Empty Miles Are Costing You More Than You Think
Every trucking company has a leak somewhere. For most small fleets, it isn't fuel prices or a slow-paying broker — it's the miles nobody is paying you to drive.
An empty mile (or "deadhead mile") is any mile your truck covers without a paying load on board. You still burn fuel and pay the driver for that mile, you just don't get paid for it. A few years ago, a fat freight rate could quietly absorb that cost. That cushion is gone.
Why Empty Miles Cost More Today Than They Used To
Freight rates are tighter, fuel isn't getting cheaper, and drivers are scarce and expensive. Shippers now expect Amazon-grade tracking on a trucking budget. Put together, every deadhead mile is a mile you pay for twice: once in fuel and wages, and once in the load you didn't haul instead.
There's a second bill arriving now too: emissions. Regulators and large shippers are starting to score carriers on carbon per load, and an empty truck is pure carbon with zero revenue attached.
"In the past, you could bury an empty mile in a fat rate. Those days are gone." - Rico van Leuken, CEO, Bluerock TMS
How Much Are Empty Miles Actually Costing Your Fleet?
Run a rough number: take your all-in cost per mile (fuel, driver pay, maintenance) and multiply it by your empty-mile percentage across a month. Most small fleets have never calculated this figure, and most are surprised by it. An empty-mile rate that looks like "just part of the job" at 15–20% is, in plain terms, a fifth of your truck's operating time producing zero revenue.
Why "That's Just How Trucking Works" Isn't True Anymore
Efficiency used to be a nice-to-have. It's now the business model. The carriers absorbing the current rate environment aren't the ones working harder, they're the ones who stopped treating empty miles as unavoidable and started treating them as a number to bring down.
That starts with a simple shift: planning trips as round trips instead of one-way hauls. It's a free change — no software required — and it's the single highest-leverage move a small carrier can make. We break down exactly how to do it in [Round Trip vs. One-Way Haul: The Planning Shift That Actually Cuts Empty Miles].
Ready to stop paying for miles nobody's paying you for?
Book a demo and see how Bluerock TMS helps you cut them.