What is deadhead in trucking?
Deadhead is the miles you drive with an empty trailer to reach your next load. Nobody pays for them as a line item, so they come straight out of the rate on the load you are driving to — which is why a $2.40 a mile load is not a $2.40 a mile load.
The arithmetic nobody does at the roadside
A broker quotes you $2.40 a mile on 500 loaded miles — $1,200. If the pickup is 75 miles from where you are sitting, you drive 575 miles to earn that $1,200. Your real rate is $2.09 a mile, and you have burned $75.33 of diesel getting there.
Here is the same load at different deadhead percentages. The third column is what you actually earn per mile driven; the fourth is what is left of the $1,200 after the empty fuel.
| Deadhead | Empty miles | Real rate per mile driven | Revenue after empty fuel |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0% | 0 mi | $2.40 | $1,200 |
| 5% | 25 mi | $2.29 | $1,175 |
| 10% | 50 mi | $2.18 | $1,150 |
| 15% | 75 mi | $2.09 | $1,125 |
| 20% | 100 mi | $2.00 | $1,100 |
| 30% | 150 mi | $1.85 | $1,049 |
500 loaded miles at $2.40, 6.5 mpg, diesel at $6.53 a gallon — the EIA national average for the week of 21 Sep 2026, refreshed weekly.
What an empty mile actually costs
Fuel is the part you can be exact about: 100¢ a mile at 6.5 mpg. The rest is not free either — tyres wear, oil hours accumulate, the engine hours go on the truck's record, and you are being paid nothing for your own time. Most owner-operators who track it land between 60¢ and 75¢ a mile all-in for empty running.
At 15% deadhead over 100,000 miles a year, that is 15,000 empty miles and somewhere around $10,050 of cost with no revenue attached to it. It is the largest single number most owner-operators have never calculated.
How to price it into the rate
- Quote on total miles, not loaded miles. Add the deadhead to the trip before you divide. A load that needs 120 miles of repositioning is a different load from one you can reach in 10.
- Know your floor first. If your all-in cost is $1.85 a mile, a 500-mile load with 100 miles of deadhead needs to gross $1,110 before you have made anything — that is $2.22 a loaded mile, not $1.85.
- Treat a bad reload as part of the outbound. If a lane only pays well outbound and leaves you 200 miles from freight, the return deadhead belongs in the outbound rate.
- Ask for it directly when it is unusual. Brokers will pay deadhead on a genuinely awkward repositioning move more often than drivers expect. They will never offer.
Cutting the empty miles
The structural fix is lane selection, not driving. Freight flows unevenly — some markets pull trucks in and do not send them out, and the rate on the way in has to pay for the trip out. Building a triangle of three shorter legs that ends where it started usually beats a high-paying out-and-back with 300 empty miles on the end of it.
The calculator takes the empty-from location as a separate field for exactly this reason: it works out the deadhead, adds the fuel, and shows the rate per total mile next to the one the broker quoted.
Questions
What does deadhead mean in trucking?
Driving with an empty trailer. Almost always it means the miles between where you dropped the last load and where you pick up the next one. Nobody pays for them directly, so they come out of the rate on the load you are going to.
Do you get paid for deadhead miles?
Not as a separate line, usually. Some brokers will pay deadhead on a long repositioning move and some contracts include it, but the normal arrangement is that the rate on the loaded miles has to cover the empty ones. That is why the rate per mile a broker quotes and the rate per mile you actually earn are different numbers.
What is a normal deadhead percentage?
Ten to fifteen per cent of total miles is the usual target for a well-run operation. Under 10% means you are getting reloads close to your drops. Over 20% consistently means you are working lanes that do not have freight going back, and the rate needs to reflect that.
How do I work out what deadhead costs me?
Fuel is the part you can calculate exactly: at $6.53 a gallon and 6.5 mpg, an empty mile burns about 100¢ in diesel alone. Add tyres, maintenance and the driver's time and most owner-operators use 60–75¢ a mile as the all-in running cost of an empty mile.
Is bobtail the same as deadhead?
No. Bobtail is driving the tractor with no trailer at all. Deadhead is pulling an empty trailer. Both burn fuel for no revenue, but they are insured differently — bobtail cover is a separate thing on most policies.