Route Optimization: Cut Empty Miles, Fuel Costs, and Detention

Let me be direct about something the software vendors won’t tell you: most of the savings attributed to “route optimization” are not routing savings. They are planning savings, data-quality savings, and lane-design savings. The routing engine is the last 20%. The other 80% is the discipline you build before you ever open the software.

I’ve spent more than 20 years in transportation, including managing a fleet of over 4,400 assets for a major events and logistics company. In that environment, you learn fast that technology amplifies what’s already there. If your process is broken, a routing engine gives you a more efficient version of the wrong answer.

Here’s how to actually cut empty miles, fuel costs, and detention — starting with the discipline that makes any tool work.

What Route Optimization Actually Is

Route optimization in its truest sense is the discipline of moving freight through your network in the most cost-effective sequence, using the least fuel, generating the fewest empty miles, and minimizing the time drivers spend waiting. It applies whether you’re running 5 trucks or 500.

The levers are:

• Empty mile reduction — shrinking deadhead between loads or drop points
• Fuel efficiency — route distance, idle time, and speed management
• Detention reduction — appointment scheduling, receiver relationships, and documentation
• Lane design — the structure of which freight you accept and where your trucks operate

Software tools can assist with all of these. But none of them work without good data going in, and none of them fix the upstream planning decisions that determine whether your trucks are in the right place running the right freight.

Start With Your Data, Not Your Software

The single most common mistake I see is carriers purchasing a routing or TMS tool before auditing the quality of their data. Bad addresses, inconsistent stop times, load weights that don’t match actuals, driver shift windows that are entered incorrectly — any of these corrupt the optimization output.

Before you can optimize routes, you need:

• Accurate, verified delivery addresses (not just zip codes)
• Realistic service times per stop — not assumed averages but measured actuals
• Actual truck capacity constraints, not theoretical max loads
• Driver hours-of-service windows that reflect real availability
• Current fuel costs by geographic region
• Lane rate benchmarks by origin-destination pair

Most operations have some of this data somewhere. It’s often scattered across spreadsheets, driver logs, TMS screens, and someone’s memory. Consolidating and validating it is unglamorous work. It is also the foundation on which every optimization decision rests.

A two-week data audit — pulling actuals from the past 90 days of operations — will surface inconsistencies that explain a significant portion of your cost overruns before you change a single route.

Reducing Empty Miles: It’s a Lane Design Problem

Empty miles are expensive. Every deadhead mile costs you fuel without generating revenue. For many carriers, deadhead runs 15-25% of total miles depending on freight type and lane structure. Reducing that percentage by even a few points across a large fleet produces meaningful savings.

But here’s the thing: you cannot optimize your way out of a bad lane structure. If your freight network routinely puts trucks in markets with no reload freight, a routing engine cannot invent loads that aren’t there. The fix is lane design.

Questions that drive empty mile reduction:

• Which lanes consistently have strong outbound freight but poor backhaul availability?
• Are you accepting inbound loads that position your trucks in dead-end markets?
• Do you have lane partnerships with other carriers to interchange freight in markets where your own density is thin?
• Are you declining loads that would improve your network position in favor of higher-rated loads that leave you stranded?

The goal is to build a lane network where trucks move freight in a pattern — not pinball from load to load across the country. For regional carriers, this often means accepting some loads at thinner rates because they position the truck for a stronger reload. The net result, when calculated correctly, beats chasing the highest-rate load into a market with no return freight.

For carriers who work with our team on network analysis, this is where we usually find the largest and fastest cost reductions. Not in routing software — in rethinking which lanes belong in the network and which ones are costing more than they’re generating.

Fuel: The Discipline That Runs Alongside the Route

Fuel is your largest variable cost in most operations. Route optimization tools can reduce total miles, which reduces fuel consumption. But they can’t control driver behavior, idle time, or speed profile — and those factors often matter as much as route distance.

The fuel cost components that routing alone doesn’t fix:

Idle time. A truck idling in a receiver’s dock for two hours burns fuel the routing engine never accounts for. This is partly a detention problem and partly an equipment and policy problem — APUs, no-idle policies, and load scheduling all affect idle burn.

Speed. Aerodynamic drag increases exponentially above roughly 60-65 mph. A driver consistently running 70 burns materially more fuel than a driver running 65, even on an identical route. Speed governance and coaching are fuel strategies, not just safety strategies.

Fuel purchasing. Where and when drivers fuel matters. A route that passes three high-cost truck stops and one low-cost fuel stop should have a fuel stop scheduled, not left to driver discretion. Fuel networks and fuel cards with benchmarking tools give visibility into purchasing patterns that many carriers overlook.

Route vs. road conditions. Shortest distance is not always lowest fuel cost. A route that avoids significant elevation changes, construction delays, or chronic congestion may burn less fuel even if it’s slightly longer. Routing tools that account for road grade and historical traffic patterns capture this — simple mile-minimization tools don’t.

