Smart to purchase my own van trailer with Landstar?

When I was at landstar I had my own trailer and it stayed in my front yard most of the time.. I would use theirs more often than not.. I sold trailer because most of the freight in my area was drop and hook..

There is another guy at the place I am at now.. He isn't really motivated but he almost lost everything he had at landstar (he said because he was tied to his trailer)... It has been years since I was there so hopefully someone with some more recent landstar experience will chime in..

 

I just run a company trailer.I've had the same one going on 2 months now.Just easier for me so I don't need to lose out on something because its drop and hook.

To answer your question directly yes there is alot of live load unload freight.Also alot of drop and hook freight.As far as money they pay 65% with their trailer and if I'm not mistaken 72% with your own.I've only talked to a few drivers running their own trailer and seems like a 50/50 split on if they think its worth it.Might be good to run a few months and get your feet wet and see what would benefit you most.

 

wats yur average rate per mile yur getting right now??

 

If you do decide to come over to Landstar wait until after the first quarter. Freight is a little slow after Christmas. Also I do dry van and about 70% of the loads I do are D&H at the shipper or receiver.

 

I had to grab a trailer after I got out of orientation ..... since then I have never had to look for a trailer with LS. We use a company trailer since my wife and I like to do some drop and hook.

 

The 50/50 comment seems about right. When I started my company I thought LS drivers would be a great target for us because we run very similar to LS so I talked to a lot of BCO's the first couple years. It has been a while but what I learned was that it really depended on the market you want to run. The 7% you pay for renting a trailer is kinda high compared to what it cost to have your own. But if you are running in a market that is DH it doesn't matter what you pay if that is the only way you can get freight.

I am not sure what you are making at Orange but make sure that you talk to a lot of new LS drivers. It takes time to build up a good agent base and some agents would rather broker than work with BCO's. They make more brokering. And the ones that stick with the BCO's have a list of who they like to work with and call them first.

 

That's about what you'll get running the southeast here at Landstar

 

Well cant tell you much about dryvan I own my own trailers all are platforms. I did need to do some power only this year and needed a dryvan made a phone call and had options all over the place as where to pick one up at. I can tell you this I have a few buddies here that are specialized dryvans and they are making big bucks doing it