O/O Owned Broker Co-Op

Have you ever tried to get a bunch of truckers to agree on how to do something ? Ain't no way.

 

I put forth the same Idea with a few others I knew from another site.
My thoughts were for the o/o's to setup a brokerage for o/o's. The
probelm was no one wanted to put money towards the bond.
Everyone thinks something is great as long as they don't have to invest.
I would still like to explore this idea if I could run accross some others that would invest too. Right now the biggest drawback is have truck availabilty for small one or few truck operators.

 

I suggested a Co-Op at least 20 years ago. You are 100% correct, they like to be INDEPENDENT owner operators.

I guess a lot of them just can't stand prosperity.

 

The only way you could compete with large carriers is to pull freight down the road for same price as they already are. I don't know about you but I do not wish to work that cheap.

It does not cut out the middle man. There will still be somebody getting money off the top before it goes to the truck. I understand that the middle man in this case would be an employee of the co-op. But the employee(s) and all related aspects would still have to be paid before the truck.

It does have some merrit to it, but would definately take some time to build it into a profitable business.

 

A couple problems I see with this model. If you really want to work with large shippers, you have to be able to committ to moving a certain number of loads. The co-op broker would not be able to do this. He could only offer the loads to the independent contractors that are members of the co-op. I think the broker would end up giving a lot of loads back.

Who gives the broker direction? Who does the broker report to?

How would the broker be compensated?

How would you set rates?

I could see this working on a small scale...one broker and a few trucks where it is easy to keep everyone on the same page. If it got too large, it would take management and then it is the same thing as Landstar.

If you get more than a few trucks together, you begin to loose the edge ind cont have over othere trucking companies. Suddenly, you have overhead.

It is a great idea in theory...I just don't see overcoming the practical challenges. If anyone pulls it off, I would love to hear about your success. Good luck.

 

Seems to me that,,,,,,, this would be the same thing as a union of independent O/O. Just thinking here ,,,,,,,, wouldn't that ,,take the Business part of being a true INDEPENDENT, out of the picture. I could be wrong??? Wouldn't this also be the same thing as a Dispatch service. were you are giving the "person" a percentage of the load to find and 'negotiate' the haul rate and terms of the load..

 

The more I think about it, the more it seems like what Landstar or Mercer already do.

 

and sooner or later someone will get greedy cut the rates and you will be able to get a better paying load from trinity transport or coverent