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.
- No signup
- Runs in your browser
- 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.
Nothing here is sent anywhere — it runs in your browser.
About the deadhead math.
This tool takes it as a share of LOADED miles, which is how dispatchers quote it: 14% means fourteen empty miles for every hundred paid ones. 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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