Empty running is the distance a goods vehicle drives with no load on board, most often on the way back to base after making a delivery. It's also called empty miles, empty legs or, in the US, deadheading. A fleet's empty running rate is its empty miles as a share of total miles, and for UK HGVs it sits at around 28 to 30% (Department for Transport, 2026).
Every empty mile still costs fuel, driver time and wear, and still produces emissions, but earns nothing. This guide covers how to calculate your own fleet's rate, what drives it and the practical ways to bring it down.
Empty Running, Empty Legs, Deadheading and Part Loads
- Empty running / empty miles: distance driven with nothing on board. The standard UK term, and the one the DfT reports.
- Empty leg: a single journey, or part of one, driven empty, such as the return from a one-way delivery.
- Deadheading: the usual US term for the same thing.
- Part load / low utilisation: a vehicle that's carrying something but has plenty of spare space or weight. It isn't counted as empty running, but it's the same wasted-capacity problem in a milder form.
How to Calculate Your Empty Running Rate
The calculation itself is simple:
Empty running rate = empty miles ÷ total miles × 100
For an illustrative example, a fleet that drives 10,000 miles in a month, 2,800 of them with nothing on board, has an empty running rate of 28%. To put a cost on it, multiply the empty miles by your own all-in cost per mile (fuel, driver wages, maintenance, tyres and depreciation). At an illustrative £2 per mile, those 2,800 empty miles cost £5,600 in a month with no revenue to offset them.
The harder part is the data. Most fleets can piece it together from three places:
- Telematics: total distance per vehicle, per day.
- Job or TMS records: which legs had a load on board, from collection and delivery points.
- Tachograph and driver records: a cross-check on journeys and timings.
Calculate it by vehicle type and by lane as well as across the whole fleet. A fleet-wide average often hides a handful of lanes running far emptier than the rest, and those are where the quickest wins are.
What Causes Empty Running
Freight demand is directional and uneven: more goods move into some regions than out of them, seasonal demand shifts lane volumes, and delivery windows rarely line up between an outbound and a return load. Specialist vehicles such as tankers, curtainsiders on dedicated contracts or temperature-controlled trailers have fewer suitable return loads to choose from. And even when a suitable load exists, it often isn't found in time because matching is done by phone and memory. Why the UK's empty running rate hasn't moved looks at the national picture in more depth.
How to Reduce Empty Running
- Backloading: fill return legs with paid loads, from your own orders, partners or exchanges. What backloading means covers the basics.
- Use every source of return loads: your own order book, partner hauliers, load boards and freight exchanges, and brokers. How to find backloads compares them.
- Plan round trips, not out-and-back runs: chaining deliveries into triangular or multi-stop routes keeps the vehicle loaded for more of its journey.
- Price the return leg in: on lanes where a return load is unlikely, the outbound rate needs to cover the empty miles home.
- Automate the matching: load matching software checks every live order against every planned route continuously, catching matches that manual searching misses.
Why Empty Running Matters for Emissions
An empty truck still burns fuel. Every empty mile adds emissions without moving any goods, so cutting empty running reduces a fleet's carbon intensity per tonne delivered as well as its costs. For hauliers reporting emissions to customers, or customers reporting their own Scope 3 transport emissions, empty miles are one of the most direct levers available.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is empty running?
Empty running is distance a goods vehicle drives with no load on board, most often on the way back to base after a delivery. It's measured as the empty running rate: empty miles divided by total miles.
What is a good empty running rate?
There's no single benchmark, because it depends on how directional a fleet's freight flows are. The national UK figure for HGVs is around 28 to 30% of vehicle mileage, so a fleet well above that has room to improve, and the most useful measure is your own rate tracked over time.
Is empty running the same as deadheading?
Yes, in practice. Deadheading or deadhead miles is the more common term in the US; empty running, empty miles and empty legs are the usual UK terms for the same thing.
How do you reduce empty running?
By finding paid loads for legs that would otherwise run empty: backloading from your own and partners' orders, load boards and freight exchanges, load matching software, planning round trips instead of out-and-back runs, and pricing lanes with the return leg in mind.
Cut Your Fleet's Empty Running
Anteam Reload™ matches live orders to your fleet's planned routes and calculates the detour, CO2 and revenue for each match, cutting empty legs by 50% in live deployment. Book a demo to see it against your own routes.
Related reading: the UK's empty running rate and why it hasn't moved, how to find backloads, and the UK empty miles and last-mile carbon report.