Adam Wingfield
6 min read
Most carriers don’t realize how much empty miles are quietly killing their bottom line. You can have the best rates in the world, but if your truck runs 150 miles empty between loads, you’re bleeding profit—and most of the time, you don’t even notice it until it’s too late. Deadhead doesn’t show up on a check stub. It doesn’t pop up in factoring reports. But it’s one of the fastest ways to destroy margins and wear out equipment chasing freight that isn’t worth the move.
Too many owner-operators and small fleet owners accept deadheading as the cost of doing business. They say things like, “That’s just trucking,” or, “I had to bounce 200 miles to get a better paying load.” But here’s the hard truth—if you’re constantly running empty, it’s not a rate problem. It’s a planning problem. And if you’re not actively tracking, analyzing, and attacking your deadhead strategy, you’re burning fuel, time, and opportunity every week.
This article breaks down real-world tactics that actually work to reduce deadhead—whether you’re running one truck or managing a growing fleet. These aren’t theories. These are moves we coach on every week inside the Playbook.
Most carriers can tell you their rate per mile. Few can tell you their deadhead percentage. That’s a problem. If you don’t know how many of your total miles are unpaid, how can you measure if your planning is improving?
Let’s say you drove 2,500 total miles last week. If 600 of those were deadhead, that’s 24% of your miles making zero revenue. You wouldn’t give away 24% of your revenue—but that’s exactly what happens when you ignore this number.
Track it weekly. Use your ELD data or your TMS to separate loaded vs total miles. The goal is to keep deadheads under 15%. Under 10%? You’re running sharp. Over 20%? You’re leaking cash.
A $3.00/mile load sounds great—until you realize you ran 200 miles to get to it. That’s the trick the load board doesn’t show you. You might see a flashy rate, but if you had to burn half a tank of fuel just to get to the shipper, the math falls apart quickly.
You have to evaluate total revenue per all miles, not just loaded miles.
Here’s a basic example:
-
Load A: 200-mile deadhead + 800 loaded miles = 1,000 total miles
Rate: $3.00/mile on 800 = $2,400
All miles rate: $2.40/mile -
Load B: 50-mile deadhead + 700 loaded miles = 750 total miles
Rate: $2.60/mile on 700 = $1,820
All miles rate: $2.43/mile
Load B actually pays better once you factor the deadhead—and your truck spends less time and fuel to do it. This is the level of math serious carriers are using every day to make smarter moves.
