Free Fuel Cost Calculator Australia for Builders & Tradies

Multiply the total kilometres for the job by your vehicle's fuel use, then by the fuel price. Total kilometres is the return trip to site, times trips per day, times days on site. Fuel use in L/100km gets divided by 100 to give litres per kilometre. Do it for each vehicle and add them together. The free calculator does all of that for you, then you can drop the figure straight into your quote with NextMinute's quoting software.

Yep, it's free to use as often as you like. Just pop in your name, company and email to unlock it. There's no trial clock and no credit card. We built it because fuel is one of those costs that quietly slips off quotes, and a quick, accurate number helps. If you want fuel, labour and materials worked into every quote without doing the maths each time, have a look at a 10-day free trial of NextMinute.

It uses a built-in database of fuel figures by make and model. Pick your exact ute, van or truck and it fills in the litres per 100km for you, so there's no digging through manuals or guessing. If your vehicles usually run loaded or tow a trailer, they'll burn more than the listed figure, so allow a bit extra on long or heavy jobs.

No. Enter the address you leave from, like the depot or the yard, and the job site address, and the calculator works out the distance for you. Then add how many trips the crew makes each day. Remember the extra runs that happen mid-job, like a trip back to the supplier, so the total reflects how the job will actually run.

Either way works, as long as it's counted. Some builders show a travel or fuel line so clients can see why a job an hour out costs more. Others build it into their labour rates and keep the quote clean. In NextMinute you can save it as a line item in your quote templates, so it's on every quote by default and never gets forgotten.

Check the pump price before every quote on longer jobs. Prices can move a fair bit over a few weeks, and a quote that's valid for 30 days or more might be accepted at a very different fuel price to when you wrote it. For long builds, allow a small buffer so a price jump doesn't come straight out of your margin.

The ones that happen between the main trips. Supplier runs for more materials, tip runs with a loaded trailer, machine fuel for diggers, bobcats and generators, and return visits for defects or handover all add up. On a long job they can be a real chunk of money. Count them when you run the numbers, then track them against the job so you know for next time.

Most trade businesses do, because fuel takes time to manage and the price can change between quoting and doing the work. A small markup covers that risk. Whatever you charge, be consistent so your quotes stay comparable job to job. NextMinute lets you set markups as you build a quote and see your margin update, so you know the job's making money before you send it. See all the features.

Compare what the job actually cost with what you quoted. With NextMinute's job costing you can track actual costs against your estimate by job and stage while the work is still running, not weeks later. If travel keeps coming in over, you'll see it early and can adjust your next quote. The crew logs time from the mobile app, so the numbers stay current.

It suits builders and project trades whose crews drive to site every day, often for weeks at a time. Think builders, landscapers, roofers, concreters, earthworks crews, pool builders and carpenters. For those businesses, fuel is a real cost on every job. If you're running a team of three or more and want quoting, scheduling and job costing in one place, see NextMinute's plans.