In road haulage, two figures tell the real story of an operation better than any words can: the truck load factor and the empty mileage ratio. The first measures what you load versus what you could load. The second tells you how many kilometers your fleet covers without returning anything. Together, they form the foundation of touring performance and the starting point for any serious optimization plan. For transport companies, effective management of these two indicators is often what separates a profitable operation from one that is squeezing its margins, whether we're talking about last-mile delivery, courier or truckload.
Truck load factor and empty mileage ratio are the two key indicators of touring performance in road haulage: mastering them means giving yourself the means to steer an operation with precision, rather than being subjected to it. In fact, optimizing load factors and reducing empty runs are the two most direct levers on fleet profitability, whatever the nature of the goods transported.
Yet few operations managers have these indicators at their disposal in real time. Poorly collected data, paper roadmaps, under-utilized TMS: the diagnosis is lacking, and with it the ability to act on the right levers. Pooling flows, organizing loaded returns, involving drivers in the performance approach: these are all actions that only bear fruit if you know where you're starting from.
This article gives you a complete method: how to calculate your real rates, which tools to use, and how to turn these figures into concrete decisions for your team.
Many operations managers estimate their fill rate "by eye", and systematically get it wrong. The discrepancy between the theoretical rate, the one they think they're practicing, and the real rate, the one revealed by tour data, often reaches 15 to 20 points. This gap is not an anomaly: it's the direct consequence of missing or approximate measurements. Before seeking to optimize fill rates, we need to put two solid figures on the table- real transport KPIs.
The first is truck fill rate. Calculating the actual fill rate is based on a simple formula: loaded volume divided by available capacity, multiplied by 100. If your forwarder tolerates 12 pallets and you load 8, your rate is 67%. Not 80%, as is often heard in boardrooms. This calculation (which also expresses the vehicle's actual occupancy rate) can be applied in terms of volume, weight or floor area, depending on your activity. It's also important to distinguish effective payload from total authorized weight (PTAC): a vehicle may be full in volume but underloaded in weight, or vice versa. A significant proportion of farms underperform precisely because this calculation is never formalized. The key is to choose a consistent unit of measurement and stick to it, so that comparisons make sense from one week to the next.
The second indicator is the empty kilometer ratio: empty kilometers divided by total kilometers, multiplied by 100. A truck making 400 km of rounds, 120 km of which are empty, has an empty kilometer ratio of 30%. Above 25%, depending on the business, it is generally considered that there are significant margins for optimization, particularly in the organization of loaded returns. The real cost of these unproductive kilometers (fuel, depreciation, driver time) is often underestimated because it has not been accurately calculated.
But you need the right data to feed these formulas. Three sources are available, depending on your level of equipment. The Transport Management System (TMS), if correctly set up, centralizes loading data and planned kilometers, based on the loading plan for each route. On-board telematics (GPS units linked to loading data) are the most reliable source: they record actual kilometers, stops, and sometimes the weight transported via suspension sensors. For operations that have not yet taken this step, the digital tachograph combined with a well-kept logbook can be used to reconstruct the essentials, provided that the driver enters the actual loads and not the theoretical capacities. Some tools can also be used to monitor in-transit stocks and anticipate volumes to be loaded from the departure warehouse.
This is precisely where the diagnosis shifts from calculation to decision-making. Once these two ratios have been established over at least four weeks, patterns emerge: chronically underloaded tours, geographical sectors generating empty returns, recurring off-peak days. These findings are not inevitable: they are the entry points for the concrete tour optimization levers we're about to examine.
Once the ratios have been established, the question is no longer "where do we stand? but "what should we do first? These four levers are listed in order of accessibility for a VSE-SME: the first two relate to logistics organization and planning, while the next two require dedicated tools.
Pooling flows is the most powerful lever for maximizing truck fill rates, and often the most under-exploited. The principle is simple: group together on the same vehicle loads that are going in the same direction, whether they come from a single customer or several. In a small operation, this starts with a weekly fleet management exercise: identify the routes that are systematically carried out at 60% load factor, and actively seek a complementary flow to make them denser. With trusted transport partners, this logic of co-loading (which consists in sharing the capacity of the same vehicle between several shippers) can be extended to real massification: we consolidate volumes before departure rather than sending two half-full trucks to the same geographical basin. The aim is to achieve optimum performance on each rotation.
The organization of loaded returns directly addresses the empty mileage ratio. An empty return is always a dry loss (fuel, wear and tear, driver time). The priority is to systematically anticipate the return trip when planning the outbound journey, not once the truck is already on site. In concrete terms, this means mapping the customers or platforms located within the return perimeter, and negotiating regular loading agreements. In the context of an international or border operation, cabotage (the transport of goods between two points in the same foreign country by a non-resident haulier within the strict framework of European regulations) can complement this approach. All such operations must, however, comply with the regulatory constraints that govern them, including the legal requirements on transport documents.
