Three trucks in the North West, nothing to bring back
You have three full loads going to Warrington and Preston on Thursday. They were booked on Monday. On Wednesday afternoon someone realises there is nothing coming back, and starts ringing round and refreshing the load exchange. Anything decent has gone. One truck gets a low-rate part load, the other two come home empty.
It happens most weeks, on different lanes, and it is hard to say exactly how often because nobody records the ones that got away.
Backloads are treated as an afterthought
The outbound load is the one the customer asked for, so it gets the attention. The return leg only becomes real once the truck is committed, and by then the time to find a good load has mostly gone. The information needed to plan earlier is usually already in the business.
- Your own customers have regular flows from the same regions, but that pattern is in the invoice history, not in front of the planner.
- Offers from other hauliers and brokers arrive by email and phone to different people.
- The planner cannot see, on one screen, where every truck will be empty and when.
- Rates for a return leg are worked out on the spot, so good backloads are sometimes turned down and poor ones accepted.
What empty miles take out of the business
Every empty mile burns fuel, driver time, tyres and a slice of the truck's life, and earns nothing. You also price your outbound loads assuming some of the return is covered, so when it is not, the margin you thought you had on the lane is not really there. Planners get stuck in a daily scramble that pulls them off the rest of the plan.
The backload finder we build
- As soon as an outbound load is booked, the tool records where and when that truck will be empty, and adds it to a return gaps list visible to every planner.
- It reads your own job history to find customers who regularly ship from that area and flags them, so the sales or planning team can ring them first.
- Offers that arrive by email are read by a parser that pulls out collection point, delivery point, date, weight and rate, and lists them against the gaps they could fill.
- Each possible match shows the extra miles, the time it adds, whether the driver has the hours (from your planning data), and the rate against your own minimum for that lane.
- The planner accepts or rejects. Rejections are kept with a reason, so over time you can see which lanes are always hard and price outbound work accordingly.
| Question | Answered today by | Answered by the tool |
|---|---|---|
| Where will trucks be empty? | Planner's memory on Wednesday | Return gaps list from booking time |
| Who ships from there? | Whoever remembers | Job history search by area |
| Is this offer worth it? | Gut feel on the phone | Extra miles, time and rate shown together |
| Which lanes are hard? | Nobody knows exactly | Record of gaps filled and missed |
If you post and search on a load exchange, the tool sits beside it rather than replacing it. Where the exchange offers data access, the tool can list relevant loads directly.
What planners work with afterwards
The return leg becomes part of the plan on the day the outbound is booked, not the day before it runs. Planners start the morning with a list of gaps and the customers most likely to fill them. Sales has a reason to ring regular customers about specific dates. And the business finally has a record of how often trucks run empty and on which lanes, which makes pricing conversations with customers much more grounded.
Recognise any of these?
- Backloads are looked for the afternoon before the truck runs.
- Offers from brokers sit in several inboxes.
- You cannot say how many trucks came home empty last month.
- Return rates are agreed on the phone with no minimum in mind.
- The same lanes come home empty week after week.