What am I missing?

When you solicit for freight, it's very rare to get business on the first call, and I am talking about the face to face call you make when you introduce yourself and your company to the customer. Usually 3-4 live calls and maybe some phone work. It's all about building solid business relationships with potential customers and then retaining them.

 

Yup, youre right, there are a lot of them, they give the good guys a terrible rep. Its hard to tell if they started out, thinking they would give the carriers a good screwing or if they ran out of money and no one got paid. Regardless, there should be a way of making sure that the bad guys don't get away.

 

Yeah, no I was thinking the private broker from home. But yes, that setup would be quite costly. I would think that employees would be primarily commission. If you're paying them each $500 a week performing or not, that is a HUGE chunk of change and a lot of bloat in the industry. Even within one company, middle-management is a huge target for layoffs and streamlining. In this case, this industry couldn't survive without the truckers and the brokers handle a lot of inconvenient things, but it would still get done without them, the old fashioned way, you have something to ship, you pick up a phone and call a carrier. If you have a LOT to ship, you call a large carrier.

Understand though, I am not in any way against brokers. I could not even possibly think about entering trucking without a LOT of them!

Best case scenario though would be if teamers were brokers. When they're not securing deals, they're supporting themselves by driving... either way much more to the truck and the progress.

 

You cant be sure the broker is good or bad until its too late in some cases. They all have, or so they say, authority, insurance, they are bonded and so on. Most customers who go around the broker that they have been dealing with, do it to cut the guy out. Plain and simple and unless you are a broker and have some sort of a contract, you are hosed.

 

Teamers? What's that?

 

To GET freight. Since I'm apparently unhireable, I'm buying my own truck and authority. It would not be possible at all without load boards and brokering companies.

 

Should I ask about not being hireable? I know it's not from a lack of intelligence... Your postings are proof of your intelligence.

OK I can understand why you want your own truck, but why your own authority? Why don't you find a decent small company to lease on with?

 

Because they all, probably rightfully, require differing amounts of OTR experience that I don't have.

Most of the companies that I applied to turned me down right away because of my education, at least the ones that would tell me anything. I don't like to think its because they don't like education, just that it didn't meet their ideal for a proper work history. The other pre-hires I had, Maverick, McElroy, the GOOD companies I was willling to work for all put hiring freezes on while I was finishing my CDL.

 

What I am asking is why would you want your own authority? Especially when you can lease your truck on with a reliable company and not have the grief of having your own authority.

 

Look at Landstar for example. They still require experience even WITH authority. If, after a year I am not doing well, I can do something like that and release my authority. I just don't want to sit.