Texas Mercer drivers

How long u had to sit for those loads out of maine and boston?mercer have a couple shippers up that way rocks out of vt lumber out of maine and some irregular freight out of mass.u may get lucky once in a while.other than more paperwork,my first two loads of the months will cover the difference between having my own numbers and leasing to a carrier.i said it before and i will say it again:unless you live in the midwest there's no way u can make great money and be home every weekend with mercer.

 

He thinks a lot like me, so i can almost guarantee you if he sat at all, it was just over night.
I live in south Florida and not only been home every weekend, I've been home almost every night for nearly six months.
If i can figure out how to make very good money in the black hole of South Florida, there is no reason a guy from anywhere else can't do it.

Op, you got to learn what our good markets are and where we aren't so good. Va is not a place you wait to get unloaded in before finding your next load. In some places it pays to be patient cause it's a very high chance of something really good popping up last minute, in other places like va for example, the good stuff is booked a few days in advance.

You just started so there is no way you can have learned our lanes and customers, so lean on your coordinator for a few months while you do learn those things.

 

How do you book days ahead if the system is first empty first loaded? We will be signing on with Me
Mercer in two weeks. I have read most all of the threads and I still don't understand.

 

First let's clarify what we mean when we use the word book. Believe it or not a lot of guys confuse two different things. Agents and mercer book loads with customers. And then we as oo's book those loads to our truck. Two totally different things.

Ok, as it applies to your question: loads hit the board once an agent gets the load ordered and rate set with the customer (some of these are fishing attempts by the customer to compare freight rates with other carriers and even the agent doesn't know there is no real load, and some are more of a will call situation where is a one shot load and you can get the agent to negotiate a higher rate for the load. But for the purpose of this discussion let's ignore those two situations and assume every load posted to our board is a good load with a set rate). When the load is posted trucks are matched to it, by their empty time. If a guy currently has loads dispatched to him (doesn't matter if it's currently loaded or future loads) he will be given an estimated empty time based off his delivery appointment.

How a guy can really take advantage of this is by knowing where to book in advance and where its a good gamble to wait till closer to his empty date.

Good example here: texas has more inbound loads than outbound. If you are booked a week ahead of time with texas as the destination, you can and should be looking for loads that whole week. The guys empty today are not going to take a load that picks up next monday. So while you might be matched 35 on that 45k lb tarp load in Houston, you got a real good chance of it getting to you. 20 guys will pass cause it doesn't load for a week, they are empty now and obviously aren't waiting a week on a load. 10 guys refuse to tarp. And 4 guys just don't understand freight lanes and basic ecomomics and think every load should pay above market rates so will sit in these areas till they run out of money and end up taking an even cheaper load.

 

They are not supposed to hold loads. Does it happen? Of course it does. Anytime humans are involved there will be a human factor in the equation. Does it happen often enough to be concerned with? Nope.

As far as cold calls on agents...i call agents quite often, especially when considering a load going to a market I'm not all that familiar with. It has never gotten me a load i otherwise wouldn't of gotten, but it has informed me about load quantities and rates out of those areas. Basically it's helped me make a more informed choice of taking a load to a specific area. Your coordinator can also help with this. They see loads for 40 trucks vs our 1. It only makes sense that they will have a broader big picture of load availability in more areas than us. But, at the same time is not possible for them to have a more detailed fine tuned picture of our specific operation.

 

so how do you manage to get out of dead holes with 5k no tarp loads with above average rate like u guys always claim.is either u sat for couple days,that 5k load is cheap as dirt and nobody wants it or its 45klbs with full tarps