Rates are crashing and fuel to the moon!

I dunno, TQL is offering lots of high quality DC loads at rates up to .99/pm!

 

that’s the “gotta get back to my lane” crowd special aka “back haul” or “it’s fuel money,” you choose.

 

...

 

Which is what it is to me.
I can't sit in Carlisle, Pa on Friday afternoon wishing for a money maker because eight times out of ten I'll either deadhead home 700 miles or stay on that miserable Petro until Monday. And since my mental capability can't deal with the latter, I will take that $1250 load from there to Chicago as soon as I see it on a load board. The trick is not bring cheap freight to Carlisle, PA. The point is, some lanes consist inherently in what is called as "pay for fuel" or "backhaul" freight and that's what the market decides.

 

Cheap freight is cheap freight. It doesn't matter what way it's moving. Taking cheap freight shoots us all in the foot.

 

Cliché. Most uttered by someone with little exposure to what is called spot market freight.
There's always going to be cheap freight intertwined by good paying freight. Good Freight + Cheap Freight = Total Freight Revenue. As simple as that.
You are not bigger than the market.
You are incapable to make cheap freight a good paying freight (in areas of inherently cheap freight), so you either take it or don't take it at all. Not taking it at all is definitely shooting yourself in the foot, as the above equation shows clearly.

 

There is this everlasting tendency in times like these of trying to find someone to blame for the existence of cheap freight.
Also, this belief in "say no to cheap freight" solidarity fallacy, as if nobody took it, it would go up. Yes, If we all waited and refused to haul it, sure it would!
But tell me, who gets to haul it first once it does?!

More efficient would be to tell someone that they they are not to buy trucks to do this for a living to begin with.

 

You do know individuals that say No to cheap freight still take it…… they use it as a back haul. It’s been like this thru out the trucking industry since deregulation. The brokers know it. Like you mentioned, “our own people shoot themselves and the rest in the foot”.

 

These individuals are realists - sound math minded people who maximize their profits in all possible ways. $0 per mile is worse than 1 dol per mile.
And tell me how to avoid taking cheap freight where there are 1000 trucks bidding on 150 loads?
"Shooting in the foot" does not even apply here.

 

This video says it all. She is genuinely speaking from her heart and its unfortunate. Cheap Freight causes this scenario.