly rather than monthly, which is why they are frequently missing from per-mile cost calculations.
Apportioned registration distributes plate fees across the jurisdictions a carrier operates in, based on miles run in each.
Amortizing the annual total across expected miles is the only way to see their real weight on a load.
For example, say your yearly plates, licenses and permit bills add up to $4,000. Spread over 100,000 miles, that is $4,000 ÷ 100,000 = $0.04 a mile. If you only run 80,000 miles, it is $4,000 ÷ 80,000 = $0.05 a mile. Four or five cents sounds small, but on a 1,000-mile load it is $40 to $50 that has to come from somewhere.
Missing a renewal costs more than the bill. An expired plate or permit can put the truck out of service at a scale or inspection, and a day parked can cost more than the permit itself. Keep every renewal date on a calendar.