The great "Freight" is picking up rumor.

Excellent thread and advice, dan.

Something that just hit me the other day is that while the shippers have started paying less to have their freight moved due to the current economic conditions, brokers haven't done a thing to reduce their profit margin. If you or your company runs most of it's freight from brokers, you won't see an increase in rates until the shippers start paying more again. God only knows how long that will be, if ever.

The best thing anyone can do right now is save, save, save. If you've fallen behind on any of your personal bills, get 'em caught up and paid ahead if possible. Continue living as if you've got no money, even if it may seem like you do with this seasonal uptick in freight. Don't go out and buy any big ticket items either. If you didn't need it when your income was reduced, you don't need it now either.

That last paragraph was just as much for my own benefit as anyone else.

 

With construction down, our work days are sometimes shorter, but with fewer loads (cement) This time last yr I was making big dollars $700-$1100 clear. Now its is just a 40hr pay which is under $500 after deductions. So ya I have had to tighten the belt on spending 3 fold..

 

I mainly service the oilfields here along the Gulf Coast but I would not
mind any of those Houston to Edmonton loads that you are talking
about.

Who are you running for or are you an O/O, and where are you getting
those loads from?

 

Update:

The gig i was talking about is drying up.

 

I can say with the lack of dry merchandise we are moving out of our warehouses, people are spending less money in our stores. I drive for Wal*Mart and this is the first time in my 18 years that the company has offered drivers voluntary time off at this time of year. We're still kicking butt on moving groceries but dry freight is way down.

 

Once the warehouses are restocked, now that most of the inventory counts are done, I am sure that it will slow down quite a bit!

 

February through May were pretty good for me. But the past couple of months have been significantly worse.

 

It's up, it's down, it's up, it's down, it's up, it's down....

It's trucking.

I don't have to drive 30 years to know that.

 

different types of trucking have always had their busy and slow periods, but their was always enough work to go around, I used to just take a couple weeks off when it was slow. But this slow period has been going on for a year now. The one place where I normaly haul out of used to have 2 loads a day, now they are down to about 3 a week. In fact most of the places I haul for are down quite a bit in their volume. Some are not even shipping at all.