Detention: The Invisible Cost You’re Probably Absorbing

Detention is where I see the most immediate, recoverable money sitting on the table in carrier operations.

Detention time — when a driver arrives at a shipper or receiver on time and waits beyond a contracted free time — costs you driver hours, keeps the truck off the road, and cascades into schedule disruptions for subsequent loads. Most carriers track it inconsistently and bill for it inconsistently.

The detention problem has three components:

Documentation. If your drivers aren’t timestamping arrivals and departures systematically — either through ELD data, a check-call process, or appointment confirmation workflows — you don’t have the evidence to bill. Start with documentation before anything else.

Billing. Even carriers who track detention frequently don’t bill for it consistently because the process is manual, fragmented, or someone decided it wasn’t worth the customer friction. That is the wrong call. Documented detention is a contractual right. Bill it.

Scheduling. Some detention is preventable at the appointment-scheduling stage. Receivers with chronic wait times are known — your drivers know them, your dispatchers know them. That knowledge should feed back into appointment requests (earlier slots, different days), load acceptance decisions, and customer rate negotiations.

Reducing detention through systematic documentation and billing is not a technology problem. It is a process and accountability problem. The technology to support it is simple and usually already in place — ELD timestamps, email confirmation of appointments, a billing line item on your invoice template.

When Routing Software Actually Helps

Routing tools earn their cost when your operation has reached a level of complexity where human planners cannot hold all the variables in their heads simultaneously. For a carrier running 10 trucks with well-defined lanes, an experienced dispatcher can plan efficiently without algorithmic assistance. At 50+ trucks, multi-stop delivery routes, or complex time-window constraints, software produces meaningfully better outcomes than manual planning.

What good routing software should do:

• Sequence multi-stop routes to minimize total time and distance within time windows
• Account for real driver HOS constraints, not just theoretical limits
• Flag load configurations that exceed weight or dimensional limits
• Model fuel cost by route, not just distance
• Generate exception reports when actual performance deviates from planned

What it cannot do:

• Fix data that was entered wrong
• Design your lane strategy
• Manage your customer relationships
• Prevent detention from a receiver who ignores appointments
• Change driver behavior behind the wheel

My opinion is direct: most “routing” savings are actually planning and data-quality savings. The routing engine is the final step in a process that starts with good data, a sensible lane structure, disciplined scheduling, and driver communication. Get those right first.

The Right Sequence for Route Optimization

If you’re looking to reduce empty miles, fuel, and detention systematically, this is the order of operations:

1. Audit your current data quality. You cannot optimize what you cannot measure accurately.
2. Map your actual lane performance. Which lanes generate profitable freight both directions? Which consistently strand your trucks?
3. Implement detention documentation and billing. This generates immediate revenue recovery with no capital investment.
4. Establish fuel purchasing discipline. Planned fuel stops, speed governance, idle policies.
5. Evaluate routing tools based on your actual complexity and what specific problem you’re solving — not based on a vendor’s feature list.

This is the kind of structured network analysis we do with carriers at LAN. We look at your data, your lanes, your cost structure, and your operational processes before recommending any tool or technology change. The goal is to make sure you’re solving the right problem. Learn more about our supply chain and fleet operations services.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How much can route optimization realistically reduce our empty miles? It depends entirely on your current lane structure and data quality. Carriers with poorly structured networks can see significant reductions through lane redesign alone. Carriers who already run disciplined networks have less room but can still capture gains through scheduling and backhaul improvements. Qualitative improvement is consistent; the magnitude varies.

Q: Do I need routing software to implement these improvements? Not initially. Lane design, detention documentation, and fuel discipline are process improvements that don’t require new software. Routing software becomes valuable when operational complexity outpaces what a dispatcher can manage manually.

Q: How do we start tracking detention if we haven’t been doing it? Start with ELD data, which already timestamps driver arrivals at geofenced locations. Combine that with a simple check-call or driver messaging protocol for appointments. Most carriers can implement basic detention tracking within a few weeks using tools they already have.

Q: Is it worth accepting a lower-rate load to improve our network position? Frequently, yes. A load that pays slightly less but repositions your truck for a strong reload tomorrow may be worth more in total than a high-rate load that leaves you deadheading 400 miles to the next opportunity. You need lane-level cost-per-mile data to make that call well.

Q: How does LAN approach route and network optimization consulting? We start with your data and your lanes, not with a tool recommendation. We identify where your costs are concentrated and what’s driving them, then map a practical improvement sequence. Contact us to schedule a free initial conversation.

Take the Next Step

Route optimization done right is a discipline, and the returns are real — lower fuel cost, fewer empty miles, recovered detention revenue. But the work starts with process and data, not a software purchase.

If you want an outside perspective on where your network is leaking cost, we’re here to look at it with you. Schedule a free consultation with the LAN team and let’s talk about what you’re actually running and where the opportunity is.

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Disclaimer: Cost reduction outcomes vary by operation, data quality, and implementation. LAN does not guarantee specific savings figures; all estimates should be validated against your actual operating data.