Picking my own freight baby! My journey to & of being on Schneider choice, the Adventure & Numbers!

welllll it happened.......

I wanted to just run circles in the midwest this week but I got lured back into you know where.

yup back to the Pitts... Pittsburg that is


I saw a load and I was like....

So I just had find a way to pull it off
but I did with some deadhead involved

All in all from Milwaukee where I'm at now over two loads to Pittsburgh it's roughly 780 miles at $2.79 all miles
Both loads are drop and hook at both ends.
And the Pittsburgh load is extremely light so I won't be on the never ending hills.

 

gezzz

yeah man

There's drivers that think "oh boy I can pick my own freight now and do whatever I want!"
So they take 1800 mile loads out west for $1 and then there's nothing coming back so they deadhead home because they want to go home and then they wonder why they're going broke.
In class the instructor told us about a driver who failed because all he wanted to do was load runs and would deadhead far just to get to another cheap long run.
Plus people seem to forget this is an OTR job.. there's good reasons why Schneider will only take people with OTR experience.
If you want to go home every week you'll take a huge financial hit.
I'm not saying you can't do well and still go home every weekend depending on where you live but that's not the way to make the most money.
The more often you spend thinking.. "how I am gonna run at the most profitable" vs "oh man how am I gonna find a way home" will make light years of difference.

I don't really go home much because there's no need to.
If I see a way that's not cheap going by the house then I'll go if I want to.
The way to make the most money on choice is to do everything you hated to do as a company driver.
Short loads, multistop loads, driving in populated areas and yes the Northeast at least sometimes.
If money isn't everything then hey that's your "choice" but if you rake in the cash or fail it's all on you.
Money isn't everything for me because I avoid the Northeast as much as possible but still go in from time to time because this is a job after all and I'll go when it pays a lot.

I love going out west but I don't love driving this truck for cheap and that's what it is when you go out west.
It's not just here.. even as a company driver I pretty much never got sent out west. I remember in orientation at Crete they said "you ever see the united states overhead at nighttime.. notice how all the lights are in the Northeast?.. you will be going to the Northeast as that's where it pays".
Then they said.. "anybody coming to Crete take a pay cut please raise your hand" and of course nobody did.
That was their way of saying we're paying you better than other OTR jobs so shut up when we send you to the Northeast lol.
ONE time I went to Colorado as a driver with Shaffer (Crete's reefer side) and they sent me deadhead all the way back to eastern Iowa. Rates are soooo terrible out west it made more sense to Shaffer for me to deadhead forever vs take cheap freight.
Even with that said I'm still going to go out west one time just because I want to. So if I earn $1000 one week instead of the usual $2500-$3000 oh well it's not gonna bankrupt me.
When I run for cheap out west I'll just pretend I'm a flease for Swift and just enjoy the scenery lol.

 

Do I need to post screenshots of loads again?
I don't make this stuff up.
It's real cheap coming out of Colorado.. what you're missing is that it pays a lot going in.
I've seen a loads 1500 miles into Colorado paying $3000
Also seen some 1000 mile runs into there for $2500. That's after Schneider get their 35% too
It pays that much because it's peanuts coming out.
Those I saw rates came from the east side of the country into Colorado.
Learning markets is something anybody better do real quick on % or else they'll be shooting themselves in the feet constantly while working.

 

another screwed up shipper.
man I've been unlucky with shippers.

drop and hook supposed to be "ready" 14 hours ago.
They haven't even started the load yet nor would have if I didn't say anything.
These people look clueless.

 

what the heck does $5000 mean?
$5000 gross? That doesn't mean anything.
He could drive 70 MPH and haul cheap $1.25 freight and knock out 4000 miles and reach $5000 gross. Gross don't mean crap because what about your fuel costs??? What about all miles and wear and tear on the truck?
I've done weeks of 2200 miles and reached $5000 gross but that's by staying where the money is and doing short loads.

It's soo darn cheap out west, I could never suggest to anybody going on choice and running the west.
Yeah you could still make money running between $1.20-$1.40 but it ain't worth it to lease a truck for those rates. Then again thousands of people flease at those rates and even LESS while still having a dispatcher being signed on to some stupid cheap mileage contract.