Loaded and empty miles

Most carriers pay OTR company drivers for both loaded and empty miles. But not all.

If a carrier pays only for loaded miles, then are you deadheading for free? Not necessarily. A company could compensate for unpaid empty miles by paying a higher Base CPM on loaded miles. On the other hand, it could pay a higher Total CPM by offering incentive bonuses or even a percentage of line haul.

To compare pay packages, calculate the Total CPM spread across all miles. In other words, always ask how much you’ll make to drive a whole route, not any portion of it – or, better yet, what you’ll make for a week’s worth of driving.

Or HHG Miles – paying for the shortest route

Customers often worry that carriers won’t use the shortest and least expensive delivery routes. In the late 1930s, a particularly influential customer – the U.S. Department of Defense – standardized the routing and rates it paid commercial moving companies for transporting servicemen’s household goods (“HHG”) to new postings. This revolutionized the way carriers charged for freight and paid drivers.

• Rand McNally created the first Household Goods Mileage Guide in 1936, mapping the shortest routes between the main post offices of hundreds of cities and towns throughout the country.
• By requiring that movers bill only HHG, or “Short Miles,” the Defense Department set a ceiling on moving costs. Eventually, Short Miles became the standard billing method for nearly all freight.

Challenges for carriers

1. For one thing, the Guide couldn’t include every route across the country, so carriers had to add up the mileage of many Short Mile legs to calculate the charge for a single shipment. It was a tedious process fraught with potential error until the computer age.
2. Unfortunately, even computers couldn’t change the fact that truckload carriers don’t use the same routes as household movers. In fact, they couldn’t if they wanted to, as big rigs aren’t allowed on many residential streets. Over time, carriers insisted that Short Mile tables be revised to include only routes their drivers could legally drive.

As Rand McNally explains, today’s Short Miles include all the miles between the start and endpoint of the shortest highway route that an 80,000 lb., 53′ trailer with 13’6″ clearances may take to a specific destination. (Of course, that means they’re not necessarily suitable for heavy haul trucking.)

Because shorter isn’t always better

Our nationwide interstate system makes Short-Mile routing less than ideal for today’s OTR drivers. After all, the shortest path isn’t necessarily quicker and cheaper if it takes you over narrow bridges, under low overpasses, down two-lane highways or through a congested downtown loop during rush hour. Thus, many carriers benchmark “Practical Routes” to encourage faster, safer and more fuel-efficient highway travel. Again according to Rand McNally, “Practical Routes tend to be the more desirable route of travel, and also may be used for calculating Fuel Tax reporting.”

Counting actual miles with a mechanical device

In some instances, drivers log actual mileage driven. Years ago, they based their reporting on hand-written odometer readings. However, early odometers were often unreliable, and manual logs’ pitfalls left customers skeptical of their accuracy.

In the 1950s, trucking companies began mounting a mechanical counting device – the “hubodometer” – to their tractors’ or trailers’ rear axles. The “Hub” more accurately tallied the miles driven to deliver a load. We still use the term “Hub Miles” to refer to the actual miles a truck travels on a route, though carriers increasingly rely on computers and satellites rather than manual or mechanical systems to track them.

Most shippers consider Hub Miles challenging to predict or control and instead contract for mileage based on optimized routes.

Electronic logging devices

Today, most long-haul OTR carriers use Intelliroute (Rand McNally), PC Miller (Trimble) or similar software in a truck’s electronic logging device (“ELD”) to track mileage along optimized routes. Most set the system to count either Practical Miles or Short Miles.

1. If a carrier counts Practical Miles, the ELD generally records higher mileage than if it records Short Miles – and lower mileage than if it used Hub Miles.
2. Shippers prefer to pay freight charges based on Short Miles, which they believe pushes carriers to choose the least expensive routing. On the other hand, many drivers think counting Hub Miles is the best way to measure all the miles they drive.
3. Many long-haul carriers argue that using Practical Miles maintains accountability for customers while fairly compensating safe and efficient drivers.

Some carriers who charge customers based on Short Miles pay their drivers similarly. Others pay Practical Miles – whether or not that’s how they bill for freight.

At the best paying OTR trucking companies . . .

Management pairs the mileage you’re likely to drive (no matter how it’s tracked) with the Total CPMs you can expect to earn so they can hand you a bigger weekly check.

Of course, a professional driver should know that when a carrier uses Practical Miles, you’ll generally get credit for 5 to 8% more miles than if your pay is based on Short Miles.

• For instance, if you drive a weekly route of 2,000 Practical Miles, and your carrier pays a Base CPM of $0.60 per mile (without additional incentives), you bring home a $1,200 paycheck.
• Alternatively, a competing carrier counting Short Miles might credit you for just 1,900 miles on the same route.
  • At $0.60 per mile, you’d earn only $1,140.
  • However, that competing carrier could offer incentives that raise your Total CPM to $0.63. Then you’d make the same weekly paycheck even though you’re driving Short Miles.

In other words, never lose track of your weekly earnings!