Is a full truckload lower carbon per tonne than a part load?
Per tonne, yes. A truck burns only a little more diesel when full, so emissions per tonne-km fall as the load rises. A half-empty truck can double the emissions per tonne. Consolidating shipments, or asking your transporter to load-share, is often the cheapest freight cut you can make.
How to measure it
- Diesel per trip from the transporter, or a factor per vehicle size.
- Tonnes carried per trip from invoices or weighbridge slips.
- Divide trip emissions by tonne-km to compare loads.
When part loads make sense
Urgent or small orders may need part loads. Report them honestly; a shared or groupage truck allocates its trip across all the shippers on it.
What Senseible does here
Senseible reads bills, fuel invoices and production records into dated, fingerprinted records, so the figure you send a buyer can be traced to its documents.
Sources: Smart Freight Centre, GLEC Framework, GHG Protocol Scope 3 Standard, 2006 IPCC Guidelines, Volume 2 Energy
Last reviewed 2026-10-23.