Why Empty Miles are Costing Shippers Millions (and How to Fix It)
Let’s not beat around the bush—empty miles are a massive waste of money. They’re the awkward silence of logistics: costly, uncomfortable, and all too common. Trucks roam the highways burning fuel without earning a dime, and who picks up the tab for that inefficiency? Shippers. The “cost-per-load” creep isn’t because drivers are throwing down on steak dinners at every truck stop; it’s because one out of every three miles they drive is completely empty. And if you think that’s someone else’s problem, think again.
The $30 Billion Elephant in the Room
Every year, the U.S. trucking industry racks up around 50 billion empty miles. That’s not just a staggering environmental footprint; it’s also a $30 billion revenue sinkhole. Carriers end up padding their rates to cover those wasteful miles, and guess what? That additional cost gets passed right along to the shipper. So, every time your freight rate seems inexplicably high, there’s a good chance those invisible, profit-sapping miles are the culprit.
How Did We Get Here?
Empty miles didn’t just appear out of nowhere. They’re the inevitable byproduct of a fragmented logistics network where carriers and shippers are perpetually out of sync. Traditional freight matching systems are like using carrier pigeons in the age of fiber optics. No matter how much you tweak the schedule or cajole your carriers, if the system you’re using isn’t built to match every load with every available truck—on every lane—those empty miles persist.
What’s the Fix?
Let’s call it what it is: you need real-time visibility and better data-driven matching. No more “set it and forget it” approaches. Leveraging tools that continuously track lanes, carrier availability, and even the minutiae of driver hours can shave off those empty miles. And no, you don’t need some half-baked blockchain experiment or a flashy app that won’t integrate with your existing workflow. What you need is a platform that uses real, live data to make smart, fast matches—often before you even realize there’s a need.
Turning Empty Miles Into Found Money
Here’s the bottom line: cutting empty miles isn’t just good for the planet; it’s good for your bottom line. When carriers have fewer deadhead trips, they can afford to lower rates. When shippers stop throwing money at inefficiency, they can invest those dollars back into growth. It’s a win-win. But that only happens if you stop treating freight like an old rotary phone system and start thinking in terms of continuous, intelligent optimization.
So What Are You Waiting For?
If you’re not addressing empty miles head-on, you’re essentially writing a check to inefficiency every single day. It’s time to stop shrugging off the problem and start solving it. Because at the end of the day, the only thing emptier than those miles should be your competitors’ understanding of how to fix them.
