The Truck Is Paid For. Nobody's Driving It.

Because a parked truck also costs less to run. No diesel, no driver pay, no tire wear — those stop with the wheels. Counting the full revenue as lost would overstate the damage by whatever those would have been, which for most carriers is more than half of it. This tool loses the contribution instead: revenue minus the costs that only happen when the truck moves. It's the smaller number, and it's the one that survives an argument.

Deliberately absent, and not because they don't matter. They bill the same whether the seat is filled or empty, so they are identical on both sides of the comparison and cancel out — adding them on top would count them twice. Their role is the reason contribution matters at all: fixed costs are what the contribution is supposed to cover, and an empty seat covers none of it.

Everything between the seat opening and the replacement being dispatchable: advertising and job-board spend, recruiter time, MVR and background checks, the DOT physical and drug screen, orientation, and any paid training days. If you have never totalled it, add what you can defend and leave the rest out — the wait is usually the bigger half anyway, which the split bar shows you.

Count the seats you actually refilled over the last twelve months and divide by your truck count. Four turns in an eight-truck fleet is 50%. It doesn't need to be exact to be useful — the figure it drives is an order of magnitude, and even a rough one usually surprises people.

It's the annual value of cutting a single day off your time-to-fill, across every seat you expect to turn this year. It's the honest way to price recruiting: if a day is worth more than what faster hiring costs you, the spend pays for itself — and if it isn't, no pitch should convince you otherwise.