Deadhead Miles Calculator
Enter where you are, where the load picks up and where it delivers. The calculator returns your empty miles, deadhead percentage, the all-in cost of the empty leg, and the break-even rate the load has to pay per loaded mile.
The short answer: deadhead percentage is your empty miles divided by your total miles, and the break-even rate is your total trip cost divided by your loaded miles. Run 200 empty miles to a load with 800 loaded miles and you are 20% deadhead; at an all-in cost of $2.663 per mile — ATRI's $1.854 a mile excluding fuel plus $0.809 of diesel at today's EIA price — that trip costs $2,663, so the load has to pay $3.33 per loaded mile before you make a cent. That is the number to quote the broker, not the dollar figure of what the empty miles cost you.
What Deadhead Miles Actually Cost You
Deadhead miles are the empty miles you drive to reach a pickup — burning fuel, wearing tyres and brakes, and consuming your hours-of-service clock without generating a dollar of revenue. Say you deliver in Dallas and your next pickup is in Houston, 240 miles away. Diesel averaged $5.257 a gallon in the week ending 10 August 2026 according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which is $0.809 a mile at 6.5 MPG. So that reposition costs $194 in fuel before the paying haul starts.
Except fuel is the small half. The American Transportation Research Institute put the industry-average marginal cost of running a truck in 2025 at $2.336 a mile, of which $1.854 a mile is everything other than fuel — driver pay, repair and maintenance, tyres, insurance, permits, truck and trailer payments. Those costs do not pause because the trailer is empty. Stack them on today's diesel and an empty mile costs roughly $2.663, so the Dallas–Houston reposition is nearer $639 than $194. Any deadhead calculator that counts only fuel is showing you under a third of the damage.
The second cost is arithmetic you cannot argue with: every empty mile dilutes the rate you actually earned. Revenue is fixed by the rate confirmation, but the miles it is spread across include the empty ones, so a trip that is 20% deadhead earns exactly 20% less per mile than the rate on the sheet. That is why the useful output is not "deadhead cost me $X" but "this load has to pay $Y per loaded mile." To build the cost side properly, run your own numbers through our cost per mile calculator and feed the result into the non-fuel field below, and use the fuel cost calculator to set your fuel figure from your real MPG rather than an assumed one.
Deadhead Miles Calculator
Trip Details
Total linehaul the broker is offering, fuel surcharge included.
Default $0.809 = EIA diesel $5.257/gal (week ending 10 Aug 2026) ÷ 6.5 MPG.
Default $1.854 = ATRI 2025 industry average excluding fuel. Substitute your own.
Your margin on top of break-even. Set it to 0 to see break-even only.
The Formula: Deadhead Miles, Deadhead Percentage and Break-Even Rate
Four formulas cover every deadhead question a broker can throw at you. They are the same ones the calculator runs, written out so you can do them on the back of a rate confirmation.
| Formula | Calculation | What it answers |
|---|---|---|
| Deadhead miles | Total miles − loaded miles | How far you ran empty |
| Deadhead percentage | (Deadhead miles ÷ total miles) × 100 | How much of your week nobody paid for |
| Total trip cost | (Deadhead miles + loaded miles) × all-in cost per mile | What the whole trip costs you to run |
| Break-even rate | Total trip cost ÷ loaded miles | The minimum rate per loaded mile you can accept |
| Effective rate | Load revenue ÷ total miles | What you really earned per mile turned |
All-in cost per mile is fuel cost per mile (diesel price per gallon ÷ your MPG) plus every non-fuel cost per mile you carry. Loaded miles is the mileage the broker pays on, which is the mileage printed on the rate confirmation, not necessarily the mileage you drive.
There is a shortcut worth memorising: break-even rate equals your cost per mile divided by one minus your deadhead percentage. At 20% deadhead, whatever your cost per mile is, you need 25% more than it per loaded mile. That single relationship is why cutting deadhead moves your income more than negotiating an extra nickel does.
