Load Boards

I have been doing a lot of reading to determine whether my "plan" is viable. Especially with the current economy and the unpredictability of the future.

Please chime in with any recommendations you may have.

I am not a driver "yet". I plan on getting my CDL and working for a year with one of the "starter" companies so that I have a knowledge of this business. Particularly, TMC because I want to lean toward skateboard work. This, however is not my goal. I want to have the flexibility of choosing my own loads going where I want to go and so want to get my own authority and work off of the load boards suggested already when I need to. Of course getting my own accounts is also part of this business but I have the following questions:

With all the time you need to spend getting loads on load boards and driving, how do you have the time to spend speaking with shippers and developing a relationship?
In addition, do you do this in person or only on the phone? How do you find the type of shipper you are looking for? Of course it would be improper to try to solicit a shipper that you handled a load for working for someone else... so how can it be done?

One last question: Are there normal areas that are "dead" with little or no freight going out? Are there always areas that are better or worse than others? If so... is this information mapped or graphed somewhere or do you just have to learn it? Does this information constantly change or can you pretty much say that "coming out of Florida" is always going to be bad?



I would appreciate all input. Thanx!

 

Get married to a business savvy woman, delegate her as "Business Manager/Dispatcher" and hire a Broker(agent) dedicated to your loads and specific needs.

 

What do you call a decent paying load , could you shed some light on it

 

Load boards = used to get the spot freight that nobody want's to move, moved...

 

Yes i wanted to know the same thing, is shipperspoint.com worthit cause there membership is $100, so i was debating either to signup or not.

 

If you're looking at tools such as credit ratings and reports, 123Loadboard.com offers them at no additional charge. Best part is that you get the credit information from 2 sources: Ansonia Credit Data and Freight Capital.

 

Your decision will depend on what you are doing and where you are located.

We are in Canada and we use Transcore LInk logistics which I believe is now the parent company of DAT.

The cost is around $350/ month. It is well worth it as it is productive. An extra skid on a full load will pay for the load board.

There are other load boards , many carrier specific such as Landstar , schneider or CH Robinson. There is too little freight on these and generally first dibs are for company agents , what is left is what they have refused. Then there are the internet truckstop and such, these are for us Canadians generally useless as there is very little cross border freight. Also many of the Freight brokers on these sites have been banned from LINK.

Although these other load boards are cheaper they generally produce little. If you have one truck , link would be an expensive option but would certainly fill you. For example we are not paying for DAT but anyone on the site from the USA can see where our trucks are posted and we often get called by DAT members.

 

$2.00/mile is a nice number , but make sure it is what you are getting on the round trip. $2.10 on the outbound and $ 1.60 on the inbound is not good

 

Make sure at least doing that on the round WITH deadhead included otherwise it's just cheap.

 

The dead head miles is what usually kills the ones working on percentage. The broker has no dead head on his percentage.