Empty Miles Are Eating Your Margin
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The trucks are running, the loads look decent on paper, and the money still isn’t there. Deadhead is usually where it went: miles you paid for and nobody paid you for. It’s also the cleanest thing to cut, because unlike fuel or insurance, it produces nothing you’d miss.
Where it comes from
The search radius is too wide. Most load board defaults run 100 to 150 miles from a zip-code centroid. Every mile of that ring is fuel and hours before the load pays anything.
The reload starts too late. Searching once the truck is empty means searching from a fixed point at a fixed hour with no leverage. The good options went while you were still unloading.
The destination was never considered. A strong rate into a market with nothing outbound costs more on the next leg than it earned on this one. That cost belongs to the load that put you there, and it never appears in the rate you evaluated.
Nobody’s measuring it. Most carriers track rate per mile and not empty percentage, so the problem is invisible until the month closes badly.
What it’s actually costing
Two loads posted at $2,600 over 1,000 loaded miles. One picks up 15 miles away, one picks up 200 miles away. After fuel and tolls, that’s $1.97 net RPM against $1.58: a 39-cent gap on identical-looking freight, entirely caused by deadhead.
Against a $1.80 operating cost, one of those loads makes money and the other loses it. Full calculation.
What to do this week
- Tighten the radius to 40 to 50 miles. You’ll see fewer loads and better ones. A load 150 miles out has to pay materially more to match one 30 miles out, and it usually doesn’t.
- Start the reload search before delivery, not after. Cross-reference your delivery ETA against outbound freight in the destination market while the truck is still loaded.
- Start measuring empty percentage. Deadhead as a share of total miles, tracked weekly. The trend tells you more than any benchmark.
- Ask what leaves the destination before accepting a load into an unfamiliar market.
When a cheap backhaul is the right call
A backhaul that only covers fuel and basic operating cost is often worth taking if it repositions the truck into a market with better outbound freight. The comparison isn’t the backhaul against your floor; it’s the backhaul plus the next headhaul, against running empty plus that same headhaul.
400 empty miles costs perhaps $300 in fuel and wear with no revenue. A $700 load over those same miles is $700 against costs you’d have paid anyway. A poor rate and a good decision. More on deadhead strategy.
Where Hey Bubba! fits
Hey Bubba! is an AI back-office automation platform for fleets. Load search runs from live ELD position rather than a zip-code default, screens every load on net revenue per mile including origin deadhead, and plans the reload before the current load delivers: continuously, across every truck.
Frequently asked questions
Lower is better and the realistic number depends on your lanes. Track your own trend rather than chasing a benchmark.
40 to 50 miles from the truck’s actual position is a reasonable default. Widen it only when the market is thin.
Yes. Excluding it overstates every load, consistently and in the same direction.
Only if the load doesn’t cover its own fuel, or delays you past something better. Otherwise revenue over miles you were driving anyway usually wins.
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