According to the National Private Truck Council, roughly 28 percent of the trailers on U.S. highways are running empty, at huge costs to companies, the economy, and the environment. This is the case despite the many years of effort spent on supply chain optimization, the multiple releases of sophisticated transportation management software and the consistent efforts to take costs out of truck transportation.

Both private trucking fleets and carriers face this challenge. But a new Internet portal, charging fees as low as $1,600 a year, is enabling Macy's, the large American retailer and Schneider National, one of North America’s largest truckload carriers, to fill more of those empty miles—and reap big savings as a result. The service is essentially an electronic bulletin board that allows a carrier with an empty lane to pair up with a shipper that has a load ready for that lane. The excitement and buzz around this portal is that it is creating new interactions between carriers and shippers across a range of vertical industries—potential partners that may never have had reason to work together before.

So what's the basic idea behind Empty Miles and where did it come from? Under the program, a shipper can connect with another company that pays a discounted rate to ship freight on the return trip. The carrier then takes most of the money paid by the second company, keeps a small amount, and passes the remainder along as a refund to the first company. The first shipper gets money that would have been wasted on an empty trip; the second is able to ship at lower rates; and the carrier makes money too.

The subscription-based service was developed by the Voluntary Interindustry Commerce Solutions Association (VICS), a non-profit group that works with member corporations—chiefly in retail and consumer-focused industries—to improve supply chain efficiency and effectiveness. VICS holds regular conferences for members on key themes such as transportation.

Shippers and carriers are very familiar with this longstanding problem. The challenge is how does a shipper find and create round trip movements with companies with whom it has no existing relationship. That is what is different about the Empty Miles program. It allows business alliances to form rather than just creating round trips. It is far more than finding loads on a load board; it is about forming business partnerships that can produce ongoing freight transportation cost savings.

Those themes had been in discussion between VICS and its Canadian e-commerce standards partner GS1 since the third quarter of 2007. The GS1 group built a pre-prototype for Empty Miles. By early 2008, the topic—and the potential tool—were under review by VICS industry focus groups. Macy's and Schneider—both longstanding VICS members—saw big benefits in an empty-miles solution and became heavily involved in the discussion. The challenge was not a technical one. It was more about business rules and practices.

The project work evolved in the form of a Web-based password protected portal that is accessed by subscribers. Any supply chain organization can subscribe—VICS member or not. The program's success relies on a critical mass of participants to provide more opportunities for good matches. The objective: Bring together retailers, manufacturers, and carriers as trading partners to collaborate and mutually benefit from reducing empty miles.

By January 2009, VICS and GS1 had launched the Empty Miles Service. As VICS members, Macy's and Schneider pay $1,600 a year in fees (non-VICS members pay $1,850.) As charter members, the retailer and carrier were quick to load their lane data into the system.

Macy's and Schneider saw results very quickly. Filling those first two lanes yielded the $25,000-a-year savings. Here is a quick summary of the results.

• Increased Sustainability – reduced carbon emissions.
• Increased Revenue - Schneider National has increased dedicated backhaul revenue by 25 percent on specific accounts.
• Decreased Costs - Schneider has decreased its operating costs by eliminating 11 percent of its empty miles and filling 22 percent more backhaul lanes.
• New Business - Schneider has been able to increase business with existing customers and develop new customers through the services it offers.
• Greater Customer Satisfaction - Based on improved capacity optimization, Schneider is able to offer more competitive rates and still offer the service that shippers expect.

To date, Empty Miles has 40 corporations on board—roughly half carriers, half shippers—with household name participants such as Best Buy, Nestlé, Johnson & Johnson, J.B. Hunt and Schneider National. The program has the potential to pull in hundreds, if not thousands more across the United States and Canada. For all its obvious advantages, Empty Miles is a work in progress. Critical to its long-term success is wider acceptance—particularly among transportation managers—and a deeper commitment to commit to make Empty Miles work. Nevertheless, this new service has the potential to be an attractive option for shippers and carriers seeking to address their empty mile conundrum.