Trip Sheet Format Free Excel, PDF, Hindi and Tamil — with the ten expense heads

The ten expense heads

A trip sheet that records only diesel and toll will always show a profit. These are the lines that decide whether it was real.

01

Diesel

Usually 40–55% of freight on a long-haul run. Record litres too, not just rupees, or you cannot check mileage.

02

Toll / FASTag

Second-largest cost on National Highway routes. Typically 4–9% of freight for a 20–25 tonne truck.

03

Driver batta

Per-day allowance while away from base, separate from salary. Scales with days out, not with distance.

04

Loading

Paid at origin, often in cash, often to someone who gives no receipt. Record it anyway.

05

Unloading

Same at the destination, and frequently higher because the consignee's labour sets the rate.

06

RTO / check post

The line nobody writes down and everybody pays. Leaving it off does not make the month better, it makes it wrong.

07

Repairs on route

Punctures and small jobs. Keeps a bad truck visible instead of hiding it in a workshop bill later.

08

Tyre / puncture

Separate from repairs, because tyre spend per km is the clearest early warning on a vehicle.

09

Mamool / miscellaneous

Record it. Hiding it does not make it smaller, and it is often 2–3% of freight.

10

Broker commission

Where the load came through an agent. Usually 2–5%, and the easiest line to forget on a return leg.

Then the head nobody puts on the sheet: this trip's share of the month's fixed costs — EMI, insurance, permit, driver salary, tyres, AMC. Divide the monthly total by the trips the truck actually runs and subtract. A trip that looks like it cleared ₹9,000 often clears ₹2,000 once the EMI share is in, and that is the number that tells you whether the lane is worth running.

How to fill a trip sheet

The driver fills it on the road, the office reconciles it on return. Both halves matter — a sheet completed entirely in the office is a guess.

1.

Before the truck leaves

Trip number, vehicle, driver, route, load, LR number, opening odometer, and the freight agreed. Hand over the advance and write it down.

2.

At each spend

Driver writes the amount and keeps the receipt. Cash payments with no receipt still go on the sheet — that is the whole point of the line.

3.

At every diesel fill

Litres, rate and the reading on the pump. Without litres you can compute a cost, but never a mileage.

4.

On return

Closing odometer, before the truck goes out again. A reading taken two days later is not this trip's reading.

5.

Reconcile against the receipts

Fuel bills and the FASTag statement are the two you can check independently. Differences here are where diesel theft shows up.

6.

Settle with the driver

Advance given minus what he spent. What is left is either due back to him or recoverable from him, and both go on the salary receipt.

7.

Subtract the fixed-cost share

Only now do you know what the trip made. Everything before this is cash flow, not profit.

Trip sheet vs duty slip

The same idea for different vehicles, and people search for both. Travels operators want the second one.

Both are on this page — the travels duty slip is one of the variants above.

How to work out profit per trip properly

Freight received minus every cost the trip incurred. That part is easy and almost everyone gets it right. The mistake is stopping there.

Costs that are paid monthly — EMI, insurance, permit and fitness, driver salary, tyres, AMC — do not disappear because they were not paid during the trip. Add them up for the month, divide by the number of trips the truck actually ran, and subtract that share from each trip. A truck running eight trips a month with ₹48,000 of fixed cost is carrying ₹6,000 per trip before it earns anything.

Do this for a quarter and lanes separate visibly. The Chennai run that always felt busy turns out to clear less per day than the shorter local work, because it crosses more plazas and waits longer to unload. That is the comparison a trip sheet exists to make possible, and it is why the profit line belongs on the sheet rather than in a ledger somewhere else.

What good looks like on a South Indian long-haul run

Rough bands for a 20–25 tonne truck on National Highway routes. Useful as a sanity check, not as a target — your lanes and your rates will differ.

01

Diesel

40–55% of freight. Above 55% and either the rate was quoted low or the truck is drinking.

02

Toll

4–9% of freight. Consistently above 10% usually means the lane crosses more plazas than the rate accounts for.

03

Loading and unloading together

3–6%. Higher where the consignee controls the labour.

04

Driver batta and salary share

8–12%, depending on days out and how salary is split.

05

Mileage

3.5–5 km/l loaded, depending on terrain and load factor. Judge it on a full tank, never a single fill.

06

Empty return

The single biggest determinant of whether a lane works. A 30% empty-run rate can turn a good rate into a loss.

Four ways a trip sheet goes wrong

01

Filled in the office afterwards

Every cash payment without a receipt gets left off — loading, check post, mamool. Those are the lines that decide the answer.

02

Diesel in rupees only

You can total the spend but never check the mileage, so fuel theft has nowhere to show up.

03

Odometer read late

A closing reading taken after the truck has been out again puts someone else's kilometres on this trip.

04

Fixed costs left out

The most common of all. It makes every trip look profitable, which hides exactly the lanes you would want to stop running.

Reconciling a trip sheet against GPS and FASTag

Two lines on a trip sheet can be checked without trusting anyone: kilometres and toll. GPS gives the distance actually covered, and the FASTag statement gives every plaza crossing with a timestamp and an amount.

Compare the sheet's kilometres against the GPS trail and a persistent gap in one direction is worth understanding — a detour that is not on the sheet, or a reading rounded generously. Compare the toll lines against the plaza crossings that fall between the trip's start and end times, and you have the trip's real toll rather than a monthly figure divided equally.

That last point matters more than it sounds. Splitting a month's toll evenly across trips makes every trip look the same, when a Chennai run and a local Thanjavur run cross entirely different numbers of plazas. The average hides which lane is expensive, which is the one thing you needed to know.

Hindi and Tamil trip sheets

A trip sheet is only as good as what the driver actually writes on it, and a driver filling in an English form he reads slowly will skip lines. The Hindi and Tamil versions carry all ten expense heads translated — डीज़ल, टोल, चालक भत्ता and டீசல், சுங்கச்சாவடி, பத்தா — in the same order as the English sheet, so an office that reads English can reconcile a sheet a driver filled in his own language.

The fixed-cost note at the foot stays in English. It is guidance for whoever does the accounting, not an instruction to the driver.

When the paper stops being enough

One truck, a pad and a calculator is genuinely fine. The trouble starts at four or five, when the question stops being “what did this trip make” and becomes “which lane is quietly losing money every month, and which driver returns worse mileage on the same route”.

That comparison cannot be done from a stack of sheets in a drawer. Fleetbooks reads a photograph of the handwritten sheet — Tamil or Hindi — turns it into a per-trip P&L, reconciles the kilometres against GPS and the toll against the FASTag feed, then ranks every lane, driver and truck by what it actually clears. The pad stays; the arithmetic stops being yours.

Questions operators ask