Empty Miles are the miles a truck or delivery vehicle drives without any freight or payload onboard, such as returning to base after a drop or traveling empty to the next pickup. These “deadhead” or non‑revenue miles consume fuel, driver time, and vehicle wear without generating income, making them a key source of waste in logistics and last‑mile delivery operations. Reducing Empty Miles is a core target for route optimization and network design.
What are Empty Miles?
Empty Miles describe the parts of a journey where a vehicle is moving but not carrying goods. Common examples include the return leg after a full truckload delivery, moves between depots without cargo, or trips to the next pickup point when no backhaul has been arranged. In all these cases, the business still pays for fuel, labor, and maintenance, but there is no load on board to earn revenue.
Industry data highlights how large this problem can be. Research cited in the sector suggests that 15–30% of total trucking miles are driven empty, meaning a significant share of road time produces no transport revenue while still generating emissions and cost. This is why Empty Miles are often treated as both a financial and environmental concern in freight and delivery planning.
Key features of Empty Miles
- Represent the distance a vehicle travels without carrying cargo or with significantly underused capacity.
- Often occur on return trips to base or when driving empty to the next pickup location.
- Also known as deadhead miles, non‑revenue miles, or empty running.
- Waste fuel, driver time, and vehicle life while increasing emissions with no offsetting revenue.
- Are frequently caused by imbalanced freight flows, poor route planning, and lack of backhaul coordination.
- Can be reduced through better route optimization, backhaul planning, freight consolidation, and collaborative shipping.
What Empty Miles mean for your business
For logistics and delivery operators, Empty Miles directly erode profitability. Every empty or under‑utilized leg still incurs costs such as fuel, wages, and maintenance, and those costs must be covered by the paying loaded miles elsewhere in the network. High levels of Empty Miles push up cost per delivery or cost per mile, making it harder to price services competitively.
They also impact sustainability. Empty running contributes to unnecessary CO₂ emissions and road congestion because vehicles are occupying road space without moving useful payload. As customers and regulators focus more on environmental performance, being able to show reductions in Empty Miles is increasingly important for both brand and compliance reasons.
How SmartRoutes helps reduce Empty Miles
SmartRoutes explicitly describes Empty Miles as wasteful distance that does not contribute to efficient deliveries and positions route optimization as one of the main ways to cut them. Its route planning tools help businesses design routes that use vehicle capacity more fully, reduce unnecessary detours, and limit out‑of‑route and non‑revenue miles. This includes planning multi‑stop routes, balancing workloads across vehicles, and minimizing back‑and‑forth travel through better territory and zone design.
Beyond route optimization itself, SmartRoutes integrates with eCommerce and order systems so that orders can be consolidated intelligently onto routes, which reduces the number of lightly‑loaded or empty trips. The platform’s logistics management features also support continuous improvement by giving teams data on total distance, loaded distance, and unnecessary mileage, making it easier to track and reduce Empty Miles over time.
Frequently Asked Questions about Empty Miles
1. What are Empty Miles in delivery and logistics?
Empty Miles are the miles a vehicle travels without cargo on board. They often occur when a truck returns to base after a delivery or drives empty to its next pickup, generating cost but no revenue.
2. Why are Empty Miles a problem?
They waste fuel, driver time, and vehicle capacity while producing no income. High levels of Empty Miles increase cost per mile, reduce profitability, and add avoidable emissions and wear and tear to your fleet.
3. What causes Empty Miles?
Common causes include returning from deliveries without a backhaul, driving empty to distant pickup points, imbalanced freight flows between regions, and poor route or load planning that leaves vehicles underutilized.
4. How can businesses reduce Empty Miles?
Key strategies include using route optimization software, planning backhauls, consolidating loads, collaborating with other shippers, improving demand forecasting, and redesigning lanes or territories to balance flows in both directions.
5. How does SmartRoutes help reduce Empty Miles?
SmartRoutes creates optimized multi-stop routes that use vehicles more efficiently, reduce unnecessary detours, and limit non-revenue mileage. It also centralizes order and route data so teams can measure and continually reduce Empty Miles over time.
Related terms
Deadhead Miles, Non‑Revenue Miles, Route Optimization, Backhaul, Out‑of‑Route Miles, Delivery Efficiency