Rates are crashing and fuel to the moon!

Smh

 

Well, it's very heartbreaking but to prevent "shooting in the foot" here would be to advise someone else to park their trucks and wait for better times while the advice givers of "Don't take cheap freight" can have that little more freight to themselves - for not as cheap, mind you.
What caused Oklahomans to default on their land leases and the great exodus in early 1930s was not only the Dust Bowl but the earlier overcapacity on their harvests that caused the rates of grains to plummet down which in turn led to their lack of savings to withstand the draught period.

 

while as on O/O I was split on that mentality and had issues and yet sometimes I did take cheap loads to get back home. I came to the realization that I rather do one good load a week than 5 bad ones.

but I’m out of the industry. Yet on my new job I use the knowledge I gained from trucking.

my service costs money. 8 out of 10 don’t want it, but the 2 that do I make money on.

 

What are you doing now

 

It's a quick run to position in a better freight lane. It's not a bad business decision.

 

It is all circumstantial.
I am in Chicago area and everything, I repeat, everything inbound on a dry van is going to be cheap. It may be different when you live ...say in Memphis TN or Kansas City area (?) where freight volume and capacity may be more balanced.
Now, forsaking that revenue in the name of chivalrous ideas that I would not shoot others in the foot is nothing but fighting with the windmills. That cheap freight amounts to a chunk of revenue at the end of the year. It all counts. What am I supposed to do, not to haul at all and advertise it here so that others follow suit? In the end, someone will break ranks and take it all happy laughing at those who did not and left it for him.

 

I have zero sympathy for her and the carrier..... Never put all of your eggs in one basket....

 

They can take all the cheap freight that’s offered. I fall in a different category, I for one won’t haul it and it’s never offered to me nor look for it. If it works for others, more power to you, like you mentioned, the one that do, must be mathematicians and works for them. I’m local and do more contract work, usually loaded one way and empty on return, sometimes I might reload in the same area which is a win win and get paid the same contract rate on that particular backhaul. On a side note: it’s been slow, the rains out here in Commiefornia has backlog the infrastructure. But again, that’s why we save for those rainy days. So let it rain.

 

It also depends on a freight segment and how you work it. With dry van, every little bit counts. General Dry van is the cheapest freight of them all. There's no flexibility to ignore "any" opportunity to move for a pay. There, surely, is so called dignity threshold but I see it more as something too cheap and time consuming to bother than anything to do with pride and dignity. The other day, I delivered to a grocery warehouse in Kenosha, WI. All of a sudden, almost right there - a few stop signs away, there was a load of water going to Rockford, IL (110 miles) - $425 - take or leave it, I was told...I took it without too much contemplation, fully aware that the last time I took it, it paid $950. I was going that way anyways. Why not?

 

Point taken, back decades ago, I haul concrete pipe to what is now North Vegas from Fontana Ca., after I unloaded I would head back empty to reload for the next day, then someone threw me the idea why not haul drywall back to some part of So.Cal, the rate was almost half of the rate I got going up, I looked at it as it pays for the fuel etc(fuel was cheaper in 1995). But when I got the the gypsum place and seen all the trucks waiting, right away I figured this isn’t gonna be worth it, for one, I would have to unload the following morning and who knows how long that would take, and second, I’m losing a whole days of work(I’m local). So at the end, it was not profitable for “ME” to take the “cheap freight”. Didn’t once and never again.