HAZMAT questions in general and specific.

Having called on loadboard hazmat I have yet to be blown away by anything offered as a start point.. Every one without fail has been in the same rediculous price range as general freight which was surprising, then again, not really I guess.. None of them even approached $1.75 on the loaded miles.... ...many below $1.50, some well below it.. shocking as yoyu would think along the lines that most solo operators won;t touch it, that capacity would be tight, but I guess not... My thoughts are that hazmat is a special niche requiring extra knowledge as well as service, that is does pay very good rates, but.... you must have some connections or a good sales dept to be in on it.. I see a lot of smaller fleets out there 150-500 trucks that appear to have contracts where they'll have 15-25 of their trucks pulling some chemical company's trailers doing transfers between facilities, maybe even contracted to do actual customer deliveries, and using their "OTR" trucks to bring bulk product from producers into their main facilities. They bring CAPACITY and service to the table....... Any overflow from stuff like that not covered by a trusted partner goes out to CHR, TQL etc and gets covered very cheaply... Yeah, there is a market for that kind of work, it just seems to me unlikely the single truck operator could ever successfully compete and crack into it though, not at profitable rates (leasing onto a mega with these contracts for mileage rates does not count)... Of course I don't call on hazmat loads, most times I never do, cause we don;t have that authority.. ..so I haven't really been able to try and press to see what could become of the rates there... I tend to think it would not be worth the extra cost for those few rare times when the loads did pay very well.. I could be wrong, maybe it is possible to crack into hazmat freight and do well with it...

 

As I understand it, you need a bonding company for HazMat and your least amount is 5 million.... I'm not sure how you contact them.. but I'd start there. Insurance will not cover it. I believe it's a surety bond, with a monthly payment. That's where I would look... oh, and forget shopping around there are like only two choices... or that is what i heard... never looked into it.

 

sorry, I have no idea about hazmat insurance, wish I could help but I can't

 

It's that much coin? I didn't know... I do know that some loading terminals require proof of having it. Seems a little steep for an O/O and one truck. It will never pay for itself with current rates... It must be fleet coverage quote perhaps? Wow