Do you know the real cost of empty runs in B2B road transport in Europe?

Everyone talks about sustainability and how important it is to reduce empty running in road transport. But do you know why?

Go to any logistics conference or open any industry newsletter, and you will see the word "sustainability" plastered everywhere. We are told constantly that cutting empty miles is good for the planet. And it is. But let’s be completely honest: if saving the planet were the only incentive, we wouldn't still have 36 billion empty kilometres being driven across Europe every single year.

The real reason empty running is the ultimate crisis in B2B transport isn't just the carbon footprint. It is the brutal, hidden financial drain on your daily operations.

When more than a fifth of all road freight kilometres in Europe (21.6%) are travelled by completely empty vehicles, we aren't just looking at an environmental hiccup. We are looking at a massive structural flaw that eats margins, wastes driver hours, and drives up freight rates for everyone.

If you want to understand why empty running is breaking your supply chain, you have to look past the green headlines and dive straight into the real cost anatomy.

Empty truck running is not a cheap problem

There is a dangerous assumption in logistics planning that an empty truck is a relatively cheap problem. The logic usually goes: "The truck has to get back anyway, and at least it burns less diesel when it is empty." That thought process is exactly how companies leak thousands of euros a week.

According to data from the Comité National Routier (CNR), the direct kilometre cost of running an empty 44 tonne articulated vehicle is about €0.57 per km. That covers the cash immediately leaving your pocket: fuel, tyres, maintenance, and tolls.

But a truck does not operate in a vacuum. When you factor in the driver’s hourly wage, equipment depreciation, insurance, and administrative overheads, the true network economic burden of that asset climbs to roughly €1.61 per km.

Look at what happens to your cash on a standard 250 km empty positioning leg:

Because that empty leg generates zero revenue, the paying legs have to carry the financial weight of the entire trip. If an operator runs empty a quarter of the time on national routes, their break-even rate required on the loaded legs spikes from €1.61 to €2.17 per km.

You are paying for that empty air whether it is itemized on your invoice or hidden inside an inflated freight rate.

Wasting human capacity

Wasting money is painful, but wasting human capacity right now is catastrophic.

The International Road Transport Union (IRU) reports roughly 426,000 unfilled truck driver positions in Europe. Compounding the crisis, more than 3.4 million truck drivers are projected to retire over the next five years.

When drivers are this scarce, an empty mile is no longer just a financial loss; it is a systemic failure. Every hour a driver spends navigating an empty rig down the motorway is an hour of capacity pulled entirely out of the European supply chain. We are burning a finite, highly constrained human resource on empty runs, directly increasing service instability and supply chain fragility.

Fragmented planning

Some level of empty running is built into geography. Ports import massive volumes that need to be distributed; construction sites pull raw materials in one direction and send nothing back.

But the vast majority of Europe’s empty miles are caused by fragmented planning, isolated spreadsheets, and a lack of real time visibility.

Fixing this requires moving away from localized dispatching and adopting collaborative, data driven structures:

• Freight Consolidation: Connecting companies with opposite shipping routes. By overlapping their journeys, the outbound trip of one business seamlessly becomes the return trip for another.

• Backloading: Securing and matching return trips through smart algorithms before a vehicle ever leaves its origin, ensuring drivers never travel empty on the way back.

• Centralized Control: Providing complete network visibility in real time. This allows us to coordinate and optimize linehaul movements across thousands of carriers at the exact same moment.

Reducing empty running is the single fastest way to lower your costs and protect your capacity. But to fix the problem, you have to stop looking at it as a sustainability box to check, and start treating it like the multi billion euro operational drain that it is.