To many truck owners, “utilization” is almost a foreign word. Yet it’s a word that’s heard often in management meetings at well-run carriers. It often appears in the quarterly financial reports filed with the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and released to shareholders and the public. Successful carriers know that utilizing their equipment in ways that generate the most revenue is a key to profitability.
A simple measure of utilization can be calculated by dividing the number of days a truck was hauling freight by the number of days in the time period. If you were on the road Monday through Friday and then parked your truck for the weekend, you utilized your equipment 5/7 of that week or 71.4% of the time. You could have increased your revenue by running six or all seven days in that week, but you may have needed to sacrifice family time or activities you find more valuable.
The utilization that most carriers track is the percentage of miles the truck ran while under load, generating revenue. Empty miles, including those used for personal conveyance, don’t generate revenue. The cost of those miles, however, doesn’t go away. When you deliver the last load for the week and deadhead to your home, the per-mile costs for fuel, tires and maintenance still add up.
Every Owner Operator should know their cost of operation per mile. Fixed costs, such as your truck payment, insurance and registration, won’t change when you’re running empty. Variable costs will add up, however. Expenses for fuel, tolls and maintenance continue to add up with every mile traveled, even empty miles.
Drivers are often focused on freight rates. Most want to know how much a load pays, especially if they’re dealing with a broker. Some are content with the total amount, perhaps dividing the revenue by working days to get a daily earnings rate. The more detailed business owners break it down farther, determining their revenue per mile. Most have a specific amount they use as a baseline. If a load doesn’t pay their minimum determined amount, they’ll usually pass.
The problem is that the customer is paying only for the miles the cargo actually moves. If you have to drive 100 miles to pick it up, that’s not their problem. Nor are they concerned about how far you’ll travel for your next load after you deliver. If the load pays $2.00 per mile and the distance quoted is 1,000 miles, the revenue may be acceptable. But if you’ll need to deadhead 100 miles to pick it up, and another 100 miles to get to your home after you deliver, you’ll be accruing per-mile costs for 1,200 miles, not 1,000. That brings the per-mile revenue down to $1.67 per mile. If you’re traveling to pick up the next load rather than going home, those empty miles would count against the next load.
Revenue miles vs. actual miles
How paid miles are calculated makes a difference, too. Miles are often paid by Household Mover’s Guide (HHG), practical miles or other methods, including hub miles. The problem here is that trucks burn fuel based on actual miles traveled, not computerized payment formulas. Although the load pays for 1,000 miles, you will usually drive more to make delivery.
A 2025 study by the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI)(truckingresearch.org) calculated that the total marginal cost of operating a truck in 2024 was $2.26 per mile. That total includes driver pay and benefits as well as truck payment and insurance, amounts that can differ greatly between owner operators. But even if your expenses are low enough to accept a load at $2.00 per mile, can you get by on $1.67?
Over the long haul, it makes more sense to look at total miles vs. total revenue miles for your business rather than calculating for each individual load. The easiest way is to compare paid miles with total miles traveled, calculated as a utilization percentage. In our example above, you drove 1,200 miles but you were only paid for 1,000 of them. That’s a utilization ration of 1,000/1,200, or 83.3%. However, it makes more sense to calculate utilization over a time period. Many larger carriers keep a running total that is reported to management on a weekly or sometimes monthly basis. For SEC financial reports, it is calculated quarterly.
Utilization ratio
The right utilization ratio differs from carrier to carrier. Specialized carriers who pull tank trailers may have to deadhead farther to get loads and will accumulate more miles traveling to wash out facilities and so on. Auto transporters may have utilization ratios of less than 50%, since they often travel empty. The important part of calculating your utilization is that it gives you a starting point to work from. There’s nothing complicated about getting paid for more of the miles you drive or minimizing the miles you aren’t paid for. The old adage that says “you can’t manage what you don’t measure” applies here, too.
There are reasons why every owner operator accumulates empty miles, of course. Going to the house, taking the truck to a shop for maintenance, detouring from your route to stock up on groceries, avoiding a congested area, all are legitimate reasons for traveling empty, unpaid miles. If you know your cost-per-mile and your utilization ratio, you’ll have a better handle on what those decisions cost you. That’s a start towards improving.
The loads you accept have a large impact on utilization. Obviously, it’s usually a benefit to reload at the same place you just delivered, but you may find that a little deadheading gets you a higher paying load. Routing makes a difference, too. Some carriers use routing software, designed to select the most efficient route. Often the software is paired with programs that determine the cheapest fueling points, helping keep the cost-per-mile as low as possible. Smaller carriers need to make such decisions on their own.
Before accepting a load, know how many miles you’ll deadhead to get it and include an estimate of the total miles you’ll actually drive. Then, estimate how far you’ll need to go to pick up the next load. Knowing your utilization percentage as well as your cost and revenue per mile helps you make better business decisions and ultimate helps put more money in your pocket.
Cliff Abbott is an experienced commercial vehicle driver and owner-operator who still holds a CDL in his home state of Alabama. In nearly 40 years in trucking, he’s been an instructor and trainer and has managed safety and recruiting operations for several carriers. Having never lost his love of the road, Cliff has written a book and hundreds of songs and has been writing for The Trucker for more than a decade.
