Dump truck bookkeeping: load tickets, broker statements, and cost per truck

The three-way match: ticket, statement, deposit

Every load generates a ticket — per load, per tonne, or per hour depending on the job — and those tickets are the primary revenue record, not the deposit that shows up weeks later. We reconcile three documents against each other monthly: the load tickets your drivers turn in, the broker or contractor statement that summarizes what you are being paid for, and the bank deposit that settles it. Gaps surface fast when the match is routine: tickets the broker never processed, rate differences between what was quoted and what was paid, and fuel-surcharge lines that quietly disappeared. Pit scale tickets add a fourth document on aggregate work, and tonnage on the scale ticket should agree with tonnage on the pay statement — when it does not, the difference has a dollar value. Haulers who skip this match are almost always leaving loads unpaid, and they find out at year-end when it is too late to chase.

Post gross revenue, not the net deposit

Broker statements arrive with deductions taken off the top — the broker's percentage, sometimes insurance or administration charges — and the single most common bookkeeping mistake we see is recording the net deposit as revenue. We post the gross hauling revenue and book each deduction as its own expense line, so you can actually see what brokerage costs you across a season and compare dispatchers on real numbers. It also keeps HST honest: hauling within Ontario is a taxable service at 13%, many brokers self-bill on your behalf, and the tax collected has to be built from gross billings, not from what landed in the account.

Cost per truck, or you are guessing

Two trucks doing the same work can be a thousand dollars a month apart in operating cost, and only per-unit books reveal it. We tag every transaction to a truck in QuickBooks Online — cardlock fuel statements split by unit, repairs and tires coded to the truck they went on, insurance, plates, and financing allocated per unit — and report a monthly margin for each truck. Each unit also gets its own line in the asset ledger; heavy trucks built for hauling freight typically sit in CCA Class 16 with its 38% rate, so keeping cost and disposal records per truck pays off directly at tax time. When a truck's repair line starts climbing toward its financing line, the sell-or-keep decision becomes arithmetic.

Drivers, sub-haulers, and WSIB paper

Fleets grow two ways: drivers on T4 payroll in your trucks, or owner-operator sub-haulers bringing their own units. The books treat them completely differently — payroll with source deductions and ROEs for seasonal layoffs on one side, subcontract invoices on the other — and the classification has to reflect reality, because a sub-hauler driving your truck on your schedule looks a lot like an employee to CRA. Before a sub gets paid, his paperwork goes in the file: a written rate agreement, his HST number if he charges it, and a WSIB clearance, because general contractors ask you for the same thing up the chain.

Season, cash flow, and the close

Hauling money arrives in a rush from May to November and the repairs bill lands in February, so the books need to show the season, not just the month — we track a rolling cash position against known winter costs and time HST instalments around the earning months. The monthly close runs tickets-to-statements-to-bank, fuel statements by unit, and the per-truck scorecard, with receipts through Dext so the glovebox stops being the filing system. Equipment and parts increasingly cross the border — USD auction buys and US-sourced components have tariff and import wrinkles we cover in our dump truck cross-border guide — and the full close routine lives on our bookkeeping services page.