Three places where the margin goes
Empty kilometres, unrecorded waiting time at the ramp and unbilled additional services — none of them appear in the calculation.
Road Transport
Manage transport networks profitably
Land transport needs clear management of margin, utilization, network and process quality.
Context
Operational logistics needs commercial leadership
In many companies, transports are planned and monitored but not consistently managed for profitability. LOG|CONS steps in where dispatching, controlling and management need the same basis for decisions.
Driver time is the scarcest resource
Scarcer than vehicle and capital. An hour at the ramp ties it up for an unpaid purpose.
Price floor from your own history
What this lane actually cost — including empty running, waiting time and additional services. Not from a rate per kilometre.
Sequence · about 45 seconds
A trip from enquiry to invoice — and where the money is lost
An enquiry comes in: lane, date, cargo.
Runs automatically · can be paused at any time
Sourced figures
What can be publicly verified
Three figures from official and published sources.
21,6 %
of vehicle kilometres in EU road freight were empty runs in 2024 (2023: 21.8 %). In national traffic it is around 24–25 %, in international traffic only 13 %.
Eurostat, road freight transport statistics 2024
around 75 %
of inland freight transport performance in the EU runs by road — ahead of rail and inland waterways combined.
Eurostat, modal split (tonne-kilometres)
34 %
empty-run share in Austria (2023) — one of the highest values in the EU, alongside Ireland and Greece. Heavily distorted by construction and local traffic and not representative of FTL long-haul.
Eurostat, road freight transport statistics 2023
In detail
Operational logistics needs commercial leadership
Where the margin is actually lost
Rarely on the price of the outbound leg. Far more often at three points that appear in no calculation:
- Empty kilometres: Cost diesel, tolls, driver time and depreciation — and bring in nothing.
- Waiting time at the ramp: It is experienced but rarely recorded. What is not recorded cannot be billed.
- Additional services: Second delivery attempt, repalletising, customs. Small on their own, together the difference between a workable lane and a tight one.
None of the three is a negotiating problem; all three are a recording problem. Record them and you can talk about them.
The driver shortage changes the calculation
Driver time becomes the scarcest resource in the business — ahead of the vehicle and ahead of capital. An hour at the ramp ties it up for an unpaid purpose.
Businesses that know and bill their standing times have a double advantage: They get paid for the time and become a better employer for drivers.
What the legal framework dictates
Cabotage, the return obligation, posting rules, tight driving and rest times, a tachograph that makes breaches easy to prove: the room an ambitious trip used to have no longer exists.
That moves the work forward — a trip that only fails on rest time while under way costs more than one discarded during planning.
What can be steered
- Not steerable: Diesel price, tolls, wage levels.
- Steerable: Utilisation per vehicle, share of lanes with counter-traffic, time from enquiry to quote, recording of additional services, where the price floor comes from.
The second list is the shorter and the more effective one — and it starts without investment.
Frequently asked questions
Road transport, costs and utilisation
How high is empty running in Europe?
For 2024 Eurostat reports 21.6 % of vehicle kilometres — national 24–25 %, international 13 %. Austria sits at the top end with 34.0 % (2023), distorted by construction and local traffic.
For your own business the average is a reference point, not a target: realistic are 12–18 % in international charter traffic, 8–12 % for well-dispatched round-trip fleets.
Why is demurrage so hard to enforce?
Because it is almost never documented. It becomes enforceable when arrival and departure are recorded automatically and the agreement is in place beforehand. The effort lies in the recording, not in the conversation.
What does an empty kilometre cost?
Variable vehicle costs plus the share of driver time — and no revenue. The real loss, though, is the contribution margin that could have been earned in the same time.
How do you calculate a price floor?
Only from your own history: what did this lane actually cost — including empty running, waiting time and additional services? A rate per kilometre underestimates exactly the items that make the difference.
What did the Mobility Package change?
The cabotage restriction with its cooling-off period, the vehicle return obligation and the posting rules. All three act on trip planning: they limit which chains are permissible at all.
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