Cheap loads in trucking: when a low rate is the smart move

The question every carrier faces in a dead market

You deliver somewhere quiet. The board near you is thin, and the best thing posted pays well under your floor, but it goes toward a market with plenty of freight. Do you take the cheap load, drive empty to the better market, or sit and wait for something decent?

There's a lot of advice about cheap loads in trucking, and most of it is a rule of thumb: never haul under a set rate, or always keep the truck moving. Both rules are wrong often enough to cost you. The honest answer is math, done over two loads instead of one.

The two-load decision

Put in your running cost per mile, meaning fuel, tires and maintenance, the cheap load you've been offered, the reload waiting in the better market, and what you'd likely get if you waited a day where you are. The table compares three options over two days.

With the EXAMPLE numbers, taking the cheap load wins, even though it pays only $2.00 per mile on its own. It earns money on 300 miles you'd otherwise drive empty to reach the same reload. Deadheading earns nothing for those miles and still burns fuel. Waiting a day trades a day of time for a load that may or may not show up.

Change the numbers and the answer changes. If the cheap load pays very little and the wait-a-day load is strong, waiting wins. If the cheap load goes somewhere worse than where you are, it's not repositioning at all, just a cheap load. That's why it has to be calculated, not guessed.

Fixed costs, like the truck payment and insurance, run either way, so they don't change which option wins. Running cost per mile is what matters for this decision. The deadhead miles cost calculator helps you pin that number down.

When cheap freight is a trap

A cheap load can be the smart move, but it comes with risks that don't show up in the rate. These are the times we'd usually pass.

• +It goes somewhere worse. A cheap load into an even quieter market moves the problem and adds miles.
• +It eats a whole day. A short cheap load with a long wait at the shipper can cost you the reload you were positioning for.
• +Detention is unlikely to be paid. Cheap loads often come from shippers with long waits and brokers who resist claims.
• +The broker is shaky. Slow-pay or unvetted brokers are more common on loads nobody else wants. A cheap load that doesn't get paid is the worst outcome of all.
• +It becomes a habit. One cheap load to reposition is a tactic. A week of them means your lanes, your floor or your market timing needs a fix.

Before taking any cheap load, check the delivery market too. Our page on the best and worst freight markets covers which areas tend to have more outbound freight, using public data with sources and dates.

A worked example, step by step

Here's the EXAMPLE from the calculator above, walked through by hand so you can do it on a napkin. Your running cost is $0.95 per mile. You're empty in a slow market. A cheap load pays $600 for 300 miles toward a busy city, where a $2,000 reload for 800 miles is waiting about 30 miles from where the cheap load delivers.

Option one, take the cheap load: you earn $2,600 over about 1,130 miles. At $0.95 a mile, running costs are about $1,074, so the two-day net is about $1,526. Option two, deadhead to the same reload: you earn $2,000 over the same 1,130 miles, so the net is about $926. Option three, wait a day for a $1,400 load of 650 miles with 60 empty: about $726.

So the cheap load, at $2.00 per mile on its own, is worth about $600 more than driving empty to the same place. That's the whole argument for repositioning loads, in one line: it pays for miles you were going to drive anyway.

Set a repositioning floor, not just a floor

Your normal floor rate covers your full costs plus margin. That's the right line for most loads. For a repositioning load, a second, lower line is useful: the rate that at least covers your running cost on the cheap load's miles. Below that, the cheap load actually costs you money to haul compared with driving empty.

With a running cost of $0.95 per mile, a 300-mile repositioning load should pay at least about $285 to beat driving those miles empty. Anything above that is money toward the trip. Most cheap loads clear that easily; the real questions are the time they take and the broker behind them.

Does taking cheap loads hurt rates for everyone?

This comes up a lot, and it's fair to ask. When carriers keep accepting loads at very low rates, brokers learn that those rates will get covered, and they post more freight at those prices. In that sense, consistently cheap hauling does push rates down on a lane.

But there's a difference between a carrier who hauls cheap freight as a habit and one who takes a single low load to reposition into a stronger market. The second one is making a business decision over two loads, and the money they earn on the reload is often well above market. Repositioning loads have always existed, and they move freight that would otherwise sit.

The practical line: know your floor, know why you're going under it, and do it for a clear reason with a clear next step. If you're hauling under your costs week after week, the problem isn't the market's fault alone, and the fix is in your lanes and your planning.

How our desk decides, with your approval

When the only loads near a delivery are under a carrier's floor, we don't book one quietly to keep the truck moving. We lay out the options, the cheap load and where it leads, the deadhead and what it costs, and the wait, each with the two-day math. The carrier decides.

Most of the time we try to avoid getting stuck in the first place, by checking what moves out of a delivery area before we accept a load into it. That's the cheapest repositioning there is: not needing to. Use the load profitability calculator to see what any single load leaves you after costs.