Empty miles get treated as weather — something that happens to you, to be absorbed and complained about. They are not. An empty mile is usually committed one load earlier, at the moment you accepted a load that ended somewhere with nothing going out.
That is the useful reframing, because it moves the decision to a point where you still have options. Once you are sitting empty in a thin market, every remaining choice is bad.
Price the rate over total miles, not loaded miles
A rate quoted per loaded mile tells you what the broker is paying. It does not tell you what you are earning, because your costs run on every mile the truck turns — and so do the driver's hours: the 11 hours a driver may drive in a shift do not care whether the trailer is loaded (§ 395.3).
Take the total revenue for the load and divide it by loaded miles plus the deadhead required to get to the pickup. That is the figure to compare against your cost per mile.
Think in pairs, not loads
A load evaluated alone will always look better than it is. The question is not whether this rate is good, it is what the truck is likely to be worth the day after it delivers.
Before accepting, three questions cover most of it:
- What comes out of the delivery area, and how consistently? A market you can reliably reload from is worth accepting less to reach.
- How far is the nearest area that does reload well? That distance is the deadhead you are probably committing to, whether or not you count it now.
- What day of the week does it deliver? Delivering into a slow market on a Friday afternoon is a materially different decision than the same load on a Tuesday.
None of this requires a data subscription. Running the same lanes for a few months tells you which destinations reload and which strand you, and that knowledge is worth more than a market average because it is about the freight you actually haul.
When running empty is correct
Deadhead is not always a mistake. Repositioning empty into a stronger market is sometimes the highest-value use of the next four hours, and refusing on principle keeps trucks in thin markets taking bad rates.
The test is straightforward. Compare the cost of the empty miles against the difference in what the truck can earn once it arrives, over the next load or two. At a running cost of $1.35 a mile — fuel, driver pay, maintenance and tires, the deadhead calculator's starting value, which leaves out the fixed costs you pay whether the truck moves or not — repositioning 150 miles costs $202.50. If the next two loads out of the stronger market pay more than that above what you would take where you are, it is a good trade made deliberately.
The distinction that matters is deliberate versus accidental. Choosing to reposition is planning. Discovering you have to is the previous decision arriving late.
What to measure
- Deadhead as a percentage of total miles, monthly. One number, tracked over time, and the trend matters more than the value. (The deadhead calculator counts it as a share of loaded miles instead, so the same fleet reads a little higher there; pick one convention and keep it.)
- Deadhead by delivery area. This is where the pattern lives — the empty running tends to come from a handful of destinations.
- Revenue per total mile alongside revenue per loaded mile. The gap between them is what deadhead is costing you, stated in the only unit that matters.
Once you can name the three destinations that strand you, you can price them properly or stop going. Until then it stays weather.
Sources and further reading
Regulations cited (eCFR, current text)
- 49 CFR 395.3 — Maximum driving time for property-carrying vehiclesThe 11 hours of driving a shift allows, loaded or empty.
On NeuroHaul
- Deadhead calculatorWhat a year of empty miles costs, and what each point is worth.
- Profit per load calculatorOne load, with the deadhead to the pickup counted against it.
- What your dispatcher is paid to doWhy a higher rate with a long empty leg can be the worse load.
- Planning a year of freightThe same planning, across the seasons.