The journey begins - purchased a truck.

Been trashing around doing a little bit of ‘normal’ freight. It’s a part for a gold mining drill rig that drills for blasting.

Swedish company, going to Australia and S.C. once completed, but at least it was fabricated in Texas.

 

BINGO!

Where you at? I’ll be there today , you better have the ladders, scaffold, scotchbrite, paint and beers ready!

I’ve been meaning to do that. A full paint job is still a ways off - but that sleeper front needs a quick tidy up.

 

Well - I went down to North Florida on an average rate for 63' long. My hope was to find something back toward home, or along the way, to make it less sour.

Thus - I had to rely on the good old load board. What a joke. I've been somewhat removed from general freight so far this year, but hoped for something. Wrong.

The system is almost overrun with 'cut and paste' agents. I dropped my parameters to 300 miles from N.Florida, and 400 miles from home.

The board has a load count at the top - today touting over 50,000 loads available.

Once you take the "one load, multiple agents listing", and the "Let's change the zip codes and post it multiple times" and "You'll run yourself out of business at these rates" - I doubt there's 10,000 loads on the trash heap.

The cut and paste agents get load lists from CHR, Coyote, Trinity etc - cut and paste to the load board, and thus your phone call to an 'agent' is an 'on hold' on and off painful conversation - they can't tell you the first thing about load dimensions or requirements. For a wasted 15 minutes of your life.

Then - a $3,000 load that apparently 'Got booked while we were on the phone' - gets reposted by another trash agent in Pakistan an hour later for $2,250. Call him to get the expected pile of lies, and shovel him what I already know.

Or the snotty B***h that decided I was asking too many questions about a load, ended the call telling ME "I think I'm just going to pass on this one". Go F___ yourself. Posting freight you have no details on then cop an attitude with me for trying to be prepared.

I really can't recommend them to anyone. The 'Learning curve' they sell, is in reality - "Sifting through their BS agents", which - 5 years ago wasn't quite so hard - now it's a minefield.

My eyes can quickly sift out the crap agents - but when that's all you're left with, and they deliver absolutely true to their abilities - and my expectations - then I feel sorry for the new BCO's that are sold this pile of horse crap.

Anyway - take a last shot at it tomorrow before running the last 500 home.

 

And it works both ways. I’ve found a few good agents recently that have difficulty finding reliable BCO’s - and keep a list of good drivers, dreading the times they run out of options and have to put their loads on the board.

Update - The $3,000 load that reposted for $2,250 - apparently the truck they (Trinity) booked, fell off it.

So we try again. Now Trinity won’t pay the $3k - so I told the gal to tell them ‘Good Luck’ , and drove on by. I’m not going to encourage their dishonesty.