best truck load boards

My advice is start with Getloaded.com and Truckstop.com. And perhaps freightmatch.transcore.com
And pay them for seeing if the broker is credit worthy before you take a load.

Once you get the hang of what is going on you can quit load boards as you see the need. Another tip is ask for more money when you are considering a load. They will say no in this economy usually, but at times they NEED you and will say yes. I wish you the best. HANG IN THERE and WORK HARD. Remember the odds are against you and you need to beat the odds.

 

Getting a brokers to come up in price works well when you're in a good freight area on a friday, asking about a load that needs to be at someones dock 1500 miles away on monday. They start to get get serious then.

OTOH, if your in Florida about mid july, this all goes out the window LOL

 

Is this another one of those boards where shippers that can't get anyone to haul their loads post, hoping someone desperate who knows nothing about cost of operation will haul their cheap freight?

 

I have been on getloaded for 5 months or so, it was good till I subscribed to ITS, which really showed me what a good loadboard should be! Been using ITS since and seem to find decent loads even in the dreaded CA west coast where I'm based. One day not too long ago I decided I'd give 360 a shot, the sales lady on the phone explained how much better it was than ITS and how much better their site was for $100 per month, about the same money I pay for ITS so I signed up and gave it a shot. A couple of days later 360 called me and said I was all set up and wanted to walk me through my first time using the site, within minutes I found it was useless in comparison and the little things such as multiple load searches etc would not work, when I asked why I can't do this they said I needed to upgrade to the $300 per month version! Yeah I'm sure you have an idea what I told them! The sales lady I talked to called me back to see what was wrong, so I explained to her that I did not like being scammed, and how frustrated I was at her for promising at the same price a better service, software and better paying loads, oh and more loads than ITS, not to mention the BS she told me that loads post on the DAT loadboards half an hour before they are seen on any other loadboard because they have some kind of agreement being the first loadboard ever and so on. She said she would speak to her manager to see if she could get me the full on version for the $100 per month, so I agreed if she done this I would keep their service. I played around with 360 and ITS for a few days comparing searches and I can tell you every state and load type i tried ITS had way more loads, and I don't mean multiples of the same load! I finally get a call from the 360 manager, he tried telling me the same BS the sales lady did, our site is better and so on, he even said that 360 has more bigger brokers loads on their site than anyone else, which my response to that was, do you really think I want to pay 3 times the price of your competition to see $1.50 per mile loads that need to be tarped with your so called bigger better brokers!? Then he said I could open up an individual page for each load search I wanted. Right like I want to have 15 separate pages loading every minute all day on my computer, that wouldn't be long eating up my MYFI GB's! And hey, I have to drive the truck too! I'm not in my office spending my day trying single random searches!
Bottom line I explained to him how I saw it as a user, 360 sucks in comparison to ITS but I would pay the $100 per month for the full version. He wouldn't go for it so I canceled it. Let's see how many times they take money out of my bank account. Last time I heard someone telling how good their below par product was and try to do a hard sale on me was the Kirby vacuum guys at my front door! I believe DAT need to quit their BS and wake up from their fairytale dream of being the best loadboard out there, move with the times DAT! Oh btw I still have getloaded also.
Just my experience so far with the boards.

 

I'm a big fan of Internet Truckstop. easy to post multiple loads at a time and I can directly match.

 

Which of the above listed has worked the best in your opinion?

 

Any board that uses DAT are all the same except for the skin. DAT is franchised out, and many of the big sites all have the same exact board, just a different website, and I wonder how many different boards there actually are. I can't imagine there being more than 3 or 4 different load boards.

 

ITS, DAT, whatever is all the same. LS, CHR and hundreds likely thousands of trucking companies brokerages out there with their own independent load board. The best spot freight that I ever see mostly comes from contract carriers who have email lists of approved carriers although, this will sound against the grain, CHR has some really great paying contract stuff as well. Just have to wade thru a lot of poo to find it. LS freight that they cover for 3PL's that I haul is always high dollar. I view ITS as something to fill in gaps. Have made a few solid contacts off it but for the most part rarely use it. I know others who use it as "go-to" and do well. Have to figure your own system and way thru trial and error.

 

Do all you still feel the same way about the boards? DAT and ITS are the best to go with?

 

U said it. Lots of these "fly-by-nite" broker wanna-be's that try to broker a trucking company's contract to make a little money off of someone elses contracts is one of the things killing this industry. One of the reasons some rates are dropping. I get pretty good rates from the contract holders myself also. I dont like dealing with those brokers that dont hold the contract to the load. Pay is too low and have to wait forever to get paid...what a scam. When we say "NO" to cheap freight, we can get rid of some of these "Bottom Feeder Brokers". Be safe out there drivers.