Trucking businesses face constant pressure to improve margins, yet empty miles remain a persistent drain on profits. These unproductive trips—where trucks return without cargo—eat into profits, inflate fuel costs, and increase wear and tear on vehicles. But with the right transportation management system (TMS), every mile can work for your bottom line.
The True Cost of Empty Miles
Every empty mile represents a missed opportunity. While some empty miles are unavoidable, too many are the result of poor planning, outdated processes, or inefficient load scheduling.
Consider this: Each mile a truck drives without cargo costs money in fuel, driver wages, vehicle depreciation, and maintenance. For large fleets, these costs quickly multiply. According to industry data, empty miles account for roughly 15-20% of total miles driven in the trucking industry. For liquid bulk carriers and petroleum haulers, that figure can be even higher due to stricter safety requirements and specialized equipment needs.
The financial impact goes beyond immediate costs. Empty miles reduce fleet capacity and hinder the ability to secure profitable load opportunities. Additionally, they contribute to increased carbon emissions, putting sustainability goals further out of reach. Ultimately, every empty mile represents lost revenue and increased operational inefficiencies.
Turning Empty Miles into Opportunities with Dynamic Planning
To combat this challenge, TrueTMS offers dynamic planning capabilities that minimize empty miles and improve overall efficiency. Dynamic planning goes beyond traditional load matching by proactively identifying optimal routes and strategic load assignments to ensure trucks stay loaded as often as possible.
Key Features of TrueTMS Dynamic Planning
TrueTMS’s advanced tools provide a comprehensive approach to reducing empty miles:
1. Proactive Load Planning
Instead of relying solely on reactive load matching, TrueTMS dynamically plans future routes based on known delivery schedules, customer demand, and available resources. By anticipating load opportunities in advance, TrueTMS helps ensure trucks are rarely empty when returning from a delivery.
For example, if a truck is scheduled to deliver a load of fuel to a station in Phoenix, TrueTMS can automatically identify potential additional loads along the truck’s projected route. This proactive planning eliminates the need for last-minute scrambling to find loads, reducing empty miles.
2. Real-Time Route Optimization
TrueTMS constantly analyzes traffic conditions, delivery schedules, and available loads to adjust routes in real-time. This ensures drivers take the most efficient path to minimize mileage and maximize productivity.
By integrating with leading mapping solutions, TrueTMS can adjust a driver’s route if delays, detours, or new load opportunities arise. This flexibility helps dispatchers make informed decisions that keep fleets running efficiently.
3. Strategic Load Assignment
TrueTMS automatically assigns loads based on key factors such as vehicle type, driver availability, and customer requirements. For liquid bulk carriers, compartmentalized trailers require specific planning to ensure compatibility between products, reducing the risk of contamination and maximizing load efficiency.
For example, if a carrier has multiple compartment trailers delivering different fuel grades, TrueTMS strategically assigns loads to optimize both outbound deliveries and additional loads, reducing empty miles while ensuring product integrity.
4. Proactive Forecasting with TrueCast
TrueTMS’s TrueCast feature enhances planning by forecasting inventory replenishment needs at customer sites. By predicting demand and automatically generating load assignments based on those forecasts, TrueCast ensures that drivers are dispatched efficiently with fewer empty return trips.
For example, if TrueCast identifies that a customer site will require a new load of fuel two days from now, it can proactively generate that load assignment and pair it with a compatible truck’s schedule. This proactive strategy reduces unproductive miles while helping ensure customer inventory never runs dry.
Boost Your Bottom Line with TrueTMS
Reducing empty miles has a direct impact on profitability. By eliminating unproductive trips, businesses can:
- Lower Fuel Costs: Fewer empty miles translate directly into reduced fuel consumption.
- Increase Driver Utilization: Keeping trucks loaded maximizes driver efficiency, improving overall productivity.
- Enhance Sustainability: Reducing unnecessary trips lowers carbon emissions and improves your environmental impact.
- Unlock New Revenue Streams: By identifying profitable load opportunities, carriers can add additional revenue to previously unproductive trips.
For example, a fleet that reduces empty miles by just 5% can see substantial savings in fuel, labor, and maintenance costs over time. Additionally, improved efficiency enables companies to accept more business without adding new equipment or staff, boosting revenue without increasing overhead.
Why Choose TrueTMS?
TrueTMS was designed with the complexities of the liquid bulk and petroleum hauling industries in mind. With over 80 years of combined TMS experience on staff helping to design our platform, TrueTMS offers features built specifically to improve efficiency, reduce empty miles, and maximize load potential. TrueTMS empowers carriers to gain a competitive edge in the market.
Our customers have seen up to 12% reductions in empty miles, saving thousands annually. By implementing TrueTMS, your business can:
- Improve route efficiency and reduce wasted miles.
- Maximize load opportunities with proactive dynamic planning.
- Increase fleet productivity without adding extra equipment.
Unlock the power of TrueTMS today—schedule your personalized demo and see how every mile can drive your bottom line.
