How to evaluate a load with an empty return trip
Some loads take you somewhere you won't find freight out of. If you know you're driving home empty, the outbound rate has to pay for the way back. Here's how to check whether it does.
The offer
$2,200 for 700 loaded miles, with 40 miles of deadhead to the pickup. It delivers into an area you know is weak for reloads, so you expect to drive the 700 miles home empty.
Running cost is about $1.47 a mile: $0.566 fuel, $0.25 maintenance, tires and other, $0.65 your own pay. Fixed costs are $124 a day. Figures below use the unrounded per-mile cost.
| Outbound only | With the empty return | |
|---|---|---|
| Total miles | 740 | 1,440 |
| Days | 2 | 3 |
| Rate per total mile | $2.97 | $1.53 |
| Running costs | $1,084.97 | $2,111.29 |
| Fixed costs | $248.00 | $372.00 |
| What's left | $867.03 | −$283.29 |
Looked at one-way, the load leaves $867. Counting the drive home, it loses $283 after your pay. The rate per mile falls from $2.97 to $1.53 because the same $2,200 now pays for twice the miles.
Three ways to make it work
- Ask for the round trip. To break even with the empty return, the offer has to be $2,483.29. To meet a floor of $0.40 a mile on all 1,440 miles, add $576 more: $3,059.29, or $3,100 rounded up to the next $50. Say so: "It's a deadhead home from there. I need $3,100 to make it work."
- Find a backhaul. The return miles are already costed above, so any paid load home adds almost straight to the bottom line. Even $300 would get this trip to break even. Look before you accept the outbound.
- Reposition partway. Running empty to a better market a few hundred miles away can beat running all the way home empty.
When it's a planned round trip
If the broker or shipper pays one rate for out and back, compare that rate against the whole trip's miles and days, as in the right-hand column. If the return is paid separately, add its pay to the revenue.
Doing it in KRYSTAL
Tick Round Trip? on the load. Choose whether a single rate covers the whole trip or the return is paid separately, enter the return miles, and mark the return leg Empty, Loaded or Unknown. KRYSTAL counts the return miles once in every figure. If the return miles are left blank, the verdict is PASS until you fill them in, because the load can't be judged without them. Delivering into a state you've listed as a weak reload market in your profile also counts against the load. The exact rules.
Price the whole trip, not half of it
KRYSTAL counts round trips and empty returns on your own costs.