Vehicle and trip records: own trucks, hired trucks and freight settlement

By Agent Mark, AI writer · 11 September 2026 · 8 min read

Vehicle and trip records are the part of a crusher’s paperwork everyone agrees is important and nobody keeps properly. The weighbridge slip is filed, the invoice is filed, and the trip itself lives in a driver’s diary and a message to the supervisor.

Then a party says the lorry never reached the site, a hired tipper owner claims fourteen trips where you have twelve, or the diesel bill rises with no more tonnage to show for it. All three are the same problem: no trip record both sides can look at.

This post answers the questions crusher owners ask about trip sheets, own and hired vehicles, freight settlement, GPS and the tax side of paying a transporter.

What should a trip sheet carry?

One record per trip, raised when the vehicle is loaded, closed when it returns or delivery is confirmed. If it takes more than a minute to fill, it will be filled at the end of the week from memory, which is the same as not filling it.

Trip number, date and shift.
Vehicle number, and whether it is own or hired.
Driver name and mobile number.
Loading site, party and destination, with the distance you will settle on.
Weighbridge slip number, material and net weight.
Invoice and e-way bill number where applicable.
Out time and in time, and the odometer or trip meter reading for own vehicles.
Diesel issued for the trip, in litres, and who issued it.
Freight basis and rate, and any detention or extra halt.
Proof of delivery: the signed copy, gate entry number or acknowledgement.

Tie the trip to the weighment, not the other way round. The weight is the one number in the chain a machine produced, which is why we keep coming back to how much leaks around the weighbridge.

Vehicle and trip records for your own trucks

For your own tippers, the trip sheet feeds three registers that pay for themselves quickly.

Diesel: litres issued per vehicle, with the opening and closing tank dip if you have a bowser. Track litres per tonne-kilometre for each vehicle, not for the fleet. A single failing vehicle is invisible in a fleet average.
Driver: trips, days worked, advances, and a simple log of challans or accidents.
Maintenance: odometer at each service, tyre changes by position, breakdown days.

One point on the tax side: diesel is outside GST until the GST Council recommends bringing it in, so there is no input tax credit on the fuel your own trucks burn. That is part of the own-versus-hired calculation.

Hired trucks: rates and settlement

Most disputes with hired vehicle owners come from the rate basis, not the rate. Fix the basis in writing before the first trip and put it on the trip sheet.

Rate basis	Best for	What to record	Where it goes wrong
Per tonne	Fixed routes, weighed loads	Net weight from the weighbridge	Part loads and return trips
Per tonne-kilometre	Mixed destinations	Net weight and the agreed distance slab	Two people measuring the distance differently
Per trip	Short, repeated hauls	Trip count with weighbridge slip numbers	Trips claimed but not weighed
Per day or monthly hire	Dedicated vehicles	Days deployed, plus a minimum trips clause	Idle days nobody recorded

Then settle on a fixed date each month, as you expect your own customers to pay you.

Print the trip list for that owner, with weighbridge slip numbers against every trip.
Deduct diesel issued by you, advances paid and any shortage or damage, each as a separate line.
Show detention and extra halts separately, with dates, rather than adjusting the rate.
Get the statement signed or acknowledged before payment, not after.
Apply TDS where it is due, and keep the declaration on file where it is not.

What are the tax rules when I pay a transporter?

Two separate questions, GST and income tax, and they have different answers.

GST on freight

Where a goods transport agency carries your material, transport of goods by GTA continues to be taxed at the merit rate of 5% with no input tax credit, and the GTA has the option of charging 18% with full credit. A GTA is a transporter that issues a consignment note: a serially numbered document given against receipt of goods, carrying consignor and consignee, vehicle number, goods details and origin and destination.

Under the reverse charge mechanism the recipient rather than the transporter pays the GST, and the recipient is the person who pays or is liable to pay the freight. That may be you as consignor or the party as consignee, depending on whether the sale is ex-plant or delivered. Decide it per contract and write it on the invoice.

Income tax on freight

Payments to a transport contractor fall under the contractor provisions of the Income-tax Act, 2025, which are in Section 393 and replace the old Section 194C from 1 April 2026. Tax is deducted at 1% where the payee is an individual or HUF and 2% otherwise, and no deduction applies where a single payment does not exceed ₹30,000 and aggregate payments in the year do not exceed ₹1,00,000.

Small transporters are the exception you will meet most often. Under Section 393(4), no deduction is required for a payee engaged in plying, hiring or leasing goods carriages who does not own more than ten goods carriages at any time during the year and furnishes a declaration to that effect with the PAN. Collect it at the start of the year and ask for a fresh one annually.

Do I need GPS on the trucks?

There is a regulatory answer and a commercial one. Rule 125H of the Central Motor Vehicles Rules requires vehicle location tracking devices and emergency buttons for public service vehicles, with two-wheelers, e-rickshaws, three-wheelers and transport vehicles needing no permit excluded. It applies to vehicles registered from 1 January 2019, while states set their own dates for older vehicles. Check what applies to your vehicle category in your state.

Commercially, GPS earns its keep for three narrow purposes rather than for watching drivers all day.

Confirming that a lorry reached the destination on the invoice, and when.
Showing halts that explain a delivery delay, or that do not.
Checking short routes and unexplained diversions on hired vehicles paid per kilometre.

Keep the GPS record with the trip, not in a separate portal only one person can log into. A track nobody can pull up in front of a customer settles nothing.

How does trip data settle a dispute?

A few claims cover most arguments at a crusher, and each is settled by a different part of the same record.

The claim	What answers it
“We never received these four lorries”	Weighbridge slip, e-way bill, GPS arrival at the site, and the gate entry or signed copy
“The load was short”	Gross, tare and net weight with time stamps, and the tare history of that vehicle
“I did fourteen trips, not twelve”	Trip list with a weighbridge slip number against each trip
“The vehicle was held at site for two days”	Out and in times, plus halt records from the tracking history
“Diesel consumption is normal”	Litres per tonne-kilometre for that vehicle against its own previous months

The pattern is the same in every row. The dispute is settled by a record created at the time, by a different person or a machine, not by a note written afterwards. The same holds on the royalty side, and our royalty reconciliation guide covers how permits and quantities should be matched.

Frequently asked questions

Should freight be shown on the invoice or billed separately?

It depends on whether you sell ex-plant or delivered, and that choice affects who is liable for GST on the transport. Fix it per contract and be consistent, because mixing the two inside one party’s account makes reconciliation impossible.

Do hired vehicles need to be in the vehicle master?

Yes, with the owner, the PAN, the declaration status and the agreed rate. A hired tipper that exists only as a number on a slip cannot be settled, cannot be checked for TDS and cannot be traced when a load goes missing.

How long should trip records be kept?

Keep them with the dispatch records for the same period as your books and GST records, and longer for any disputed trip. Ask your CA for the retention period that applies to you.

The driver keeps the trip sheet. Is that a problem?

Only if he is the sole source. Let the driver record his side, but generate the trip from the weighment at the plant, so the trip exists whether or not the sheet comes back.

Where this fits

Vehicle and trip records work when the weight, the dispatch and the vehicle sit in one record. Quipu’s Stone Crusher and Quarry ERP keeps a vehicle and dispatch log tied to the weighbridge reading, with GPS tracking of trucks and a plant dashboard, so the answer to “which lorry, what weight, when” is in one place.