Should I use the dispatch services or just lease to a big Outfit?

I would choose none of the above, unless you were only using them as fill in work. The rates on the load boards suck, sometimes you find a good deal but usually it is double or triple brokered garbage that no one else wants. To properly answer your question, do you have any car haul experience? If you have no car haul experience then trying to jump in with both feet will most likely end in disaster. If you already have car haul experience from working elsewhere, then you may be able to make a go of it with the load boards, but I would highly recommend visiting local dealerships and auctions to solicit direct work, use the boards only to fill in where needed.

If you have never hauled a car before then you should start by either working for someone or leasing onto one of the big companies as they have training programs and support for newcomers. Hauling cars is a completely different animal than freight, even flatbed freight, but no matter how many times I say that to drivers they don't believe me. Trust me, you want to learn this segment of the trucking industry from someone who has been there, if you have never run a car hauler lease onto someone like United Road, Dependable Auto Shippers (they even have a lease purchase program, not that I recommend lease purchase to anyone), JLS, basically anyone who will take you with no experience.

 

Yes, you would be the salesman for your company, assuming you have all the proper operating authorities to run a trucking company no other license such as broker license is needed to solicit work from dealers and auctions. The big auction houses, Adesa and Manheim, will contract local work directly to car haul companies, even 1 truck companies, if you meet their insurance requirements. They do this thru their in-house dispatch services, Cars Arrive for Adesa and Ready Auto Transport for Manheim. The rates directly with the auctions vary from .75cpm up to $1.50 or more, depending on the length of haul, type of vehicle (running or inop), etc.

As for going directly to dealers, again no broker license needed if you are representing your own company, and yes you should be able to get a few cents more than what is on the load boards, but dealers can be a pain to work with. Sometime by cutting out the middle man you can save 30 or 40% or more, we have been doing this 12 years and have never used a broker board, all of our contracts are directly with the customer, even with Manheim although they are making us switch to Ready Auto at the end of the month, no more direct contracts with Manheim. This sucks for us, we survived them outsourcing before with Allied, UPS Autogistics, Auto Driveaway, etc, but now that Manheim owns RAT they won't be going away anytime soon. We are expecting to lose at least 10% (have been told RAT takes 10% automatically) but it could be up to 30% as they are adjusting some of our special contract rates to be in line with market averages, which never means they will go up LOL!