Deadhead Now Costs a 100-Truck Fleet $1.6 Million a Year in Diesel

Diesel averaged $6.13 a gallon on November 10, up $2.51 from a year ago, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Multiply that by the industry's deadhead rate of 16.5% — roughly one in six miles runs empty — and a 100-truck fleet now burns about $1.6 million a year hauling nothing. About $640,000 of that bill is new this year.

The math is blunt. ATRI's latest data puts deadhead at 16.5% of miles. On a 100,000-mile year, that's 16,500 empty miles per truck. At 6.5 mpg and today's pump price, those miles consume roughly $15,700 in fuel per truck annually. A year ago, the same miles cost about $9,300. Nothing about the operation changed. The bill simply rose by about $6,400 per truck.

Why relief at the pump won't come quickly

This isn't just a crude story. Diesel has outrun crude because refining capacity is tight in the U.S. and overseas, with almost no slack left to absorb the shortfall. That distinction matters for planning. A crude spike can unwind in a quarter. A refining squeeze takes longer to fix. Carriers waiting for cheaper fuel may be waiting a while.

Fuel surcharges help, but they lag the pump. They don't recover everything, and they rarely cover the miles a truck runs empty. At $3.67 diesel, that gap was manageable. At $6, it's a margin problem.

Every 10 cents on a gallon costs a 100-truck fleet about $154,000 a year. Nobody can negotiate that price. Fleets can only decide how many miles they burn it on.

Where does deadhead actually come from?

Deadhead gets discussed as something that happens on the road. Most of it is locked in hours or days earlier. It happens when a dispatcher accepts a load without a clear view of where that truck goes next, when drivers are assigned one at a time instead of across the fleet, and when the backhaul search starts at delivery instead of at dispatch.

Each decision looks sensible alone. The cost only appears when you view the whole fleet. Good dispatchers already handle this well for the trucks in front of them. The limit is scale — nobody can hold 100 trucks, every driver's hours, every home-time commitment, and several days of freight across every lane in their head. That's not a skills gap. It's more than one person can track.

What AI is actually good at here

This is where AI earns its keep in trucking right now, says Mark Hill, CEO of TMS provider PCS Software. It isn't a buzzword and doesn't replace the people running freight. It does practical math at fleet scale — evaluating the whole fleet and all available freight together, recommending load chains that cut empty miles while respecting hours of service and home time.

A useful system flags the load that looks good on rate but strands a truck 200 miles from its next pickup. The dispatcher still reviews and decides. The difference is working from a fleet-wide plan rather than a single load. Hill's standard for buyers: the system must explain each recommendation, and the team must be able to tune it. If dispatchers can't see the reasoning, they won't trust it — and they shouldn't.

Measure margin, not vanity rates

Rate per loaded mile flatters a fleet because it ignores the miles that cost money and earn nothing. Margin per total mile, deadhead included, tells the truth. It also guards against the wrong fix: sometimes 80 empty miles to a strong load beat 10 empty miles to a weak one. The goal isn't the fewest empty miles. It's the most margin from every mile you pay for.

Hill's near-term checklist for fleets:

• Know the real deadhead number, broken out by driver, lane and terminal — problems concentrate, and fleet averages hide them.
• Reprice the empty mile at today's diesel, not last year's figure.
• Start the backhaul search when the outbound load is booked, not on delivery.
• Plan several days out; deadhead decisions improve with visibility.
• Demand technology recommendations the team can see, question and override.

The refining squeeze will ease eventually, but probably not soon. Fleets that tighten operations now won't hand that margin back when prices fall. High fuel prices don't create inefficiency — they show how much was already there.