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

Do they broker loads to other carriers or just give the loads to other brokers ?

 

Honestly I don't care, can't do anything about it right? What we see is what we get. I did a load early this morning 67 miles paying right above 500.00. Im not complaining lol

 

The numbers are what they are. In the end, we choose whether it is worth hauling or not.

As for going somewhere else, I hope to do that in the near future, but that is a year or two away. Just bought this truck on a 6 year note, with a 3 year payoff "plan". Looking to get my own authority, but not until the truck is paid off, or really close to it. Need to buy a trailer, and I don't want to be financing both pieces of equipment at the same time. If I found a good deal on a trailer, that might move my plan up a bit.

Until then though, being here is about my only option other than Landstar, and finding out solid rate info about that place is like pulling teeth. I refuse to go anywhere that I am dispatched.

 

I usually complain to bring attention to things I feel would help.
I managed to complete a lease and still put 15k down to buy my own truck..so yes SNI is working out.

I will no longer try and help as you can't help those who think they know it all.
Just remember..reading tons of info on the internet doesn't make you a expert.
You're just regurgitating facts..you're not fooling anyone.

Good Luck to my fellow IC's.

 

Rates aren't really great, but you can clearly out perform rates via the load boards over what you can get with Schneider. I keep an eye on the spot market rates, and stay in contact with quite a few drivers out there running on their own.

The cost of getting your own authority is not much at all. Beyond that, you have cargo/liability insurance to deal with. Once again, the cost for that is not huge, compared to the increased rates you can get outside of being leased to a carrier. The guy I am talking to the most about this is paying around $9500 a year for all of his insurance. Truck, trailer, as well as cargo/liability. Having a new truck, mine would be a bit higher, but not a huge amount.

I spoke with the guys at farm2fleet, and running the boards, they averaged something like 2.12 a mile for the fourth quarter of 2015. With them, you are running the load boards and getting 80% of the rates you can get form the load boards. I worked the numbers really hard on their system, and it looked like I could do a little better maybe with them than I can here at Schneider, but it was at the cost of much more work.

There is no reason you can't get close to $2.00/mile freight now, but lets just go with $1.75/mile. That puts you more in line with Schneider's freight rates before they take their cut. 35% of that is $55k. at 90,000 miles. That is what you are paying Schneider to carry your cargo insurance, find your freight, and do what little other work they do for you. IFTA is easy to do. The higher the rates get, the more you give to Schneider to handle your back office stuff.

You can get equal fuel discounts or better on your own outside of Schneider.

And insurance? Schneider is getting you there as well. Having my own truck, yet having access to the insurance that Schneider provides, I save a huge amount by insuring outside of Schneider.

So, at this point, I am using Schneider to provide me with loads, and to handle my IFTA.

You may like drop and hook freight, and I get that. But, if you are tight with your numbers, think about how much money you could save on fuel by having your own trailer. Tires always inflated properly, everything in proper working order, and the ability to invest in improving the aerodynamics of the trailer. Instead, we constantly pick up trailers that have something wrong with them (see the colostomy bag thread, LOL). How often do you stick a gauge to the trailer tires? I do this quite often, and they are usually at around 80psi, 90 maybe. Not to mention, you gotta be careful with many of the valve stems because they are rusted so bad they may break if you try to check the pressures. I could go on forever about the trailers, including constantly cleaning out nasty trailers that don't like they have ever been swept.

 

Schneider doesn't have the auto inflate systems on the trailers?