Worked Example: An 800-Mile Load With 200 Empty Miles
You are empty after a delivery and a broker offers $2,400 for a load that runs 800 miles. The pickup is 200 miles away. On the sheet that reads $3.00 a loaded mile. Here is what it actually is, using an all-in cost of $2.663 a mile ($1.854 non-fuel from ATRI plus $0.809 of diesel at the EIA price for the week ending 10 August 2026, at 6.5 MPG).
| Line | Working | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Advertised rate | $2,400 ÷ 800 loaded miles | $3.00/mi |
| Deadhead percentage | 200 ÷ (200 + 800) × 100 | 20.0% |
| Deadhead fuel only | 200 × $0.809 | $162 |
| Deadhead all-in | 200 × $2.663 | $533 |
| Total trip cost | 1,000 × $2.663 | $2,663 |
| Effective rate | $2,400 ÷ 1,000 total miles | $2.40/mi |
| Break-even rate | $2,663 ÷ 800 loaded miles | $3.33/mi |
| Net on the trip | $2,400 − $2,663 | −$263 |
The $3.00 load is a $2.40 load, and against an average industry cost base it loses $263. Take the same load with the truck already sitting at the shipper and the arithmetic flips: 800 miles at $2.663 costs $2,130, so the load nets about $270. The 200 empty miles are worth a $533 swing on a single trip — which is the entire gap between a good week and a bad one, produced by nothing but where the truck happened to be parked.
Note what the break-even line does for you on the phone. "I need $3.33 a mile because I'm 200 miles out" is a position a broker can check and respond to. "That's too cheap" is not. Our rate negotiation tips cover how to open with that number, and our guide to reading a rate confirmation shows where the paid mileage is defined before you sign it.
What Is a Good Deadhead Percentage in Trucking?
Start with what the industry actually runs, not with a target somebody invented. ATRI, in its 2025 Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking, reported that empty miles rose to an average of 16.7 percent in 2024. Its 2026 update, released on 15 July 2026 and covering 2025, said deadhead mileage remained elevated but did not publish a fresh percentage. If you have seen a "12 percent industry average" attributed to ATRI on another calculator, that is not a number ATRI published.
That matters because most advice tells you to keep deadhead under 10% without mentioning that the median carrier is nowhere near it. Under 10% is achievable, but usually through dedicated freight or genuinely dense lane planning — not through trying harder on the load board. The honest banding below is our dispatch judgement measured against ATRI's published average.
| Deadhead % | Reading | Break-even rate needed per loaded mile |
|---|---|---|
| 0% | Drop and hook at the same dock. Rare. | $2.66 |
| Under 10% | Strong. Usually dedicated freight or tight lane planning. | $2.96 at 10% |
| 10–15% | Genuinely good for spot freight. | $3.13 at 15% |
| 16.7% | The industry average ATRI recorded for 2024. Average, not good. | $3.20 |
| 20% | One mile in five unpaid. Fixable with better outbound selection. | $3.33 |
| 30% | The freight mix is broken, not the luck. | $3.80 |
Break-even column = $2.663 ÷ (1 − deadhead %). Only the 16.7% row is a published research figure; the bands are our judgement.
Put that in weekly money. On a 2,500-mile week, running at ATRI's 16.7% average means about 418 empty miles; getting to 10% means 250. Those 168 miles cost about $446 a week at $2.663 a mile — roughly $22,300 across a 50-week year, on those assumptions. That gap is the whole argument for planning the outbound before you take the inbound, and it is what our guide to avoiding deadhead is built around.
How to Calculate Your Weekly Deadhead Percentage From Your ELD
Per-load deadhead is a decision tool. Weekly deadhead is a diagnosis. This is how to get the weekly figure out of records you already have.
- 1
Pull total miles from your ELD
Export the mileage report from your electronic logging device for one full week, Monday through Sunday. This is every mile the truck turned, loaded and empty, and it is the denominator of the calculation.
- 2
Add up loaded miles from your rate confirmations
Take the paid mileage off each rate confirmation or bill of lading for the same week and add them together. Use the mileage the broker paid on, not the mileage you drove, so the number matches what you invoiced.
- 3
Subtract to get empty miles
Empty miles equal total miles minus loaded miles. Anything unaccounted for is deadhead: repositioning to a pickup, running to a truck stop to park, driving to a shop or a scale.
- 4
Divide and multiply by 100
Deadhead percentage equals empty miles divided by total miles, multiplied by 100. Run 2,150 loaded miles inside 2,500 total miles and you drove 350 empty, which is 14 percent deadhead.
