Deadhead, TONU, factoring, dispatch fee — the words your first rate con assumes you already know. Here’s what they actually mean.
Fortuna Dispatch Desk, reviewed by David White
Your first rate con lands in your phone and half of it reads like a different language. Deadhead. TONU. Dispatch fee. Factoring. Nobody hands a new driver a glossary before that first load. The material out there mostly covers safety rules and paperwork, not the money words a dispatcher or broker uses without a second thought.
This is that glossary. Not a course, not a legal breakdown, just the plain-language meaning of the terms you will actually run into on a rate con, a load board, or a phone call, grouped by where you will meet them. A forum thread or a quick answer from another driver usually explains one word in passing, not the whole list at once. This puts it all in one place. Read it end to end once, or jump straight to the section you need before you sign anything.
A handful of roles and documents show up before a wheel turns. Get these straight first, because most of the other terms on this list refer back to them.
These are the words attached to real dollar figures. Two drivers can look at the same rate con and read it differently if they do not agree on what each term covers.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Linehaul | The base pay for moving the freight, before any fuel surcharge or accessorial pay like detention is added. |
| Fuel surcharge (FSC) | An add-on to the linehaul meant to offset swings in the price of diesel. Sometimes it is broken out as its own line, sometimes it is already folded into the total. Check which one your rate con is doing. |
| Deadhead | Miles driven empty, usually to reach a pickup. Deadhead miles do not pay the same as loaded miles, and some rate cons do not pay them at all. |
| Loaded miles | Miles driven with freight on the trailer. This is the number a rate-per-mile calculation should actually be based on. |
| Rate per mile (RPM) | Linehaul divided by miles driven. Worth calculating two ways: loaded-only, and all-in with deadhead included. |
| Gross pay | The total that comes in before fuel, insurance, the truck payment, or any fee is subtracted. |
| Net pay | What is actually left after every expense is paid. See our full owner-operator net pay math for how to work it out from your own numbers. |
| Factoring | A separate service from dispatching: a factoring company advances most of an invoice’s value up front, commonly 90–97%, and collects the rest once the broker settles the invoice in full. It keeps a fee of its own for that, usually 1–5% of the invoice, which is separate from and on top of a dispatcher’s fee. Ask any factoring company for both numbers before you sign: the advance, and the fee. |
Four line items get lumped together as “extra money,” and each one only gets paid if the rate con actually states it. None of the four is a favor. Each one is pay for time or for costs a driver has already absorbed.
For exactly what proof each of these needs and how the claim actually gets paid, see Detention, TONU and Layover Pay: How to Actually Collect It.
These are the words for how you are set up legally and financially, not for what you haul.
Not dispatch vocabulary exactly, but words for what you are actually pulling, and they shape which loads you can even see on a board.
None of this is dispatching, but you will hear it from a dispatcher, a safety department, or another driver, so it is worth knowing what is actually meant.
None of these terms are complicated once somebody actually defines them. The confusion is almost always that nobody did, not that the concept itself is hard, and a lot of it only gets explained after a driver has already been caught out by it once. Keep this list handy the next time a rate con, a dispatcher, or a load board hands you a word nobody bothered to explain.
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