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Perspective: The greenest mile is the one you don’t run
Continuous network optimization lowers deadhead and improves asset use, Frank says
Fleets using AI earlier in their workflows are gaining a leg up in efficiency and sustainability. (Transport Topics with AI assistance)
Key Takeaways:
- Erica Frank argues that AI-driven decision optimization improves trucking sustainability by shaping load acceptance and network planning before trucks begin moving.
- Data shows deadhead accounts for nearly 20% of truck miles while medium- and heavy-duty trucks emit roughly 186 grams of CO2 per ton-mile.
- Frank says fleets can cut empty miles and emissions by evaluating freight earlier, optimizing across networks and directing planners toward higher-value decisions.
When trucking executives discuss sustainability, the conversation almost always starts at the truck. Cleaner fuels. Better aerodynamics. Tighter routing once a load is dispatched. Those investments matter, but they address only half the problem. The biggest sustainability wins in trucking happen before a single wheel turns.
For years, fleet technology focused on applying data toward the next route, using what already happened to inform what comes next. It’s useful, but only reactive. The fleets pulling ahead today are inserting artificial intelligence at a different point in the workflow: the decision point. They use it to make smarter calls about which loads to take, how to match equipment to freight, and how to sequence work across a network before a single mile is committed. That shift, from reacting to deciding, is where sustainability and profitability stop competing.
Start with deadhead. Empty miles are the distance a truck moves with no load, returning to base or repositioning for the next pickup. Industry research from the American Transportation Research Institute puts deadhead at nearly 20% of all truck miles and higher among private fleets. That is fuel, driver hours and maintenance spent generating no revenue. It is also an emissions problem hiding in plain sight.
Medium- and heavy-duty trucks emit roughly 186 grams of CO2 per ton-mile, according to the EPA’s 2025 Emission Factors for Greenhouse Gas Inventories, and the agency attributes about 23% of U.S. transportation greenhouse gas emissions to this truck class. When carriers apply decision optimization continuously across the full network, that share of empty miles falls. It is not a marginal efficiency gain. It is a structural change in how a fleet operates.
Equipment will eventually reshape the industry. Electrification, alternative fuels and aerodynamic designs all have a role. But those investments are capital-intensive, slow to scale and dependent on infrastructure still being built. A 2022 McKinsey survey of more than 200 U.S. fleets found that while two-thirds are committed to decarbonization and over half are piloting zero-emission vehicles, fewer than 10% see a viable path to scaling adoption.
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Frank
Network optimization works with the fleet a carrier already has. The greenest mile is often the one you never needed to run. When the path runs through new equipment, the answer lives with the chief financial officer and procurement. When it runs through smarter decisions, it lives with the dispatcher, the planner and the driver reviewing those recommendations. Sustainability becomes operational, not aspirational.
The fleets seeing the biggest gains have made three shifts. First, they evaluate freight earlier. Instead of accepting loads and figuring out coverage later, they optimize at the point of acceptance. The question is no longer whether we can cover this load, but whether this load improves our network. Second, they match equipment and drivers at the network level, not the regional level. Most planning still happens in silos, where a planner sees only their lanes and their week. Smarter optimization sees the whole board, weeks ahead. Third, they free planners and dispatchers from clearing a queue to focus on the decisions that need human judgment. Attentive planners make better decisions, and better decisions burn less fuel.
What makes this powerful is not any single call. It is the compounding of thousands of slightly better decisions, made consistently across a network. A truck running fuller, on better-fitting freight, with less deadhead, earns more and emits less. Most decarbonization stories ask carriers to spend money or accept trade-offs. This one asks them to make better decisions with the assets they already have and rewards them on both sides of the ledger.
The trucks of the future will be greener. But the most sustainable mile of all is the one a fleet was smart enough not to run.
Erica Frank is SVP of marketing at Optimal Dynamics, where she leads positioning for the company’s decision automation platform for trucking and logistics carriers.