- 5
Track it weekly, not per load
A single load with 30 percent deadhead means nothing on its own. The number that predicts your income is the four-week rolling average, because that is what shows whether your lane selection is putting you where the next load already is.
Once you have a four-week average, feed it into our rate per mile calculator to see what your real revenue per mile has been, and our weekly revenue calculator to see what closing the gap is worth over a month.
Should You Deadhead to a Better Load, or Take the Cheap One Nearby?
This is the question the calculator exists to settle, and the instinctive answer is usually wrong. Drivers avoid empty miles because they can see them. What they cannot see is a cheap load quietly consuming the same day for less money.
Compare the two options net of all-in cost on every mile, then divide by the days each one eats. Here are two real-shaped options for a truck sitting empty, both priced at $2.663 a mile all-in.
| Option A: cheap load next door | Option B: reposition 150 miles | |
|---|---|---|
| Deadhead miles | 20 | 150 |
| Loaded miles | 280 | 750 |
| Deadhead percentage | 6.7% | 16.7% |
| Rate per loaded mile | $2.40 | $3.40 |
| Revenue | $672 | $2,550 |
| All-in cost | 300 × $2.663 = $799 | 900 × $2.663 = $2,397 |
| Break-even rate needed | $2.85 | $3.20 |
| Net | −$127 | +$153 |
| Driving days consumed | About 1 | About 2 |
Option B has seven and a half times the empty miles and two and a half times the deadhead percentage, and it is $280 better off. Option A never clears its own break-even rate of $2.85, so the low deadhead percentage is decorating a loss. Deadhead percentage is a diagnostic, not a decision rule — the decision rule is the break-even rate.
Then price the clock. Under the FMCSA hours-of-service rules you get 11 driving hours inside a 14-hour window, and empty miles count against both exactly as loaded miles do. A cheap load consumes that day as completely as an expensive one, and it usually leaves you in the same weak market it found you in, so tomorrow starts with the same problem. When two options are close on net dollars, take the one that ends somewhere with freight. Our breakdown of hours-of-service rules and reform covers how the clock works, and the load-to-truck ratio is the fastest way to check whether the destination market is one worth landing in.
Deadhead by Equipment Type
A deadhead target that makes sense for one trailer is unrealistic for another, because the freight itself moves differently. What follows is operational experience from dispatching these segments, not survey data.
Dry van generally has the densest network of shippers and the most balanced lanes, so it is the segment where a low deadhead percentage is most achievable through planning alone. Dry van dispatch is mostly a matter of choosing which market you deliver into.
Flatbed and step deck reposition more, and it is not a planning failure. Steel, building materials and machinery tend to move one way out of production and construction regions, so the return leg often does not exist at any rate. That is why flatbed dispatch and step deck dispatch have to price the reposition into the outbound rate rather than hope for a backhaul. Our comparison of flatbed versus step deck covers where each one earns.
Reefer lanes concentrate around growing seasons, which means empty miles cluster: excellent while a region is harvesting, ugly the week it stops. Reefer dispatch is largely a calendar problem, which is what our seasonal freight calendar exists to solve.
Deadhead vs Bobtail vs Backhaul
These three get used interchangeably and they are not the same thing. The difference matters for insurance and for how you talk to a broker.
| Term | What it means | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Deadhead | Driving with a trailer attached but no freight in it. | Unpaid miles that still cost full running cost and full clock. |
| Bobtail | Driving the tractor with no trailer at all. | Handles and brakes differently with no weight over the drives, and bobtail liability is separate coverage. |
| Backhaul | The loaded return trip that brings you back toward home or a strong market. | The thing that prevents deadhead. Often discounted, and worth it anyway. |
Who Pays for Deadhead Miles?
On spot freight, you do. Brokers price a load as one linehaul number for the lane; they are not budgeting for wherever your truck happens to be sitting, and asking for deadhead as a separate line almost always gets a no. The move that works is to fold it into the rate rather than bolt it on: "I'm 150 miles out, so my break-even on this is $3.20 — I can do it at $3.40" is a rate conversation. "Can you add deadhead pay?" is a request for a favour.
When a broker refuses outright, the useful follow-up is not a discount but a change of shape: an earlier pickup so you can take a load into that market first, or a longer run out of it so the empty leg is spread over more paid miles. Both improve your number without costing the broker anything.
