Posting For Good and Bad Brokers

it's there but you ain't gonna find it on a load board.

 

You mean if you cancel the load because you found a better rate?

 

You just landed with both feet on why I pay decent rates. My customers need the trucks to show up. Most 'cheap' trucks are still shopping after they agree to haul your load for peanuts. They just took the load so that they have a safe backup plan in case they can't find something better.

I always smirk a little when I hear some newer broker #####ing about how their cheap truck just fell out and now they are going to have to lose money on the load. If you take a super cheap load I'm going to ask you 20 questions about why it makes sense for you. If I don't like your answers I'll pass rather than taking the load from the customer and risking a service failure.

 

On the flip side many brokers are still shopping for a cheaper truck . TQL is one that comes to mind, book a load for a decent rate then next thing you know load cancelled. Broker says he can't help it and how it's not his fault. But you don't get any TONU because you were not dispatched yet.
That is one of the main reasons why I use brokers as little as possible. We have direct freight on both ends and only use brokers as a last result. Our outgoing freight will let you deadhead home empty and still make a profit.

 

I hate to suggest using something as blunt as the age of the person you are talking to as a guideline. I don't know about you guys but I can tell how experienced or not-experienced someone else is when I'm on the phone with them. When you get that non-experienced vibe from brokers at the big places like TQL it's important to realize what the person on the other end of the phone's life is like.

They hire them RIGHT out of college. These people are NOT the cream of the crop. We're talking about business majors with a 2.x-low 3.x GPA from mediocre state schools where ever their office happens to be. For those of you who haven't been to business school (unfortunately I have) it's not exactly hard. I joke that in B school they teach people things that are so obvious that the very need to have them explained pretty much disqualifies you from running a business.

So here they are with their first real job. They get hired and put through whatever paid training TQL has. At the place I started it took a week in the class room and then you went out to be an assistant for a broker for like 6 weeks. Then they get assigned to a broker and do all of their junk work for 6 weeks-6 months for a 30k a year draw. These assistants are assessed on their ability to make money on loads in a wildly subjective environment. After their training period ends they are put out on their own to make cold calls to customers. They immediately have weekly profit targets that they have to hit. These targets get bigger and bigger the longer they are there up to somewhere in the 3k/week range. The 30k a year draw starts running the second they stop being someone assistant... So they feel like they are slowly drowning.

Some of them get lucky and land a real customer. This enables them to survive long enough to start getting given the accounts of the 90%+ of people who don't make it... Which they get 20% of instead of the 28-35% they usually get (depends on the brokerage). At this point a broker gets to be a viable mini business that generates 3-10k per week in brokerage for TQL. The ones who land towards the high side of the distribution are paraded around in front of the newbies to show how well you can do if you call 300 people a day.

Most of the people you deal with at TQL are under EXTREME duress to generate better numbers. You can hear it in their voices. The strain and the stress is in the process of burning them out. They've worked 6 days a week, 12 hours a day, for probably 2-3 months... And before this the most work they ever did was school. They are young so they think that if they don't succeed at TQL they will probably be a failure at life.

These people find the time to call even more trucks after they already have a load. They might be sitting a couple of hundred bucks under their weekly goal with all their available loads covered. The smart thing to do would be to keep prospecting, but people think short term.

Compare all of this to my operation that moves hundreds loads of produce a year + a couple of hundred misc loads of dry stuff and meat. I have myself and my wife to do all that work. We would literally never call around looking for another truck because it makes no sense. We already did the work and the money is currently secure... What on earth would convince us to redo all of that for an extra hundred bucks? We didn't do the work for a hundred bucks to start with!

EDIT: Oh and to make it more unfair I get 60% not 28-35%. When I worked for one of the bigger shops I was always confused about how brokers could be willing to move loads for 100-200 dollars when there was no way I could basically ever justify making less than 250-300. Now I get it

 

JAT brokerage in Columbus Kansas. This is primarily a hopper bottom broker and at one Tim was a good one but recently he has become very underhanded and skilled at backstabbing. He no longer attempts to contact for decent rates for his drivers but just takes what is offered and is slowly starving his drivers out.As testament he has went from 80+ trucks down t less than ten in just about six months as drivers find ways to get out of their contracts.

 

This sounds like a sad situation. I don't know anything about it but it sounds like Tim is under a lot of rate pressure from his customers for some reason. Sounds like it's ruining his life actually.

When people start doing underhanded #### that isn't in character and suddenly the rates they are getting collapse it means one thing: the customer cut the rate so deep that there's no room for a broker anymore. As someone who has this happen to one lane or another almost every year I feel for the guy. Doesn't make whatever he's done because of it reasonable.

Whenever you sense this kind of dynamic it's long past time to exit the situation. Desperate people do desperate things. I don't wanna end up some drowning guys drowned life preserver.

 

You are correct. Few weeks ago I took a load from VA to IN for $1000 on 730 miles. Then I had about 260 DH, so the broker was really nervous and kept calling to see if I'm still good to go. He explained that it didn't really make sense for me with all the DH and that many carriers would cancel something like this. Well to me it made sense because it delivered Dec 31 which was Saturday and I didn't wanna take a chance and get stuck for 2 days. Not to mention I made really good money going out.

 

That broker should have just asked you why you were doing it on the first phone call. I'd have been skeptical too, but when you explained you had a load coming out on Saturday/Sunday that paid well I'd have relaxed a lot. Also certain kinds of trucking companies use this strategy, and certain kinds do not.

If your MC number starts with a 3 or 4 and you seem like the kind of pro dispatcher who probably has 10+ trucks you, like me, aren't going to spend your time redoing your work unless someone makes you.

 

I applaud you @Jeff Reiners , Sometimes I think I should start a broker company just to get truckers better paying loads. I know the brokers are in the majority absolute thieves.
My sister in law wanted to move her son's car from LA to Tennesse and was told it will cost $2000. when the driver arrived and she asked him why they charge so much the guy replied "I don't know Mam, I only make $350 per car"
The broker is making 82.5% per car. just to book these loads That is ridiculous.
I am so sick of greedy people. Truck drivers are having a very difficult time making a decent living without being away from home all the time.
I know we all could do better.