Well, 30% times a snotload of trucks. If the fleet were suddenly halved most those bonuses would have to go away. If you have enough trucks, then a penny profit can make you rich. Also, you're incorrectly assuming that the company trucks only make 30%. And you're completely forgetting the bazillions raked in from the QC cash cow.
I don't think he does. I certainly don't. Your profit percentage isn't the amount above your expenses - that's called markup. The gross profit margin expresses your profits as a percentage of the total sales revenues generated, not as a percentage of expenses. Gross profit is simply where you take the cost of goods (in our case, the operating expenses only (fuel, oil, tolls)) and divide it by the gross revenue.
Since the CPM includes many things other than operating expenses, we look more at net profit margin than gross profit margin. For the net profit margin you take all expenses, including operating expenses, truck washes, maintenance, insurance, everything that goes into that CPM, and divide it by the gross revenue (all income including bonuses, layover, detention, etc.). It's quite impossible for that number to be greater than 100% unless you are just making a killing in non-line haul income like detention and other accessorials.
In your example above, of a 35 cent CPM and a line haul to the truck of 85 cents, that's a 41.1% net profit margin, not 120%.
