Passing on a thought....

where do i sign up?????????




American Trucker

 

Two quite obvious flaws.

1) Your competition is under no obligation to abide what you decide is a fair rate.

2) A collective will just take away control of your business. Kinda like a union demoralizes man be subjecting him to the whims of others so would your O/O collective. It would be like being a lease driver with ten thousand (OK probably more like a hundred or so would be this foolish) dispatchers deciding the policy for your company. It is a simple choice to think for yourself or let others do it for you.

 

Sounds as if all you want is price fixing. I mean unless your willing to let some else run your business. That is what you are suggesting. Letting people make your decisions for you.

I stand by my statements.

 

In a company as described you're going to run into all kinds of safety/compliance issues. One owner is bad enough, but every time someone is up for review for doing something stupid the vote is likely to be based on peoples opinions of the person, not the facts. Management needs to have the power to control certain aspects of the company, if management has to answer to the drivers it's trying to enforce policy on it'll never work. This would be a great system if people didn't suck, but lets face the facts most people suck.

 

It isn't do they suck or swallow. It is opinion. What happens when the collective votes to ban pre-egr engines because finding freight for them coming out of or to Cali is a pain the collective decides takes to much effort?

What if the collective decides that trucks should be achieving 6?8 mpg and bases FSC off of it.

What happens when your employee spends all day setting up a reload for you and you decide you want a break instead?Who pays for the damage to the collective's reputation when the load is now missed?

What is a fair rate? That in and of itself is a widely debated topic. What you want or can run for is not necessarily what anyone else can run for.


But hey go ahead and start it. You can collectively go out of business together.To many dang trucks out here now with new back haul billy big riggers running for fuel to get home.

A business needs one decision maker. Anything else is doomed.

 

Talk about taking a very simple idea and turning into a complicated mess.

Rates / FSC would be decided on based on market conditions not VOTED on a daily basis. You would need to hire a Manager , Book keeper , Safety person , Sales person and dispatchers , they each would have a job to do not the CO OPERATIVE members.

Monthly meeting to VOTE on issues same as with being a shareholder in a small outfit.

CO OPERATIVE members would get treated just like if they were leased on with a MEGA CARRIER , get assigned loads run with them , turn it down goes to next truck.

You pool your resources / current customers, swap equipment , get volume $ on fuel , tires , service.

Would be a major effort getting it in place but with the right people / attitudes it could be done.

 

I think the idea has some merit. I've been thinking it over. I'm hoping some forum members will weigh in with some more objective views. So far there is more subjective analysis than objective analysis.

The hard part would be getting more than two owners to agree on anything. All decisions would need to be based on facts and written and established guidelines.

There would be no intent to compete on price so that point isn't valid. There isn't a smart owner out here who competes on price. While it isn't as widespread as it was 20 or 30 years ago, there are still a number of people who pay for service. I am one. Those who receive bad service often convert their position. Remember it's a free market. If one of your competitors pays more to move his product with better results he could steal your customer.

Anyone that doesn't realize that most brokers have at least two catagories or standards they operate under just doesn't understand. They have the shippers and receivers that demand quaility service and they have the ones that demand a cheap rate. Then they have the quality trucks that don't haul cheap freight and the cheap trucks that may not provide good service. They know their trucks and their shippers and they match them based on requirements and the most money they can make. Spend some time thinking about this and you will see there are many potential outcomes for the truck and not all of them are based on cheap rates.

As for control, I'm a control freak. Still if I can get my rate or better, cut my workload and leverage my costs with a small loss of control, why wouldn't I do it. If I don't like it all I have to do is walk.

 

Good luck. I look forward to the cat fight just like the unions get every three years. Butyou guy's will get them every month about every "employee".

Any business man worth his truck will see the flaw of letting a collective make his decisions.