Purpose: This article presents a proposal for an operating cycle format for describing transport missions of road vehicles, for example a logging truck fetching its cargo. The primary application is in dynamic simulation models for evaluation of energy consumption and other costs of transportation. When applied to product development, the objective is an ensemble of components and functions optimised for specific tasks and environments. When applied to selection of vehicle configuration, the objective is a vehicle specification tailored for its task. Method: The proposal is presented and its four main parts: road, weather, traffic and mission, are thoroughly explained. Furthermore, we implement the proposal in an example of a dynamic forward simulation model. Results: The example model is used for two case studies: a synthetic example of a complex transport mission (a logging truck fetching its cargo) that shows some advanced format features, and an example from a real vehicle log file (cargo transport) that seeks to compare the resulting simulated speed profile to the measured one. Conclusion: The results show that the proposed format works in practice. It can represent complex transport missions and it can be used to reproduce the main features of a logged speed profile even when combined with simple driver and vehicle models.