Empty miles: how far you drive for nothing

11. 8. 2026

You get paid for the ride. You do not get paid for the trip out to the customer and back to base — and yet it burns fuel, the driver's time and the life of the car. In small operations the share of empty miles tends to be surprisingly high, simply because nobody ever measured it.

How to work it out with no extra technology

Compare two numbers for the month: kilometres on the odometer and kilometres recorded on rides. The difference is repositioning, refuelling and everything else.

If a third of your distance turns out to be empty, that is not a scandal — it is normal for an on-demand service across scattered villages. What matters is whether the number improves over time.

Four things that shorten it

Chaining rides together. The cheapest kilometre is the one you drive from where you have just dropped somebody off. When the dispatcher can see where the car will be at a given time, slots can be offered more cleverly.

Waiting instead of returning. For short errands — blood tests, a prescription, a pharmacy — waiting almost always wins. The threshold tends to sit around twenty minutes.

Return legs booked straight away. If you know you are driving back in two hours, you can plan something nearby instead of a trip home.

Neighbourly routes. Two customers from the same street going to the same doctor at a similar time are a gift. You only spot them when the dispatcher has the day in front of her, not in her head.

Beware the false economy

You can replan an operation around distance so hard that the driver and the customers both lose patience. Senior transport is not parcel delivery — somebody whose blood test is at ten cannot leave at half past eight because it routes better. Empty miles are the price of a service that runs when people need it.

The target is not zero. The target is to know the number and not let it grow.

Kilometres are recorded on rides and totalled in Statistics and in the monthly report.

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