Two carriers run the same trucks, pay the same drivers, quote similar rates. One clears 12% EBITDA and the other fights for 5%. The difference usually is not the rate sheet. It is the miles between the rates: how far every truck runs empty to reach its next load.
The customer pays for the loaded miles. The carrier pays for all of them. The truck, the driver, the fuel, and the insurance cost roughly the same $1.70 to $1.90 per mile whether the mile earns $2.30 or earns nothing. That is the whole trap, and it hides inside good-looking rates.
The lane that lies on the rate sheet
Take a lane quoted at a healthy $2.35 per loaded mile, 400 loaded miles, with a 90-mile empty reposition to reach the next pickup. The revenue is $940. The miles are 490. The lane actually earns $1.92 per mile the truck runs, and at $1.80 of cost per mile it contributes $59 a trip, not the $220 the rate sheet implies. Stretch the reposition to 150 miles and the lane is underwater while still looking fine in the sales report.
That is why "growth" freight taken to keep trucks busy so often makes the P&L worse. It books revenue and quietly subtracts value. Nobody priced the empty half of the round trip.
The four numbers that manage it
- Revenue per total mile, by lane. The master metric. Not rate per loaded mile: revenue divided by every mile the truck ran, empty included. Most carriers have never seen it calculated at the lane level.
- Deadhead percentage, network-wide and by lane. The share of all miles run empty. Trend it monthly; watch what new freight wins do to it.
- Contribution by lane, fully loaded. Truck, driver, fuel, maintenance, and the repositioning miles. When you build this, lanes have tails just like customer books, and a band of lanes is usually earning nothing.
- Detention and accessorial capture. Waiting time is billable in most contracts and unbilled at most carriers. Small per-stop amounts, real margin.
What the disciplined carriers do
They price the round trip. A one-way lane gets quoted with its reposition in the price, or it gets a polite pass. The rate sheet stops being the loaded-mile fiction and starts being the network truth.
They pair backhauls deliberately. Sales chases freight that fills existing empty legs instead of freight that creates new ones. The best carriers literally map their empty miles and sell into them.
They chase dedicated round trips. A contract that runs loaded both directions along a corridor you already serve arrives at unusually high margin, because the return leg was already paid for.
They bill the waiting. Detention terms with an owner, a trigger in dispatch, and a weekly audit.
We have watched this full playbook take a $20M regional carrier from 5.7% to 12.2% EBITDA with the same 48 trucks. If you cannot currently see revenue per total mile or contribution by lane, that is not a TMS problem first. It is a finance-meets-operations problem. It is exactly the work we do for logistics operators. Start a conversation if you want the geometry of your network made visible.