Rates are crashing and fuel to the moon!

Needless to say unless you’ve got something dedicated, if you’re pulling a dry van the spot market is absolute trash right now. I’d get out and pull hazmat, flat, or pneumatic. Also the oil fields are booming but sandbox lines are 8 hrs in the Permian I’mhearing. Good thing I own my rig; deed and title. I parked it. I was leasing on prior so I ain’t gotta worry bout ins lapses. No note means no worrying about a payment or the repo man coming to take away my asset.

For a lot of you o/o’s who bought used rigs at inflated prices just to get in on the Post-Covid mania phase we had, I knew it was only a matter of time. Everyone had FOMO fever. I tried warning ppl to hold off. Reality is now kicking every o/o and lease-op financing a truck and a $90k trailer the gut. Me and a buddy went team for a fleet owner recently. He’s running dry vans and he’s candid enough to share his rate cons with us. He’s barely cracking 2k on 1000 miles. We ran from Bmore to Indy for $1300 Monday, and 2100 from Just west of there to Williamsburg, VA for roughly 2k, then about the same money back up to Michigan, and we just did 1 pick 2 drops to RI and MA for 2800. Now as I’m typing this we’re loading beer in Newark Nj to Syracuse and back round trip. Broker is giving him 800. Home weekends. He couldn’t find anything viable outta Mass. so we deadheaded 210 miles down here. We just filled up the truck for a grand (fuel card maxes out at $999.00) so he’s already out -$200 on this load. Mind you our agreement with him is $2000 per week per driver. You can do the math, but if this is gonna be the new status-quo for spot freight going forward, it’s not sustainable. I wouldn’t be surprised if he lays us off by month’s end.

 

That's repulsive. Can't believe he's running for those rates.

 

DOOM

 

Enlightenment can only be obtained through short haul.

 

I would not be suprised either. Drivers' pay went up exorbitantly in the last two years. Some are ... or were making more than I did when first started as an o/o in 2014. I wish them all the money in the world but as far as I am concerned, hiring drivers, and relying on spot market freight solely is simply long term unsustainable, if not irresponsible.

Now, being a solo o/o with no equipment payments, I could just settle on enough margin that equals drivers wages and hope for better times to come back sooner than later. That's only possible because I am the driver and will cut my pay first instead of laying myself off.

 

"That's a civil matter, sir. You'll have to get a court order". Ft Atkinson, WI PD

"I have a court order, I want you to enforce it" my dad.

"That isn't signed by a WI court"

"It's a federal court, it doesn't matter the judge was in Illinois"

"There's nothing I can arrest them for"

"I don't want you to arrest them, I just want my clients equipment "

"I don't have officers to spare"

I'm paraphrasing, but the officers wanted to do anything but get involved. It went on like this for quite a while. I don't remember all the details, but basically the bank loaned money to a campground in Illinois, whose owners owned other campgrounds in WI and MN. The IL site was loosing money and going bankrupt. The owners moved some of the fixtures from the failing location to one of their Wisconsin locations. Enter the lawyers and courts, etc.

I don't know why the cops didn't want to get involved, but they very much didn't. I thought it was weird, but on the way home my dad told me that most cops/sherriffs don't want to get involved in civil matters because their is no upside for them.

 

The only time I remember them cutting drivers pay was in 2008 and briefly in 2011 but not by as much as in 2008.

 

I think it was the Longshoremen INSIDE THE COMMUNIST STATE that made freight rates great.