Your Trailers Are Costing You Money While They Sit.

REPOWR CCO Todd Waldron joined Chris Jolly on The Freight Coach podcast to talk idle assets, trailer repositioning, and why decoupling the truck from the trailer might be the smartest thing a fleet can do right now.

The Problem Nobody Talks About Loudly Enough

Every fleet above a certain size has the same dirty secret: trailers sitting in yards, on customer lots, and at drop locations across the country not moving, not generating revenue, yet still incurring costs.

Todd Waldron, REPOWR's Chief Commercial Officer, sat down with Chris Jolly on The Freight Coach podcast to put real numbers to what most fleet operators already feel but rarely quantify.

The average large fleet sees 10-15% idle trailer days. At $12-$15 per day, that's $400-$1,000 per trailer per year, just sitting there. Layer on top of that the cost of repositioning, when trailers pile up in the wrong markets and have to be moved empty to where freight demand actually is, and you're looking at another 10-12% in annual empty miles, roughly $2,400 per trailer per year in relocation costs alone.

For a fleet running 500 trailers, those two numbers together can represent $2-3 million annually in combined cost and lost revenue. That's not a rounding error. That's a line item that should have a strategy attached to it.

Why Repositioning Is So Hard to Fix Manually

Part of the reason this problem has persisted is that it's genuinely complex. Freight demand is volatile. Customer commitments look one way on paper and play out differently on the ground. A trailer pool that was perfectly balanced on Monday can be three markets out of position by Friday.

Todd described it plainly: fleets are managing this with spreadsheets, phone calls, and institutional knowledge, trying to manually track where surpluses and deficits exist across their networks and then paying to correct the imbalance. Sometimes that means repositioning on a deadhead move with their own drivers. Sometimes it means paying a broker to run the trailer as a shipment just to get it to the right market.

Either way, it's a cost. And it's a cost that's been treated as unavoidable for a long time because there was no systematic alternative.

The Smarter Approach: Get Paid to Reposition

The core idea behind REPOWR is that trailer repositioning doesn't have to be a cost center. If you need a trailer moved from Phoenix to Dallas, why pay to move it empty when you could list it on a platform, have a carrier use it to cover a load heading that direction, and generate revenue in the process?

That's the model - connecting fleets that have surplus trailer capacity in one market with carriers that need trailer access in that same market, and letting demand do the repositioning work. Instead of incurring the cost of moving equipment, you're getting paid for it.

Todd also walked through the demand side of the equation: carriers who need short-term trailer access without committing to multi-year leases, brokers trying to participate in drop-trailer freight and build trailer pools for shipper RFPs, and fleets managing new account startups or phase-outs where a specific number of trailers need to move to a new location quickly.

Decoupling the Truck, the Driver, and the Trailer

One of the most useful frameworks Todd laid out in the conversation was what happens when you decouple the three variables that traditionally had to align to cover a load: the truck, the driver, and the trailer.

Historically, if you didn't have all three available in the same place at the same time, you couldn't cover the freight. That constraint has shaped how fleets buy equipment, how they commit to customers, and how much capital they tie up in assets that may or may not be running efficiently at any given moment.

When trailer access becomes flexible, when you can source a trailer where you need it, when you need it, without owning it permanently, the math on fleet operations changes. You can take on a new customer without buying 50 trailers first. You can hedge against losing a core account without those trailers becoming a balance sheet liability. You can surge into a new mode without a long-term lease commitment. Optionality has real dollar value, and most fleets have been operating without it on the trailer side.

Security and Accountability in a Shared Network

The obvious question when you're sharing your equipment with carriers you don't know is: how do you protect it?

Todd walked through the multi-layer security approach REPOWR has built. First, carrier vetting through Highway - re-credentialing every carrier on the platform to confirm they are who they say they are before they're approved to book a trailer. Second, load-level tracking through GenLogs, which generates a ping every time a trailer is seen on the road and identifies which carrier has it at that moment. Combined with mandatory pre-trip photo documentation and specific drop requirements built into every reservation, there's a clear chain of custody from the moment a trailer leaves until the moment it's returned.

As Todd noted, there's an argument that trailers in active use with regular checkpoints are actually better monitored than trailers sitting in a yard where nobody's checking on them.

Introducing the Trailer Optimization Platform

Toward the end of the conversation, Todd introduced what REPOWR has been building toward: the Trailer Optimization Platform (TOP) - the industry's first platform designed to help large fleets manage, balance, and optimize their trailer pools systematically rather than manually.

TOP gives fleet operators visibility into their surpluses and deficits across regions and automates the process of posting repositioning moves into the marketplace. Fleets can choose how much control they want - a manual review of what gets posted, or a fully automated approach based on configurable thresholds. Either way, what used to live in spreadsheets and dispatch calls now has a dedicated platform behind it.