Company drivers are the exception. Many carriers do pay deadhead, either at a stated rate per mile in the pay package or only past a threshold. Either way it belongs in writing before the wheels turn — on the rate confirmation for an owner-operator, in the pay agreement for a company driver. Nothing agreed on the phone survives a payment dispute.
Five Ways to Cut Your Deadhead Percentage
1. Choose the destination market before you choose the load
Most deadhead is created the moment you accept an inbound load into a market with nothing going out. Check outbound volume for the delivery city before you book the load in, not after you deliver. The load-to-truck ratio is the single fastest read on that.
2. Think in triangles, not out-and-backs
A three-city loop where each leg is loaded almost always beats a strong one-way plus an empty return, even when each individual leg pays less. Sketch the loop first, then fill it with loads, using our interstate corridor guide and the best freight lanes as the skeleton.
3. Sort load boards by deadhead-adjusted rate, not headline rate
The highest number on the board is rarely the highest number in your pocket. Recompute every candidate as revenue divided by total miles including the empty run before ranking them — that is what the calculator above does in one pass. Our comparison of DAT and Truckstop covers which search filters get you there fastest.
4. Book two loads ahead
Booking the next load while you are still under the current one is the difference between choosing a load and accepting whatever is left when you are empty and out of hours. It is also the single biggest structural advantage a dispatcher has over self-dispatching, because somebody is working the board while you are driving. Finding loads consistently is mostly this habit.
5. Build a backhaul list for the markets you keep delivering into
Every time you deliver somewhere thin, note the shippers and brokers who move freight out of it and keep the contact. Over a year that list becomes your outbound in the markets where the board has nothing, and it is the part of deadhead reduction that compounds.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are deadhead miles in trucking?
Deadhead miles are the miles you drive with an empty trailer, almost always repositioning from where you delivered to where your next load picks up. Nobody pays you for them, but they burn the same diesel and put the same wear on the truck as a loaded mile. If you deliver in Dallas and your next pickup is 240 miles away in Houston, those 240 miles are deadhead.
How do you calculate deadhead percentage?
Deadhead percentage equals empty miles divided by total miles, multiplied by 100. Total miles means empty plus loaded, not loaded alone. A trip with 200 empty miles and 800 loaded miles is 1,000 total miles, so the deadhead percentage is 200 divided by 1,000, which is 20 percent. Over a week, take total miles from your ELD and loaded miles from your rate confirmations.
What is the average deadhead percentage in the trucking industry?
The American Transportation Research Institute reported that empty miles rose to an average of 16.7 percent in 2024, in its 2025 Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking. ATRI's 2026 update, covering 2025 and released on 15 July 2026, said deadhead mileage remained elevated but did not publish a new percentage. Anyone quoting a 12 percent industry average is not using ATRI's published figure.
What is a good deadhead percentage?
Measured against ATRI's 16.7 percent industry average for 2024, anything under 10 percent is strong and usually means dedicated freight or dense lane planning, 10 to 15 percent is genuinely good for spot freight, and around 16 to 17 percent is simply average. A rolling average above 20 percent is a lane-selection problem rather than a bad-luck problem. These bands are our dispatch judgement, not ATRI figures; only the 16.7 percent average is published research.
How much do deadhead miles cost per mile?
An empty mile costs you the same as a loaded one. At the EIA weekly US on-highway diesel price of $5.257 a gallon for the week ending 10 August 2026, fuel alone is about $0.809 a mile at 6.5 MPG. Add ATRI's 2025 average marginal cost excluding fuel of $1.854 a mile and the all-in figure is about $2.663 a mile. A calculator that counts only fuel captures under a third of what the empty leg actually costs you.
How do I calculate my break-even rate after deadhead?
Break-even rate equals total trip cost divided by loaded miles, where total trip cost is every mile, empty and loaded, multiplied by your all-in cost per mile. At $2.663 a mile all-in, a trip of 200 empty and 800 loaded miles costs $2,663, so the load has to pay $3.33 per loaded mile to break even. The shortcut is your cost per mile divided by one minus your deadhead percentage.
Do truck drivers get paid for deadhead miles?
