Loaded RPM vs. effective RPM

Loaded RPM is the offered rate divided by loaded miles. Effective RPM is the same rate divided by total miles, loaded plus deadhead. Both describe the same load, and the gap between them is where a load that looked strong quietly stops being strong.

Brokers and load boards quote loaded RPM because it is always the prettier number. Deadhead miles burn the same fuel and the same hours as loaded miles, and they pay nothing. Effective RPM is the only version that charges the load for them.

The short version: scan with loaded RPM, decide with effective RPM.

What loaded RPM tells you, and what it hides

Loaded RPM is rate ÷ loaded miles. A $900 load over 240 loaded miles is $3.75 per loaded mile. Since every posting on the board is quoted this way, it is a fast, fair tool for sorting a page of loads.

What it hides is position. That $3.75 assumes your truck is already sitting at the shipper's gate. If the pickup is 60 miles away, you burn fuel and hours before the load pays its first dollar, and the posting never mentions it.

Effective RPM counts every mile you run

Effective RPM is rate ÷ (loaded miles + deadhead miles). It treats the trip the way your fuel gauge does: a mile is a mile, full trailer or empty.

There is a clean rule inside that math: deadhead's share of total miles equals the exact percentage cut to your loaded rate. Run 10 percent of your miles empty and effective RPM sits 10 percent under loaded RPM. Run 25 percent empty and a $2.40 posting quietly becomes $1.80.

The gap decides between two loads

Comparing loads is where the two numbers earn their keep, because the load with the better loaded RPM is not always the better load.

Load B pays $50 more and looks 10 cents stronger on the board. Count the empty miles and Load A wins by 24 cents a mile while putting 90 fewer miles on the truck. That swing, on one midweek decision, is the whole argument for running both numbers.

How to use both numbers when you book

Scan with loaded RPM because that is the language of the board. Before you call on a load, add the deadhead from where your truck actually sits and recompute. If the two numbers diverge by more than 15 percent or so, deadhead is doing real damage, and that is a fair opening to ask the broker for more money or to find a closer pickup.

On a dedicated round trip or a drop-and-hook where the next trailer is across the yard, the two numbers converge and loaded RPM alone is fine. The farther you run empty, the more the loaded number overstates the load.

Effective RPM is also the figure to hold against your cost per mile, since costs accrue on every mile too. For the arithmetic start to finish, see the step-by-step rate per mile walkthrough; for the judgment call once you have the number, see what counts as a good rate per mile. If you would rather not do it by hand, the free calculator returns both RPM figures on any rate, miles, and deadhead you enter.