Djsell, there are a few things that need clarifying. If you hire a driver for you van, you do not need to pay them social security taxes etc. You will be hiring them as a nonemployee which means that whatever you pay them throughout the corse of a year wold be placed on a 1099, and then the driver would be responsible for filing his own taxes.
Also, when you bid on that rout you need to determine what your "break even" point is. Your break even point will depend on how your fuel mileage is, your insirance costs, driver pay, and the daily price of fuel...which is a variable expense. Once you get these numbers worked out you can figure out how much you need to charge the customer per mile in order to turn a reasonable profit.
Remember you are giving the customer a straight bid. That means that the fuel surcharge should be a part of your bid. You don't necessarily have to list the fuel surchargs as a separate expense. Once you have this down, you take your rate per mile and times it by the amount of paid miles the rout will be paying and you generate your total revenue and submit that as your bid for the route. Alas, do not forget to take into cosideration the deadhead miles and maintenance as well as expenses for costly breakdowns; because you will still have to figure out a way to get the freight to its destination even if your van is in the shop.
Now, you are going to have trouble generating a competitive bid because you only have one vehicle on the road. You do not have enough vehicles on the road making you money to evenly spread your fixed operating expenses which will make it harder for you to bid lower to get the contract. Once again, it mostly depends on what type of retuen on your investment you are trying to get.
You also have to take into consideration what the great OVM said about seeking good hard working drivers, because you will have to fill that drivers seat if anything happens to one of them. You can't be late or miss a day of work when you are running a dedicated route. Again, these are just some things to think about here.
Also, you need to get back to us with the type of van "diesel gasoline" you will be driving and whether or not you will pay cash for it and what your reasonable expectations of income potential is. I hope this helps you my friend.
