Empty backhaul, an opportunity to avoid fuel expended on the road.

Sheckler, Ross; Maynus, Lee W. · 2009 · ROSA P / New York (State). Dept. of Transportation

archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified

Get this paper ↗ (full text — opens at the source; we link to it, we don't host it)

Summary

This study investigates the prevalence of empty backhauls in the commercial trucking industry and evaluates whether vehicle telemetry data can reliably identify when trucks are traveling without cargo. Motivated by the fact that over 20% of commercial vehicle miles traveled (VMT) move no freight, the research aims to identify routes and regions with surplus empty trucks. The goal is to facilitate load matching or brokering, which would increase fleet profitability, reduce total VMT, and save significant amounts of diesel fuel. The study was conducted by Calmar Telematics for the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and the New York State Department of Transportation. The researchers developed a methodology to determine load status by analyzing fuel economy data derived from existing vehicle telemetry systems. They hypothesized that a specific truck would consume more fuel (lower miles per gallon) when loaded than when empty. The study focused on Class 8 semitrailers traveling distances exceeding 30 miles to filter out yard movements and idling. Data was collected from 267 vehicles across five commodity sectors (dairy, petroleum, general for-hire, grocery, and heavy equipment), totaling 22,831 trips between March and May 2009. The analysis required filtering "dirty" telemetry data and associating per-trip fuel consumption with specific routes. Initial tests on petroleum and grocery carriers validated the hypothesis, showing distinct fuel economy differences between loaded and unloaded states. The findings confirm that aggregated trip fuel economy is a reliable indicator of load status, provided the primary commodity carried is known. The study found that weekly data was too volatile for analysis, but monthly and quarterly data provided stable patterns. Fuel economy thresholds for identifying empty trips varied by commodity type due to differences in cargo weight and container compatibility. For instance, petroleum carriers showed a clear bimodal distribution, with nearly 50% of trips identified as empty, while other sectors showed left-skewed distributions indicating optimized loaded trips. Across all sectors, probable empty trips ranged from 10% to 30% of total trips, with a mean of 20%. The analysis also revealed that empty trips were not significantly shorter than loaded trips, suggesting that many empty vehicles travel long distances where opportunistic loads could potentially be secured. The significance of this research lies in its demonstration that existing telemetry infrastructure can be used to map empty backhaul trends without requiring new hardware or intrusive driver reporting. By identifying specific routes and regions with high frequencies of empty travel, the transportation industry and public planners can target load-matching efforts more effectively. The study concludes that reducing empty VMT through better utilization of these identified routes offers substantial potential for fuel savings and increased economic efficiency in the freight sector.

Key finding

Empty or lightly loaded commercial truck trips represent ten to thirty percent of total vehicle miles traveled, with fuel economy serving as a reliable indicator of load status when adjusted for the primary commodity carried.

Methodology

dataset

Sample size: 22831

Provenance

The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via bulk_ingest_rosap on 2026-05-23 (6 acquisition events logged).

Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.

Topics

Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.

• truck driver fatigue