Worked scenario
The return leg was empty and nobody costed it
A transport business with monthly costs and per-trip revenue cannot tell which trips make money, and usually assumes the busiest are the best.
3 min read
A vehicle takes a load, delivers it, and returns. If the return is empty, the round trip cost twice what the loaded leg suggests, and the quote was built on the loaded leg.
Monthly costs hide trip economics
Fuel, salaries and maintenance are real and are recorded in aggregate. Revenue is recorded per trip. The two never meet, so profitability exists only at company level.
Empty running is the main variable
Between two operators on the same lane at the same rate, the one with a return load is profitable and the other is not. That is the dominant factor and it is rarely in the costing.
Lane-level pricing
Once trips carry their costs, some lanes are clearly good and others are being run out of habit. Operators frequently find they are subsidising a long-standing customer on a route with no backhaul.
What changes
- Trip-level costing including fuel, driver, tolls and return position
- Empty running measured as a cost against the loaded leg
- Route and customer profitability visible, not just utilisation
- Quoting informed by the actual cost of that lane
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