Truck Load Rates Halt 8 Week Slide 2.0

Yep, that was the one.

 

O.K. 52 hours at home felt like luxury.
But since they still pay not bad and knowing my own limitations I need to keep catching the tuna while it is still there.
Me goes to Denver for $2650.00 then deadhead 420 miles to Kansas (somewhere between Salina and Wichita) and get back to Milwaukee, WI area for 1800,00 to be back home before noon on Saturday.The loads are super light too, and I don't care much about the deadhead either.
About 2300 miles which after fuel and tolls leaves me about $3500.00 from the whole revenue.
Monday night - Saturday morning. Nothing special about the rate per mile on this one but I don't care...
I am hoping for this August to bring over 20K of revenue too.

I am really fond of Quickbooks -thanks to @Scooter Jones mentioning it in the other thread.
Before I was using my own spreadsheets and self developed Access app but I guess I tried to reinvent the wheel. Nothing like real time look of the cash flow dynamics, profit & loss report and balance sheet.
Of course own spreadsheets are still needed to calculate different kinds of money per mile but I prefer to look at the whole picture, as it matters the most anyways.
I need more revenue and what is left from it in a given time than rate per mile. That's where many disagree...as in "work smarter not harder" but ... time is money is more resonating to me.

 

@Midwest Trucker

Nice operation keep it up. You drive much yourself these days or you driving the desk most days?

Might of missed it but how many tractors you have?

 

This one cancelled fri night. Figures it would but all worked out in the end. Pulled out of the same place sat morn and sun night both trucks.

 

Thanks man. I had 10 tractors and 1 owner op but now I’m at 8 tractors and 1 owner op. Not to worry, I’ll be back at 10 in the spring of 2021. I had some older units that needed to be retired.

I haven’t drove in about 4 years now. I could I guess but I make myself stay out of the driver seat. Otherwise, I feel like I would lose focus on the big picture.

I used to drive the desk as well, but the last couple years I’ve mostly worked from home so I can be with my son. He turns 4 later this month. I have an amazing team in my office who works most of the day to day things. I normally deal with problems and high sensitivity type situations. Don’t get me wrong, I know everything that is happening but prefer to stay at home and raise my boy. This way, he doesn’t have to go to a babysitter unless I want him to for socializing.

I also have a brokerage as well.

 

If you don't mind me asking, how many back office staff do you have with the size of your operation? Do you have separate folks specifically handling brokerage vs. asset based operation? Do you have contracts with direct customers, or just pull from contacts you have made and load boards?

 

That's awesome you can stay home with the kid and have good people you trust for the day to day stuff.

 

I have 2 guys and 1 gal.

1 is an operations manager who has been with me around 7.5 yrs and the other will be 5 yrs this fall and what I call a logistics specialist. The gal will be at 3 yrs this fall. Fall hires work great it seems! lol

I prefer to bring people on with zero trucking experience. This way, I can train them from the ground up on how I like to do things and how to operate.
The lady does all billing for the assets and brokerage, along with all general office administration type work.

My wife does all payroll, taxes, and permit type stuff. My two guys do both booking loads/dispatching as well as booking carriers for the brokerage. They bounce back and forth as needed. We broker around 350 loads per year. So, not huge but busy.

I have customer freight, regular broker freight, along with random go where it pays the best. In fact many times I’ll broker customer freight and book broker freight on the assets. Whatever makes the most money as long as the customer is being taken care of.

So, our driver to dispatcher ratio is extremely low compared to most outfits. However, it allows us to be very on top of things and find the best paying freight. We have hundreds of incoming and/or placed calls per day. I have the office capacity to run up to id say, 15 trucks max at my personal comfort level. Right now though it’s all good, we have a lot of redundancy in case of vacation, sickness, whatever. I’ll cross the expansion bridge as I get there.

 

Nice to read of what a small fleet business model looks like.
If you were to expand, would you rather see more owner ops signing up with you or aquire more equipment and find drivers?
I am curious which way is easier. And more profitable, of course.

 

I was thinking of a model of letting a bunch of proven owner ops - good rate getters - to sign up and let them run the show of finding their own freight and me taking a percentage for providing insurance, warehouse, fuel advance, safety management, IFTA, etc.
Sure, it was tried before but guys who started like that sooner or later got rid of the owners and had their own drivers only.