Rates are crashing and fuel to the moon!

I'd like to know how it can possibly be figured when you only have one direction that pays. Coming back don't usually pay anything. So you either haul for fuel or eat the fuel to go somewhere.

 

Thought I was off for 16 days,till the 6th. Working today and tomorrow 3pm till 11pm. I’m glad. Only got 4 checks then shut down for the holidays. This month I’ll gross $6400, take home about $5200. Going to stick with it for a while at least. Lots of loose strings that require home time. If I go OTR, I’ll need a week off per mo. Cuts into profits. Ends up being about the same pay. Can’t decide which way is better. For now it’s slow steady progress. The other way is always a gamble. I might get way ahead quickly, or get behind quickly. Time will tell. Can’t do everything I want and run my Truck. It’s very strange after 29 years OTR. Been running into people I haven’t seen in 30-40 years. It’s nice, but very strange.

 

Frankly, in the grand scheme of things, its better to eat the fuel. But SOMEONE will work for what ever they pay which is going to keep rates down.

2 weeks ago, I was looking at getting a load up to Minneapolis (from Florida). There was a load paying 1200 from somewhere in Alabama, and a load from Kentucky for 2600. I would have been better off dead heading to Kentucky (I didnt take either load).

 

Hauling empty is better economy.
It's a toss up between eating and hauling.

There used to be guys on this forum that would drive around the country for the paying loads. I don't see how that's a winning scenario between eating fuel and wear and tear. Burning up the hours.

 

I'd bet it's just scraping rate per mile data and not really looking at "lanes" or length of haul. Toss in a bunch of loads like that Blue Island one you posted the other day and the average shoots way up for "loads going to Chicago".

Lies, darn lies, and stats.

 

That’s exactly the case

 

Well, there is what you need to do for your family and what you need to do for the industry. From the family aspect, you want to make as much as you can, even if its hauling at a buck a mile. For the industry, if you haul for less than say 3 bucks a mile, you are hurting everyone else.

Look at Colorado for example. You take a load into Denver, about the only thing coming out is heavy beer loads out of Coors which pay nothing and they treat you like ####. Why? Because they can... They know people are willing to take next to nothing to get a paying load out. Last time I was out there I ended up dead heading back to Sioux City to get a load back towards Chicago. The Sioux City load paid almost double what the beer load would have paid (not to mention the fuel savings).

This is called working smarter not harder.

If enough people did this, the rates on them beer loads would go up, and they would treat drivers better to attract trucks in. But as long as people are desperate and stupid, they will keep doing it. And that goes for every other low paying shipper in the country...

I dont take loads that pay me less than $2.50 a mile for all miles traveled. Less than that I may as well sell the truck and go back to work for someone...

 

and the loads out of souix city would be down because everyone else would be doing the same thing…..

 

No. Not everyone coming out of Denver would be headed in that direction. You got people going to the Pacific Northwest (Salt Lake City), to Commiefornia (also Salt Lake City or maybe New Mexico), Texas (New Mexico/Oklahoma), the South East (Kansas City - St Louis), and East (also Kansas City - St Louis. I dare say that Sioux City would be the most unlikely place for people to go.

 

EPA fines Iowa 80 Truckstop, 'World's Largest,' for failing to properly plan for fuel spill. The truck stops both have above-ground storage of more than 1 million gallons of diesel fuel, gasoline, lubricants and oil, according to the EPA.

The agency plans to fine Iowa 80 Group $204,142 for violations at the Iowa business and $186,642 at the Missouri operation.