Friday, 18:00. The truck unloads 300 km from base, there is no return load, and honestly nobody in the office is upset about it. The driver heads home empty and the week is over.
Tuesday, 09:00, same 300 km empty, and now it stings. Fuel, wages and tolls are almost identical to Friday's run. So why does one feel free and the other feels like burning money?
Because it is not the same kilometer. Empty kilometers come in three kinds with three very different price tags, and the single "empty km cost" line in the spreadsheet hides that. Fleets with similar trucks and similar rates end the year at 14 % margin or at 6 % largely on how well they tell the three apart.
The direct cost is the easy half
The spreadsheet version everyone already has:
- Fuel: an empty truck burns 8–12 % less, so ~25 L/100 km against ~28 loaded for a Euro 6 tractor
- Driver: same wage per hour
- Tolls: same rate per km for the same axle and emission class
- Depreciation, service, insurance: same per km
Call it 90 % of a loaded kilometer. That number is fine. It is also only half the story, because the other half is what that truck and that driver could have been doing instead.
Kind 1: the ride home
The driver is heading toward base, close to the daily driving limit, no realistic pickup left in the window. Those 200 km are empty because nothing else can be done with this truck today.
What the leg really costs: the direct cost and nothing more. The hours were lost either way; the only choice was resting at base or resting in a lay-by. Getting the truck home even buys you flexibility for Monday.
This is the cheap empty kilometer. Friday evening lives here, which is why it never hurt.
Kind 2: the empty leg that cost you a load
Tuesday morning, busy week, rates on the board 15–25 % over the usual, three loads within 50 km that you turned down to run this positioning. The direct cost is the same as Friday's. The real cost is not, because this time there was an alternative, and you paid for it by not taking it.
Say the load you skipped was 200 km at €1.30 with roughly €0.30/km of margin in it. That is €60 of margin that left with someone else's truck. This is the empty kilometer that ruins months, and no spreadsheet line will ever show it.
Kind 3: the bet on a backload
You send the truck empty toward a region where return freight is dense and you know the going rates. You pay the direct cost now because the next loaded leg out of there should more than cover it.
The math a dispatcher actually does: out of the Ruhr, seven times out of ten there is a 350 km load at around €1.25/km within a day of arriving, with about €0.25/km of margin. Seven times €87 of margin, three times nothing. On average that is roughly €61 back against €81 of positioning cost. Some weeks you eat the three misses; on average the leg ends up costing about €20 instead of €81, and the truck is already standing where tomorrow's freight is. That is what makes the pair of legs pay, even though the empty one never does on its own.
Nobody's spreadsheet tracks regional backload odds, and no software honestly can. This kind runs on knowing your corridors.
Same 100 km, three price tags
Direct cost of a 100 km empty leg, the same in all three cases:
- Fuel: ~22 L × €1.50 = €33
- Driver: ~1.5 h × €15 = €22.50
- Tolls: ~100 km × €0.18 = €18
- Wear: ~€8
- Direct total: ~€81
Now the part the spreadsheet does not show:
| Scenario | Kind | Direct | What was on the table | Real cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Friday 18:00, heading home, driver out of hours | 1 | €81 | Nothing | €81 |
| Tuesday 09:00, busy week, skipped a 200 km load at €1.30 | 2 | €81 | €60 margin missed | €141 |
| Wednesday, positioning to the Ruhr, backload likely | 3 | €81 | ~€61 expected back | €20 |
Same truck, same diesel, same driver. €81, €141, €20.
What to do with this on Monday
Pull the last quarter's empty legs and sort them into the three kinds. Roughly; the ratio is the point, not the bookkeeping:
- Mostly Kind 1: the fleet is fine. Empty km exist because freight is not symmetric, not because dispatch is asleep.
- Kind 2 above a quarter of the total: the trucks are in the wrong places at the wrong times. That is a dispatching problem, and it is fixable, unlike geography.
- No Kind 3 at all: with three trucks, fine. With fifteen, the fleet never positions for tomorrow, and whoever else runs your corridors is doing it.
The same 22 % empty-km figure can mean a healthy network or a broken one. The split tells you which; the average never will.
Pricing the next offer with the three kinds in mind
- Empty leg of Kind 1 attached? Price the offer aggressively — the approach is nearly free.
- Kind 2? Price it hard. The rate has to clear the direct cost and the load you will be turning down.
- Kind 3? Judge the pair, not the leg: this load's margin plus the likely backload against both legs' cost.
The board offer never tells you which kind you are looking at. Where the truck is, what else is nearby, what tomorrow looks like in the destination region — that context is yours.
Where the software fits
Be clear about what a planner can and cannot do here. It cannot tell you whether the backload will be there on Thursday. What it can do is make sure the €81 in the table above is actually €81 for your truck on that road: fuel priced per country crossed, tolls for your axle count and emission class, ferry and tunnel fees included, positioning leg and loaded leg separated so you see both numbers before you bid.
Transport Nomad does exactly that part. The judgment about which kind of empty leg you are buying stays with you; the cost you are judging against stops being a guess.
If you want the direct-cost side of this table computed for your own corridors, try Transport Nomad free for 14 days. The three-kind sort of last quarter's empty legs you can do this afternoon in the spreadsheet you already have — it usually surprises.