Empty miles are the one cost with nothing on the other side of the ledger. You pay the fuel, the hours, the tires, and the driver, and you bill nobody. Most carriers know their deadhead number is too high. Fewer know that the fix has almost nothing to do with rates.
Deadhead is a timing problem wearing a pricing costume. The empty leg exists because the outbound load was found after the truck was already free, and by then the only options left were the ones nobody else wanted.
Book the reload before the truck is empty
The single biggest lever is how far ahead you are planning. A dispatcher working today's board is negotiating from weakness; one working two days out is choosing. Nothing about the freight market changed — only the number of options on the table when the decision got made.
- Know where every truck will be tomorrow and the day after, not just where it is now.
- Treat an unassigned truck 48 hours out as an open problem, the same way you treat a load without a truck.
- Put the empty miles on the screen next to the rate, so the trade-off is visible while the decision is being made.
Price the leg, not the load
A $2,400 load 200 empty miles away is not better than a $2,100 load at the dock. Judged per total mile, it is usually worse — and it burns hours you cannot get back. Comparing loads on revenue per total mile, empty included, quietly kills most bad deadhead decisions before they happen.
The load that pays best is rarely the one that pays most.
Build lanes instead of chasing loads
Repeat lanes are the durable answer. Two customers on opposite ends of the same corridor beat ten spot loads scattered across a region, because the second leg is known before the first one runs. This is slow work — sales work, not dispatch work — but it is the difference between 18% deadhead and 9%.
The trade-offs worth making
Some empty miles are worth paying for. Repositioning to a market with volume beats sitting in one without it. Running empty to keep a driver on a home-time promise is cheaper than replacing the driver. Deadhead is a number to manage, not a number to minimize at all costs.
What is never worth it: an empty leg you did not decide to take, because the load was booked too late to have a choice.
