Besides paying your drivers, there are many other operational uses for the data you collect. In the last post I talked about deadhead miles by run. In this post we’ll cover detoured drivers.
By detoured, I don’t mean construction detours. If you can record hub miles, whether you pay them or not, try sending two different teams or drivers on the same roundtrip and check the hub miles on the trip reports when they get back. It’s not unusual to see as much as a five percent difference if you picked the right drivers to sample. That five percent on a 5,000 mile roundtrip is 250 miles of extra diesel and maintenance for your equipment. That’s a lot to be giving away even if you only pay PC Miler miles so the driver isn’t getting paid any extra!
A truck with team drivers could do this every week putting 13,000 unnecessary miles per year on your truck and using over 2,000 gallons of diesel for no reason that benefits the company. When you ask them about the higher miles, they’ll say something like their route has better roads or less traffic. Those may be good reasons to the driver but as long as it is you money to pay for the truck, that’s your decision to make.
Mike Ritzema
Superior Trucking Payroll Service
This also works for reducing fuel costs.
Thanks for commenting Bob, fuels costs are a big reason why the out of route miles cost trucking companies so much money.