How much do empty miles cost a trucking company?

How to work it out

Take your all-in cost per mile from your own books: fuel, driver wages, insurance, maintenance, tyres and truck payments, divided by total miles. Then count the empty miles for a month, from your ELD or trip logs.

Here is an example. A fleet with an all-in cost of $2.00 a mile that drives 20,000 empty miles in a month spends $40,000 moving nothing. Your numbers will differ. The method is the same.

Not every empty mile is waste

Some deadhead is the price of the network. A truck that delivers into a quiet area has to get back. The waste is the empty mile you could have filled: two trucks running empty between the same two cities on the same day, or a truck sent home empty while a load sat waiting near its delivery.

You only see those when you look at the whole fleet at once, not trip by trip.

Why dispatch misses them

Most dispatch plans one load at a time. The dispatcher finds a truck for this load, then the next. Nobody is looking at where every truck will be empty tomorrow and what freight is near it. When the board lives in one person's head, they do their best, but nobody can hold forty trucks in mind on a busy morning.

What to change

Track every truck's location, destination, expected finish time and equipment in one place. Flag the trucks that will be empty in the same area at the same time. Then measure dispatch on revenue per mile and revenue per driver hour, not loads moved.

Start with your five busiest lanes. Count the empty miles on each for a month, and put a dollar figure beside them. That list is where your planning should start.