The long-term vision Todd described is a universal trailer network - a model where trailer access is flexible enough that carriers, brokers, and even shippers can source capacity where they need it, when they need it, without the capital exposure that comes with ownership. That's not a distant concept. It's the direction the industry is already moving.

The freight market will always have volatility. Rates will spike and soften. Customers will come and go. Capacity will get added and absorbed. That's not new.

What is new is the ability to treat trailers as flexible network assets rather than fixed capital commitments. To generate revenue from idle equipment, reduce repositioning costs, and build operational flexibility into a part of the business that has historically been anything but flexible.

If you're running a fleet with trailers sitting in yards right now, the question isn't whether those assets are costing you money. They are. The question is what you're going to do about it.

Listen to Todd Waldron's full conversation with Chris Jolly on The Freight Coach podcast.

From the Episode: Todd Waldron on The Freight Coach with Chris Jolly

Chris Jolly: Right now, more than ever, the person with the truck is going to win at the end of the day. But Todd, you've been talking about something different - how do fleets actually make money on assets when they're just sitting there?

Todd Waldron: Yeah, there's really a twofold benefit for someone supplying into the trailer marketplace. Large fleets typically see 10 to 15% idle trailer days - assume $12 to $15 a day, that's $400 to $1,000 per trailer per year just in idle costs. On top of that, fleets are often trying to balance their networks to support customer demand, and when those networks get imbalanced, you see 10 to 12% annual empty miles just to relocate capacity to where it needs to be. That's another $2,400 per trailer per year in relocation costs. We see potential for $2 to $3 million in annual cost savings or revenue benefits from optimizing something like this, where, instead of paying to move an empty trailer, you're actually getting paid as carriers use those trailers to reposition them where you need them.

Chris Jolly: Are trucking companies just paying their own drivers to run empty and reposition trailers in certain markets? Is that just standard practice because there's never been an alternative?

Todd Waldron: Absolutely. We know how volatile shipment demand is. A customer sets up a trailer pool for X loads per week, but the reality when you get tendered 48 hours in advance is very different. You plan for assets in one location, and suddenly you don't have them in another. So yes, we see constant deadhead miles trying to relocate capacity, whether fleets are using their own trucks or paying brokers to move trailers as shipments. Either way, you're incurring that cost because you want to service your customer.

Chris Jolly: How does the repositioning side actually work? Walk me through the different options.

Todd Waldron: There's the repositioning component where a fleet needs to get a trailer to a specific market, so they post it as a listing with a rental fee, and the carrier who picks it up and uses it pays for that. That's the ideal outcome: you need the trailer moved and you get paid for it. But if it's more time-sensitive, we also have the option to pay someone to move it, or work with partner brokers on a load-and-trailer solution where we cover the move cost. On the demand side, you have carriers with short-term rental needs, maybe they have equipment in the shop, they're turning down loads, or they want to take a different mode for a customer. They can rent through REPOWR without long-term lease commitments, covering surges or gaps without overcommitting capital.

Chris Jolly: What about security? If I own trailers, that's my biggest question: how do you make sure whoever's moving my equipment is legitimate and accountable?

Todd Waldron: We’ve got layers. First, we vet every carrier through Highway to confirm they are who they say they are before they're approved to book. About a year ago, we re-vetted the entire carrier network through that process. Second, we use GenLogs, which pings every time that trailer is seen on the road and identifies the carrier hauling it. So you have confirmation in real time that the right carrier has it, and if something goes wrong, you have the tracking to help locate it. On top of that, there are clear expectations built into every reservation - where the trailer needs to be dropped, secured yard requirements - so there's no ambiguity about where your equipment is supposed to end up.

Chris Jolly: Tell me about the Trailer Optimization Platform.

Todd Waldron: We just soft-launched TOP, the Trailer Optimization Platform. It helps large fleets manage and balance their trailer pools with either manual support or an automated solution. Instead of managing surpluses and deficits in spreadsheets, fleets now have a platform that tracks where they're long and short across regions and automatically posts repositioning moves into the marketplace. You can configure how much you want to control manually versus automate. It's really taking what fleets have been trying to do with spreadsheets and phone calls and giving it actual infrastructure.

Chris Jolly: Where do you see the bigger opportunity right now, on the supply side or the demand side?

Todd Waldron: Both, honestly. The supply side is fleets realizing their trailers are the last unoptimized asset in transportation. The demand side is carriers and brokers gaining flexibility they've never had and being able to participate in drop-trailer freight, cover surges without long-term commitments, mode-switch when higher-paying loads are available. As soon as you decouple the truck and the driver from the trailer, you dramatically increase your flexibility and efficiency. Those three things used to have to align perfectly to cover a load. When the trailer becomes a flexible variable, everything about how you run your business gets easier.

Find Todd Waldron at repowr.com or connect with him directly at todd@repowr.com. Listen to the full episode on The Freight Coach podcast.