Deadhead cost calculator: what your empty miles cost

1. 01Take your miles a week, loaded and empty, and multiply by 52 for the year.
2. 02Multiply the year's miles by your deadhead share. Those are the miles that carry nothing.
3. 03Multiply the empty miles by your cost per mile. That is what deadhead costs you a year, and the same sum on one week's miles is the week's figure.
4. 04Divide your cost per mile by the loaded share, 100% minus your deadhead. That is what every loaded mile must earn to pay for all the miles, and the gap over your cost per mile is the premium your deadhead adds.
5. 05Do the same sum at 9% deadhead. The difference is what you would keep a year at that share, the target we plan reloads toward, not a promise.

Example: 2,400 miles a week is 124,800 miles a year. At 17% deadhead, 21,216 of them are empty, and at $2.336 a mile they cost $49,561 a year.

• The sliders open at published averages: 17% deadhead (OOIDA Foundation, 2022 Owner-Operator Survey) and $2.336 a mile all-in (ATRI, 2026 Operational Costs of Trucking). Move them to your own figures: yours are the ones that count.
• Nine percent is a planning target, not a promise. Lanes, markets, equipment and the season all change how few empty miles a truck can run.
• This counts what empty miles cost, not the time they take. For a single load, the load check weighs the empty miles to the pickup against the pay.