CURTAINSIDE TRAILER BLOG

Empty miles: they’re often the biggest money-drain for a trucking company.

Also known as “deadheading,” empty miles happen when a truck driver carries a load from Point A and delivers to Point B, then brings an empty truck all the way back to Point A again, racking up driver hours and fuel expenses with no freight revenue to compensate. According to recent research, between 15 and 25 percent of the trailers on the road at any given time are empty. The antidote to these empty miles is a successful back-haul strategy that optimizes opportunities to fill the truck with paying freight on return trips.

One-way rates do not a trucking company make. Your shipper may be happy to pay a high one-way rate, but if you are deadheading back, your one-way rate is (for all practical purposes) cut in half. Your one-way rate has to cover expenses both ways. Back-hauling will never be your main bread and butter, but getting a little income for heading home can make that one-way rate look mighty good.

Back-hauls help make the return trip from shipping destinations profitable as well as productive.

Deadheading, driving an empty trailer back from a delivery, is a waste of fuel, driver time, and vehicle wear and tear on the return trip. Locating a back-haul load at or in the nearby vicinity of where the outbound load was delivered is the key to optimizing revenue opportunities.

Today's fleet managers can't afford to leave profitable opportunities on the table.

One meaningful source of freight revenue are back-hauls. Most anyone can make money hauling freight from Point A to Point B. But if you're pulling an empty trailer or bobtailing all the way back to Point A afterwards, you're losing money on fuel and wear and tear on every one of those return miles. The opportunity to haul freight both ways helps compensate for the return trip to home base—but only if your trailer has the versatility to accommodate a diverse assortment of loads.