Long haul for less per mile?

I think a more accurate way is to start per trip mileage with deadhead miles, end mileage at delivery point. Doesn’t matter where you go once empty, straight to next Load, Truckstop, or Home, The empty (deadhead) miles will be the cost to get the next load. Keep track of loaded per mile rate, and w/deadhead per mile rate. Shows actual per mile revenue. You can add all actual revenue and divide by all actual miles at anytime. Per round trip, weekly, monthly, annually. Learning what loads work best.

 

Counting empty miles or playing with a calculator to see what your rate per mile is, won't get you more money.
If you can get $3500 from Rochelle, IL to WM DC Cheyenne, WY or Denver, CO, sure, grab it. That's enough revenue over 3 days to bounce back to Omaha, NE 450 empty miles and get yourself a load going further east. 450 - 700 miles of dh is a quite a bit but who cares, if you have $3000 after fuel in 3 days. If you could only avarage $1000 after fuel every working day, I don't care what your rate per mile or deadhead is.

 

Reloads have been the issue since spring regarding certain lanes. Many will hype up $3.17 cpm one way for 600 miles. When running the spot market but never give the full story toward a lack of a reload back or elsewhere paying even $1.35 cpm sometimes deading back entirely. As much as they might avg. $2.26 cpm for that lane many seem to never factor in the extra 2 days it took to get the reload or something decent going back out wiping out the entire week. This starts eating away at the weekly and in some cases monthly averages. Factor in ones cost fuels, tolls, other expenses etc. It becomes difficult to sustain. In many cases staying closer within a less than 180 mile radius at reasonable rates of $2.95 cpm or more even in some cases deadheading back. Will generate more in the end even after fuel expenses if because when deadheading back your burning at least 1/5th less when there's no load.

 

I try to profit as close to $1,000 bucks a day as I can. (If I leave the house) I look more at money per day than RPM. Especially with how ####ty the market has been for the past 3 years or so. And I don't expect it to get any better any time soon. Everyone has different overhead and other bills to pay. So whatever works for you. For a bit I was getting tripped up over RPM concerns and was wasting days not making as much money as I could be. Everyone does different stuff though.

 

Daily Revenue is the only way a O/O that does OTR should look at. Of course you want to keep track of everything but don't trip yourself up over RPM. Sitting and waiting for RPM to be met in a hard market will cause you to sit more. If you want to live in the truck it is a good thing I guess. If you want to have a life outside of trucking and get home then it is a bad thing.

I hardly ever do 34's on the road, Meaning the whole time I have been out since 2019 I have done maybe 3 or 4 on the road. I want to make X amount every day I am out. The only time I set is when I am at home and I make sure to get the best rate I can. Normally this will be a 2-3 day run and will have 1500-2000 a day to start out. Once that is started I try to stay at 1500 a day but will dip to 1200 or lower if need be to get in the right area.

This trip started out from Home and dead headed 200 miles to pick up a load. Something I never do but it was well worth the extra 200 miles.
Got 6K for the load and it was on truck for 3 days.
2nd load short load but was 1495 for one day.
no load and dead headed to a better area since it was the 1st and no one open.
3rd load was 2500 for 1 day just finished it. Weekend load
4th load will be for 1136 and 1 day on truck. Weekend load
5th load 1698 picks up Monday morning. 1 day on truck
Have eyes on 6th load and will pay min 2400 for two days on truck. I am starting to run recaps on this week so won't need to take a 34. I will go home most likely on that last load.

Normally I do not stay out this long and run close to my 70 and go back home for a 34 or few days off. The money was decent so I am running. Not sure on the miles yet but most of these loads are a full day worth of work but one short 400 mile load. I do 500-700 miles a day and do not do a lot of short runs. Most runs are 600 miles a day. I do this kind of work because lots of people are too lazy to run those loads in time sensitive runs.

 

Dry Van and I run my own numbers.