Why oh why are you drivers taking this cheap freight????

No, busy busy. I am home right now but deliver 20 miles away at 8am. Could have gotten it off today then run another this afternoon but I needed a breather. Expedite seems to be picking up somewhat I might go otr a whopping 300 miles and sleep in the truck. Man I hate sleeping in the truck anymore lol but you gotta follow the money...

 

Well on the platform side, things are sketchy this week. Lower rates than I usually see and less loads available. I still have my agent base and am doing ok, but I don't know what some of these guys are thinking taking some of this stuff???

 

Don't blame. I have seen that beater.

 

I'm sleeping in the truck tonight as well. It sucks! It'll be a distant memory when the check comes in though. I've still got 4 more nights though as I'm going to get a new LS trailer, and then heading home. I don't care if I don't leave FL for the rest of the winter.

 

on these rates & how drivers perceive them, to me to each his own. I have hauled cheaper than I wanted more than once. usually this would happen when I would get dispatched with a good rate & not knowing the area could not get back out with a good rate, but I could get within 1 mile from the house with a load paying 700 to the truck for 450 miles, so I would take it. however , having learned my lesson on that one, I would not take another load going in the same area unless I had a pre planned reload that paid well.

this was mainly years ago going to the northern oh area & being dispatched as a o/o. I never get mad anyone taking cheap freight. I do not think any one affects my bottom line more than me. the reason we have so different opinions on what is good rates is more based on the comparing factor.

Just like starting a new job... you start at a lower wage & other workers say I wouldnt work here for less than $15.00 an hour while you start at 10.00 an hour. some just need more money to make it because of their lifesyle debt, e.t.c. some can make it on a lot less & still have more net after all is said & done. there is a point where too low is too low no matter what your circumstance is. I know it can be frustrating... your away from home 500-900 miles. you try all the contacts you have & nothing is paying worth a flip. so what do you do? live in your truck a few more day's? dead head? to where? then what? or take a load where you make money, but not as much as you want or should? I don't know the answer, cause it depends on the operator.

 

Crazy D's other thread about YTD numbers inspired me to do my most recent CPM navel-gaze. The results seemed more appropriate here, since this one's about rates. The interesting part was comparing the results of three different strategies, also being kicked around this thread, which can be separately measured due to how I've run my business. I do all the load bookings, so that's fairly constant in terms of what customers and negotiating tactics.

The base case is my son. I tend to optimize his lanes for mileage pay, but will go to percentage on short mileage stuff. I work to get him back through home on Fridays due to a reliable, high revenue reload that can sit on the truck Saturday and make for a bonus off-day. YTD his CPM is $1.81 on all miles, $2.03 loaded.

John, my other driver, was routed/paid the same way, but was a lot more flexible about home time. Once in a while I'd have to book a loser to get him home due to the freight profiles in/out of where he lived. The upside was usually better than average rates loading out. YTD his CPM was $1.86 on all miles, $2.09 loaded. So a more flexible driver willing to stay out weeks at a time was good for about a nickel a mile. That's not much. I had started to work with him on booking his own loads and lane optimization. He was very enthusiastic with it and had come up with some options that ran me down to the IRP office to add four states to my plates to make it work. He just wasn't able to carry it out. He actually passed away shortly after he was staged to pick up the first load in this new strategy.

Since John's passing, I have been holding the steering wheel in that truck. The good thing about that is: when you're the Captain of Everything, you only have to satisfy Number One. I'm not a wage slave and am not the one to live in the truck. I need to cover some costs while I figure out my next move. So I'm the part time, cheapest driver on payroll. When I negotiate with brokers, I am doing them a favor by offering to move their load on my truck. Think of rate negotiation Samuel L. Jackson style. Just pay me #@%$#@$. My revenue is about half the two employees due to driving half as much. I will also camp in the truck to get my son moving before booking something for myself, sometimes at my own peril. My own CPM in the past four weeks has been $2.22 on all miles, $2.74 loaded.

Those numbers are against raw confirmed rates. That is, they don't include any detention or accessorial fees I may have invoiced for. That won't be much, but it's worth mentioning since it might tend to raise the reported values by a few cents.

I haven't dug a lot deeper to measure profitability across the board, but I think I know what it's going to look like. Net profit may be a bit lower on my case (tracking with lower revenue), but the cost factor will be half as much. My next step will be getting my son up to speed on booking his own loads in the same fashion I am, on a straight percentage pay basis. Still never going to get rich doing this, but never expected that. The goal is to achieve sustainable income with less stress. I think my numbers over the past year bear out that direction. Regardless, my numbers bear out what rollin coal and BBB are saying. To be honest, I've known this since day one but John passing away suddenly put me in a position that forced me to quit considering it and take immediate action. Either that or have a truck auction.

The moral of the story is: running your butt off on break-even loads will never pay off, no matter what your spreadsheet tells you. Right now I'm still tired from doing a quickie round trip up to KY and need to get my son back up out of FL. But I'm at about 50% of the stress level I had two months ago and am seeing my business go in a positive direction for once. The good rates are out there, just not in a neat fashion that accommodates a mileage-oriented strategy.

 

Red,
I didn't know that John had passed. I missed him on the forums and understood that he was busy running with you. Very sad. He was a good guy.

Prayers go out to his family.

 

http://www.thetruckersreport.com/tr...d-virtual-memorials/193268-rip-bigjohn54.html

 

A lot of interesting math calculations in this topic.

 

Just got my year to date fuel cost $42,617.61 updated this morning and figured the math on everything else year to date. $2.16 a mile to the truck on 70,222 miles 1-1-12 thru tomorrow when I finish my next load up 11-29-12. Still have another 3 weeks left in the year to make money. Still need to tally my deadhead but the last time I checked that it was running 25% so of those 70,000 miles 17,555 of them were unpaid. That puts my loaded miles only rate "to the truck" at approximately $2.88 a mile. Red you're doing great for having to keep 2 trucks with employees rolling. Well, at least until John passed away recently anyways. A business owner in your shoes has the added pressure of having to make good paychecks consistently week after week for your drivers. A single truck self dispatched owner is not under that kind of pressure. But as are seeing with yourself behind the wheel now, your rates are rising when you have that ability. One other thing about my numbers, and Bill could tell you this, I do a crazy workload when I book several pre-planned loads of general freight. And when I'm running the other stuff picking it off as it pops up I work insane hours when everyone else is asleep - for days on end. I'm lucky if I get 5 or 6 hours of sleep per 24 hour window when I'm busy. It's a lot of hard work. The only easy time and "fun" part is when I'm driving. That's the only real free time I have unless I'm off for a weekend with nothing that needs fixing on the truck. My goal was $2.25 a mile to the truck. Maybe fuel will hold relatievly steady and I can meet or exceed that next year. I had several huge expense hit me this year that are thankfully behind me trailer purchase and engine overhaul the big ones. Next year will be my first ever profitable year in 3 years owning if all goes well. This year I will break even, the previous 2 years I went in the hole.