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

What Rollin fails to mention, and is very important, is that he has taken an insane amount of time off with those numbers. Not counting being home most weekends I believe he has taken almost 3-months off. Some of that was being down with the overhaul but taking that out and he will easily be at 8-weeks off by the end of the year. And no one can say he got lucky or fell into anything. Hard work, over the top customer service and he has positioned himself as the go to guy for many accounts.

I could not have asked for a better O/O to be the first to lease on.

Great work Chris.

Final note, in January he was saying he would have been delighted if he could average $1.80/mile to the truck on all miles. Glad he missed that goal.

 

This is the way I see it, Find out what your operating costs are and make sure you get above that. We charge for any extra thing they request, I call on a load and they say it's gotta be tarped and I tell them you can go ahead and add a minimum of $150 and if the dims are all out of whack it goes up and if they really wanna be a pain I throw the whole "if there isn't a safe place to tarp it where I wont get hurt then OSHA says it don't get tarped" line you tend to find out the ones who will pay cause it needs it or the shipper who just wants it for "customer presentation" I refuse to haul anything under $2 a mile and before I take a load I make sure I can find something in or 150 miles of the area it's going to. Now we have one broker we deal with on our outbound and the rates are anywhere from $2.30 a mile and up and I only deadhead 65 miles from home to get it, don't be afraid to come back empty if you have good outbound freight and there isn't anything good where your at, as long as it's not out of reason, I'll push my truck empty before I waste my time, fuel and wear on my equipment to haul some $1 a mile garbage just to get closer in. If you think about it anytime the rate is crap you can bet the customer probably is too, you'll be stuck waiting to load or it'll be more of a hassle than it's worth so just tell those cheap fools no! I tell brokers all the time you get what you pay for and the famous line of "I got a list of drivers a mile long that will move it for that" or "We've been moving them for that rate" tell them go for it and when it doesn't make it cause the driver gets shut down or just doesn't care to get it delivered until they feel like it then they will remember the next time. These clowns that haul freight for cheap more than likely don't maintain their equipment very well either so it's just a matter of time before they get deadlined. Finding good paying loads can be done, yes it takes some work but in the long run your much better off than dealing with the worry of making it hauling crap.

 

I deadheaded 105 miles today just to move a $550 run that went 52 miles down the road!! I'll end up 2500 miles this week at $2.38 all miles and only move 3 loads not a bad week and be home for gold rush Friday!!!

 

My dad ran flatbed in the late 90s and the rates averaged according to him were 1.50 on average. That's when fuel was $1/gallon!!! Now diesel is 4 times as high and rates are actually lower.

 

I was at the Baytown TA over the weekend listening to the flatbed drivers whine about sitting all week because there were no loads available from their companies.

 

Really? Cause from where I sit I'm not seeing it. Rates this year are down from last year, by a very healthy margin. Last year I could take a load into a "bad" area and still come out good, without having to wait. This year you can go into a good area and either haul out cheap, or wait for better paying freight. And forget going into a bad area, you will wait for days for anything decent. I am ready for the new year, cause it has to be better than this year. I am going to try to work one more week this year, then I am done until next year.

 

I book my loads up early I try and move oversize stuff out but even that's getting cheap but having my own customers helps out with outbound freight I had something come up so I have to head home so ended up taking a 1,100 mile run back to Houston paid $2,300 so that dropped my rate down but I'll pre book something for Monday and be back at it

I'm going to try and hit it hard the next few weeks insurance is due after the first of the year I'm going to try and pay in full again this year save some money and just one more thing you don't have to worry about

 

I'm wondering, with all due respect, of course, how often Bill does load-finding for his O/Os. Or at least even looks at that rate confirmations that probably get faxed to his office. I'm seeing a lot of respected owners here complaining about bad rates, when Bill is saying that rates have been up all year since last.

I'm not sure which to believe, because differing perspectives are coming from a lot of respected members here.

I'm pretty sure that freight capacity has been down this month like 25% from the previous month - at least that is what I got from those statistics I got from DAT's website...

 

He's actually "looking" for a load to my truck right now. I'll be in Atlanta delivering in a few short hours after I'm loaded. This was a load I knew when they hit and 2 different brokers have the loads. Offered rate $650 on 187 loaded it popped yesterday at 5pm. My other loads had cancelled and I was about to go home. Countered with a bid of take it or leave it $850 and got the load. We have contacts via Sylectus network who have loads picking up regularly about a 120 miles out of Atlanta that pay $750 on 269 miles and deliver in my hometown ASAP tonight. So from last night when I got the Atl loadtil tonight when i deliver at home that's1,600 gross on 616 miles including deadhead. How's that for backhaul fuel money to the house? Every one of these brokers know exactly where I live. Imagine that. They also know I'm not cheap and will drive on past their load empty on the way to the house. This is 5 loads on the week I found 4 and Bill, possibly1. That's the first load I've asked for off sylectus in weeks. The way sylectus works its the only "board" us f2f drivers don't have access to. We just submit bids on what hits his email and he screens tons of those looking for specific lanes. I keep Bill apprised daily of my status and whether I'm booked or not. Dropped the ball yesterday and missed 2 bid opportunities because I forgot to tell him at lunch my preplans fell through. This is how I work our system.

 

I do believe that both are correct, both Bill and those who say rates are down.

Bill has access to freight that the 'normal' O/O does not. He has access to brokers that won't talk to outfits with less than 10 trucks, so he's in a whole different world than the rest of us.

There's also something to be said for having someone behind the scenes looking for the next load while your current load is in transit. Good loads hit the boards and are snapped up within minutes, so if you're a one-man show, it's almost impossible to grab one of them unless you just happen to be online and not driving when it hits the board.