Owner-operators are almost never paid separately for deadhead on spot freight. The empty miles are your cost of getting to the freight, which is why they belong inside the rate you negotiate rather than as a line item you ask for afterwards. Company drivers are a different case: some carriers pay deadhead at a stated rate per mile under their pay package, and some pay it only above a mileage threshold. Whatever is agreed has to appear on the rate confirmation before you roll.
What is the difference between deadhead and bobtail?
Deadhead means driving with a trailer attached but no freight in it. Bobtail means driving the tractor with no trailer at all. Both are unpaid movement, but they are not interchangeable: bobtail changes how the truck brakes and handles because there is no trailer weight over the drives, and bobtail liability is a distinct insurance coverage from the physical damage cover on a trailer you are pulling empty.
Do deadhead miles count toward hours of service?
Yes. Under the FMCSA hours-of-service rules, driving time is driving time regardless of whether the trailer is loaded. Empty miles count against the 11-hour driving limit and run the 14-hour window down exactly like paid miles do. That is why a long reposition is expensive twice over: it costs fuel and wear, and it spends a finite share of the only clock you get that day.
Is it worth deadheading for a higher-paying load?
Sometimes, and the arithmetic settles it rather than instinct. Work out the net on each option after all-in cost on every mile, empty and loaded, then divide by the days each option consumes. A 150-mile reposition to a load paying $3.40 per loaded mile beats a nearby load paying $2.40 with almost no empty miles, because the second one never clears its break-even rate. The empty leg is only wasted if the load at the end of it does not pay for it.
How many deadhead miles is too many?
There is no fixed mileage. The test is whether the load still clears break-even once the empty miles are in the denominator. At an all-in cost of $2.663 a mile, 10 percent deadhead needs $2.96 per loaded mile, 20 percent needs $3.33 and 30 percent needs $3.80. If the rate on offer is below the figure your deadhead percentage demands, the miles are too many at that rate, even if the distance looks short.
How do I find a backhaul to avoid running empty?
Book the outbound before you commit to the inbound. Search load boards from your delivery city with the pickup date set for the day you deliver, and check the load-to-truck ratio in that market before you take the load in. Keeping a list of shippers and brokers who move freight out of the markets you regularly deliver into is worth more than any single search, because in a thin outbound market the relationship finds the load that the board does not show.
Methodology and Sources
Every figure on this page is either a named external source, arithmetic shown in full, or an editable placeholder you are expected to replace with your own number. Nothing here is an industry statistic we made up.
- Empty miles averaged 16.7% in 2024. American Transportation Research Institute, An Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking: 2025 Update, published July 2025. truckingresearch.org
- $2.336 per mile all-in and $1.854 per mile excluding fuel, 2025. ATRI, An Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking: 2026 Update, released 15 July 2026. The same report notes deadhead mileage remained elevated without publishing a percentage. truckingresearch.org
- Diesel at $5.257 a gallon. U.S. Energy Information Administration, weekly retail on-highway diesel price, U.S. average, week ending 10 August 2026. eia.gov
- Fuel at $0.809 a mile and all-in cost at $2.663 a mile. Our arithmetic: $5.257 ÷ 6.5 MPG = $0.809, plus ATRI's $1.854 non-fuel = $2.663. At 7.0 MPG fuel is $0.751 a mile and at 6.0 MPG it is $0.876. ATRI's own $2.336 all-in figure reflects the diesel prices of 2025; substituting today's EIA price is what produces the higher $2.663.
- Hours-of-service limits: 11 driving hours within a 14-hour window. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration hours-of-service regulations. fmcsa.dot.gov
- Load rates in the worked examples ($3.00, $2.40 and $3.40 per loaded mile). Illustrative figures chosen so the arithmetic is reproducible. They are not a market quote and spot rates move weekly — check a rate service for your lane and put your own number into the calculator.
- Deadhead percentage bands. Our dispatch judgement, benchmarked against ATRI's published 16.7% average. Only that average is research.
Figures last reviewed 11 August 2026 by the Truck Dispatch Experts dispatch team. Mileage in the calculator is road-adjusted straight-line distance, so treat it as an estimate rather than a routed mileage.
Our Dispatchers Minimize Your Empty Miles
ATRI put industry-average empty miles at 16.7% in 2024. We plan the outbound before you take the inbound — on a 2,500-mile week, closing that gap to 10% is worth about $446.