Algorithmic route optimization via a TMS solution changes the game as soon as the number of daily stops exceeds ten or so. This simulation and planning tool simulates the optimal loading and sequencing of stops, integrating customer time windows, tonnage and vehicle constraints (whereas human planners optimize by habit and experience, the algorithm explores hundreds of combinations in a matter of seconds). The average gain in total kilometers travelled is between 10 and 20% in the first few weeks of use. The resulting logistical optimization directly improves the operational efficiency of the entire fleet. The challenge for small and medium-sized businesses is to choose a tool that is appropriate to their size, capable of managing both the tracking of a one-off order and the planning of recurring tours, with modules for optimizing load factors that can be accessed without the need for a heavy infrastructure.
The use of freight exchanges completes the arsenal for one-off journeys not covered by the usual agreements. Platforms such as Wtransnet and Teleroute list available loads on specific routes in real time, enabling carriers to offer their available capacity on the spot market. The service provided is simple: fill residual empty returns or make the most of capacity freed up by cancellations. Taking these spot flows into account in planning means adopting a global approach to optimizing vehicle utilization rates. Optimizing load factor also means knowing how to fill the last few percent of available capacity on regular routes, and spot market logistics is one of the tools for achieving this.
These levers produce measurable results in just a few weeks, provided that truck drivers and dock crews play their part. We now turn to the often neglected managerial dimension of touring performance.
Tools optimize, algorithms calculate, but it's the truck driver who executes. And when he's executing, he's making dozens of micro-decisions a day: how he loads, in what order, whether he reports available space during the tour or whether he returns empty without mentioning it. These decisions, taken at six o'clock in the morning on the quay or at four o'clock in the afternoon on the road, have a direct impact on truck fill rates and empty mileage. In a transport sector subject to increasingly restrictive economic trends (rising fuel costs, pressure on margins, truck fleet availability, growing expectations in terms of supply chain performance), ignoring this reality means optimizing on paper and losing on the ground. The driver is not a passive executor: he is a sensor and a player in performance, provided he is given the means to be so.
The first lever is information. A driver who knows what's expected of him, who understands why a 65% truck load is detrimental to energy efficiency and operating profitability, gets involved in a different way. This starts with a weekly performance monitoring ritual: not a formal forty-five-minute meeting, but a ten-minute review at the beginning of the week, standing up, around an operating dashboard posted in the break room or dispatch area. Two or three indicators at most: average load factor for the week, empty mileage ratio, number of loaded returns organized. No jargon, just legible figures, a curve that goes up or down. This simple format creates a habit of collective reading of the results without weighing down the organization.
The second spring is the individual driving objective. Setting a personalized target (for example, to go from an average load factor of 78% to 85% over three months) gives each driver a concrete direction. The objective must be achievable, discussed face-to-face and not imposed via a poster. A driver who has taken part in setting his target will make it his own; a driver who has been told about it will have to put up with it. The nuance is managerial, but the impact on commitment is real.
The third pillar is recognition, and it doesn't have to be monetary to work. Regular, simply formulated feedback from the field ("this week you organized two busy returns that nobody asked you to do, that's exactly what we're looking for"), anchors good behavior much more durably than an annual bonus disconnected from daily actions. Visual management (dashboard updated weekly, results visible to all) creates healthy emulation without toxic competition.
This is how a transport performance culture is built: not by injunction, but by repetition of small rituals, concrete feedback and shared objectives. Tools create the conditions, management creates the desire to act.
Rigorous measurement, well-chosen levers, committed drivers: the three pillars are in place. Truck load factor, empty mileage ratio: these two indicators are not ends in themselves. They are the common language that enables an operations manager to speak the same dialect as his figures, his drivers and his customers. Seriously calculating them means moving away from intuition-based management towards a logic in which every decision (a negotiated return load, a reorganized tour, a target set with a driver) is based on a measured reality, not an assumed one.
The method described in this article requires neither an out-of-reach budget nor a brutal organizational transformation. It requires rigorous data collection, pragmatism in the choice of levers, and consistency in team leadership. These three ingredients are within the reach of any operation that decides to make it a priority, whatever its size. Over and above immediate profitability, improved logistics optimization contributes directly to reducing the fleet's environmental impact: fewer empty kilometers mean a tangible and measurable reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. In the context of sustainable development and the circular economy, which are gradually redefining the expectations of clients, this is also an ecological and commercial argument that is gaining in value (particularly on an international scale, where the CSR requirements of major shippers are increasingly precise).
Touring performance cannot be decreed. It is built week after week, from small deviations that are corrected, from integrated field feedback and from truck drivers who understand what is asked of them and why. The operations that make the fastest progress are not necessarily the best equipped: they're the ones that measure, that adjust, and that don't let a misunderstood figure lie dormant in an Excel spreadsheet for six months. It's here, in concrete terms, that the difference lies between a fleet that suffers its results and one that pilots them, and it's within the grasp of any serious operation, whatever its size.