Does owning a "tricked out truck" land you better gigs?

i am goin from a t600 to a w900

yes my mileage will go down, and yes my payments will go up and no the frieght rate does not increase

so why am i doing it?

becuase i can is the short answer

ok im alittle image concious, no chrome wont pay me more but it will keep me in better with certian shippers that do pay well....besides the dispatchers would rather have a chromed out and pretty truck goin into new accounts than a plain jane company truck....o/o's are known to take better care of thier equipment for some reason

 

Good point

 

It is a show off thing. Same with motorcycles,pull up get out or off and get noticed. The number of lites or chrome on apete379 that is all deckedout bumps the dock the same way a freightshaker does, waits hours for the bill or gets put in line behind 20 other trucks and waits its turn just like the ratty old freightshaker. Its an ego,show off thing.

People don't care what the truck looks like, they just want the freight ontime w/o incident.

 

I've always wondered why you would want to make yourself more noticeable. On top of that, it seems some drivers go WAY overboard on the chrome and accessories to the point where it just looks ridiculous.

 

yeah, I have been at many docks sitting next to fancy, chromes up, trucks, and the shippers really don't care.

I have a crusty crst truck, and it is pretty decent, but filthy, we are only allowed to wash once every two months at the iowa 80 truck o mat and they are few and far between, and generally not on route, thsu far, my truck has not been washeddd since i got it, and it pulss the freight the same as the pimped out peter eater that sits next to it.

i will say that i fancy truck is nice, but the bottom line is in pesos, and if you are spending 2 cents a miles towards polish and paint you are losing out at the end of they year. the money is better spent at a truck wash or on driver amenities like a good cb, a nice flat screen tv for the truck or an apu unit for driver comfort, JUST MY OPINION, and evey one has one LOL

 

I have been taking the back seat apporach lateley and reading what you guys post. It really cracks me up, that some of you guys are so stubborn that you can't see a simple marketing stragety. How many of you guys that posted on this topic have washed your truck lately? It sounds like most of you guys have dirty trucks, so how in the heck will you know if the shipper cares or not?

I used to work in a wherehouse, and i still know plenty of people who work in one, and they LOVE IT when a nice pretty CLEAN truck backs into their dock. Plenty of customers don't want their crap going down the road in the ugly truck that hasn't been washed in 2 years.

This is simple people! Clean truck and extra lights = getting noticed which = more loads! I always remember the shiny truck on the other side of the road, but i don't pay any attention to the CRST truck that hasn't been washed in a year. You get what I am saying?

 

I would have to agree with alot of you on this subject that just cause it looks nice, doesn't mean you'll get more or better paying loads. On the flip side though, I have had shippers request my truck or give me priority over others because of the way I keep my trucks appearance and more importantly my personal appearance!!Most shippers/brokers could care less what the truck looks like or the driver, hence the fact the reason that they only want to pay you $1.00 a mile to run there product down the road.

I have my truck "tricked out" because I can without it affecting my bottom line.I get my truck washed every week and always wash out my trailer after each load some might say overkill, but I like it to be clean and so do my customers. The last thing I would want is to know I could be the cause of people getting sick because I was to lazy to wash out my trailer that just hauled a load of meat and is now going to load produce.

 

crst is hauling more freight than ever. no one cares about the tuck being washed. i get .33 cpm no matter what the truck looks like. This issues is not important to company drivers. it really does not matter. and crst does not care if the trucks are clean or dirty. occasionaly they will ask you to sweep out a trailer and check it for holes. crst is one of the biggest dirtbags out there, they are growing strong and it really has nothing to do with the cleanliness of the trucks it has to do with moving freight.