With the trucking industry clawing out of a freight recession, pressure to cut costs is mounting. Fleets are desperately trying to gain momentum going into 2025. Whittling down top expense items is a top priority, yet identifying and managing hidden costs from non-freight-related (NFR) events may hold the more significant savings potential.

NFR events, such as the five covered in this article, may seem like minor detours in the daily planning process because they often don’t appear on P&L reports. Yet, they could be draining your profitability.

To help you stop the leakage, let’s examine five common NFRs in load planning.

1. Maintenance Costs: The Unseen Drain

According to the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), fleet maintenance costs held steady at $0.202 per mile last year. Even if your maintenance budget is predictable, planned and unplanned maintenance events frequently leave money on the table.

Whether you plan for drivers to stop at your facilities or outside shops, every minute of downtime equals lost revenue. Preventive maintenance (PM) services take a couple of hours, and more comprehensive services with additional inspections and repairs can take up to a full day.

Shop time doesn’t include the added time and miles that maintenance events add to a driver’s route, often hidden from the P&L. Moreover, when trucks are sidelined for maintenance, delivery schedules could be delayed, leading to dissatisfied customers and potential late penalties.

Traditional transportation management systems (TMS) make it challenging for load planners to account for the actual time and mileage tied to maintenance. Some systems also need more visibility of maintenance events coming due, leading to more extensive, costlier problems down the road.

2. Fuel Ups: More Than Just a Pit Stop

Fuel consumes up to 20% of a carrier’s operating costs, but that’s just for transactions at the pump. The actual costs extend further. Theoretically, a fuel stop should take around 10 minutes, but more activities are involved, adding time and miles.

Over a year, time lost to fueling activities adds up. Sometimes, extended mileage and time for fuel stops negatively impact delivery schedules and Hours of Service (HOS) compliance.

Fuel stops also contribute to fuel inefficiency. Idling during fueling consumes additional diesel. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that idling a semi-truck wastes 0.8 gallons of fuel per hour.

Do you know what fuel stops are costing you in time and mileage and how each driver's situation differs? Traditional TMS platforms don’t have the answer.

3. Required Driver Breaks: A Costly Necessity

Driver breaks are essential for safety and compliance but also have hidden costs. Federal regulations require drivers to take a 30-minute break after eight hours of driving, and some states, like California, have stricter rules. While crucial for preventing driver fatigue, rest breaks often extend beyond the minimum requirement, lengthening the workday and contributing to higher labor costs, lost time, and extra non-revenue miles. 

The need to plan around breaks complicates load planning. Traditional TMS platforms lack visibility to this NFR event, leading to inefficient routing and increased fuel consumption. The breaks also disrupt the flow of operations, especially for time-sensitive deliveries.

Does your TMS and mobile driver communications platform allow you to monitor and analyze inefficiencies associated with rest breaks?

4. Dwell Time: The Silent Productivity Killer

Dwell time—waiting at shippers or receivers—has long been a thorn for the trucking industry. In 2023, the average dwell time per stop was 1 hour and 40 minutes, a slight improvement from previous years but still a significant productivity drain.

Carriers typically allow a two-hour window for loading and unloading, then impose detention charges for time drivers are held up beyond this limit.

However, the hidden cost of dwell time goes beyond detention fees. Every minute a truck sits idle at a dock is a minute it’s not on the road generating revenue. Dwell time can amount to 3-5% of revenue, translating to millions of dollars in lost earnings annually.

Additionally, excess dwell time can increase the risk of crashes. Studies have shown that each additional 15 minutes of detention time increases the expected crash rate by 6.2% as drivers try to compensate for lost time.

Using technology to track dwell and detention time accurately and supporting automated workflows that prompt drivers to capture and document these NFRs has become essential to recoup lost revenue.

5. Deadhead Miles: Moving Without Earning

Deadhead miles—driven bobtail or with an empty trailer—are a double-edged sword for carriers. They represent wasted fuel and labor and increased vehicle wear and tear – all without generating revenue.

In 2023, deadhead mileage among non-tank operations rose to 16.3%, up from 15.4% the previous year, with tanker carriers experiencing deadhead rates as high as 36.2%, according to ATRI.

The financial impact of deadhead miles is significant. For one truck driving 100,000 miles a year, 28% of those miles are deadhead, and 28,000 miles cost approximately $20,482 in fuel alone—without any revenue to offset it. Additionally, the increased wear and tear on the truck leads to higher maintenance costs, further eroding profits.

Deadhead miles are frequently tied to NFR events, such as maintenance, fuel stops, and driver rest breaks. Unless your TMS system can add NFR events to the route plan, it is difficult, if not impossible, to track them accurately.

The Cost of Ignoring Non-Freight-Related Events

The trucking industry is focused on optimizing freight-related expenses, but identifying the hidden costs associated with non-freight-related events is equally important. Maintenance, fuel stops, required driver breaks, dwell time, and deadhead miles can seem like minor inconveniences but create significant drains on profitability.

To mitigate these costs, you could adopt a more advanced TMS that accounts for NFR events and provides greater visibility of their impact on operations. By doing so, you can make more informed decisions, reduce inefficiencies, and, ultimately, protect your bottom line. 

The Magnus Platform delivers realistic load planning with a simple, cohesive process that allows you to add NFR events to driver routes and precisely manage the associated time, miles, and costs. Don’t delay; schedule a personalized demo today to see how.