Nobody Pays You For The Empty Miles.
What your deadhead costs over a year, what one percentage point of it is worth back, and what closing the gap to your target returns — from your miles and your running cost. Free, no signup.
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- Cost before upside
/ What empty costs /
Deadhead, per year
$188,698139,776 empty miles · $0.19 on every loaded mile
Miles driven a year
1,138,176
You quote deadhead against loaded miles; the fuel bill counts it against every mile you drove. Both are above.
- One point of deadhead
- $13,478 /yr
- Getting to 9%
- 5.0 points
- Cost avoided at target
- $67,392
Upside case, if those miles ran loaded
+$119,808/ year
Separate from the saving above, and a bigger ask: not driving an empty mile saves its cost immediately, but filling it also needs freight on that lane at that time.
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How the deadhead math works
The same steps the calculator runs, worked through on its default fleet. The cost of the empty miles comes first; what they might earn if loaded is kept as a separate, last line.
- Loaded miles a year8 trucks × 2,400 mi a week × 52998,400 mi
- Empty miles998,400 × 14% (a share of loaded miles)139,776 mi
- Share of all miles139,776 ÷ (998,400 + 139,776)12.3%
- What they cost139,776 mi × $1.35 running cost$188,697.60 a year
- One point of deadhead1% of 998,400 loaded mi × $1.35$13,478.40 a year
- Cost avoided at target14% → 9% = 5 points = 49,920 mi × $1.35$67,392 a year
- Upside, only if loadedthe same 49,920 mi × $2.40 revenue — only where freight exists on that lane$119,808 a year
What the number cannot tell you
- Deadhead here is a share of loaded miles: 14% means 14 empty miles for every 100 paid. The cost-per-mile calculator counts it as a share of all miles, so the same percentage means slightly different mileage there.
- It is a yearly average. One bad backhaul week can run far above it without moving the annual line much.
- Every truck is treated alike. If one truck or one lane produces most of the empty miles, the fix belongs there, not across the fleet.
- The saving comes from not driving the mile. The upside needs freight on that lane at that time, which planning alone cannot guarantee.
What to do with it
- Get your running cost from the cost-per-mile calculator: fuel, driver pay, maintenance and tires per mile, without the fixed share.
- Measure deadhead per truck and per lane for a month. The fleet average hides where the empty miles come from.
- Judge each load together with the empty miles it leaves you; the profit-per-load calculator counts the deadhead to the pickup.
- Use the value of one point to decide how much planning effort an improvement is worth.
About the deadhead math.
This tool takes it as a share of LOADED miles: 14% means fourteen empty miles for every hundred paid ones. (The cost-per-mile calculator uses the other convention, a share of all miles, so the same percentage means slightly different mileage there.) The split bar shows the other view — empty miles as a share of everything you drove — because that one is always a smaller-looking number and it is worth seeing both so nobody is surprised later.
Because it bills whether that mile happens or not. An empty mile costs you the things that only happen when the wheels turn — fuel, driver pay, maintenance, tires. Including fixed costs would inflate the figure and make it indefensible in the one conversation where it matters, which is the one with your own accountant.
Because they are different claims. Not driving an empty mile SAVES what that mile costs — that holds as soon as the mile disappears. Turning it into a paying mile additionally requires freight to exist on that lane at that time, which is a market fact rather than a planning one. Adding them together is how this kind of calculator becomes a sales pitch; keeping them apart is how it stays useful.
It depends entirely on your lanes, your equipment and how far you run — a regional dry-van operation and a flatbed running one-way freight are not the same problem. The useful move is not to copy a number but to price the gap between where you are and where you think you could be, and see whether it is big enough to justify changing how loads are planned.
Averages are the point. One percentage point is one percent of your annual loaded miles, priced at your running cost — a steady figure derived from lumpy weeks. It answers 'is chasing this worth a dispatcher's attention', which is a yearly question, not a weekly one.
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