Owner Operator vs. Driver

There are some on here who will say deadheading 500 miles is bad business. Take for instance that last load I delivered at 4 am Saturday morning. When I was done with it I deadheaded 503 miles to the house. Maybe I could have picked off a $1 a mile fuel money load somewhere down there that got me close to the house and I could have delivered it either yesterday or this morning. I would have covered my fuel getting back home and warehoused a load on my trailer over the weekend. But do you remember the $3 a mile load on 500 loaded miles that came available to me Sunday morning? The one that I turned down because I thought that was cheap for an odd hours holiday weekend load, and I really didn;t want to work this weekend anyways. Had I followed conventional thinking and booked the $1 a mile load to home, that $3 a mile load would have never been an option. As it was I quoted that load at well over $5 a mile, not ever thinking I would get it at that, and I didn't. Point is I had the option to get that load for at least $3 a mile and wasting my time on a "fuel money" load to get home would have had me not only paying the broker to haul their freight, but also missing the opportunity to haul some real freight for someone who was serious about getting it moved. Granted, not everyone can get freight like that nor do they know better freight is available like that. But it's not my fault they don't do any home work and never think out of the box.

 

I would rather deadhead to a decent area where I know that I can get a good paying load rather than tie my truck up hauling a load that only pays my fuel with little or no profit. I understand that some feel that having something on the truck that pay a little is better than deadheading. While I understand their thinking, I don't agree. I have found what works for me and my situation. Some will argue that rates in those areas will never come up so they may as well take the cheap load. That type of thinking is the very reason why those rates are so cheap. When people stop hauling freight then rates come up until someone books the load.

 

Perfect example here.. I'm in Philadelphia, delivered this morning. Called on a 220 mile run picking up 6 miles away... Broker paying $475... I tell him flat out, I don't have to go to that area, I can just as easily go the other direction, if you want me to do it, I want $800.. As I mentioned in previous post, I look at cost to run, figure in trascores rate index, and go from there.. The high end of the rate index was tellin me $725... I always ask extra, just because I can, and so there's a little wiggle room when they try to negotiate you down.. He came to $600, I told him "I'll just take another 34 hr restart, I've got 2 days til I need to be 100 miles away, I can either move your freight or hang out, well, I got my $800 price, now I'm Rollin out again

 

Wow! Finally some owner operators who know what I been trying to say but couldn't find the words to say it on paper! I am a company driver and once a few times a week am dealing with a broker and negotating a rate for me to haul the load! Although my company does not compensate me for the rate I get them my dispatcher does give me extra pay when extra pay is not meant for me to have example a drop and hook he will pay me dention pay from 4 hours up to 10 hours depending on how much I can get the load to pay!

Prime example I just got my pay check for the weekending Aug 31st. I had a broker load from Riverville, Va to Masillione, Oh. This was a paper mill run. Some would say paper mills are cheap freight! The broker needed this picked up by 5 pm and delivered the next day at 10 am about a 540 mile run! The broker thought they was gonna get off cheap and pay 2.00 mile for the load! I told the broker if you want the load there by 8 am it will cost 5 bucks a mile, if I get it there by 10 am it will be 4.00 a mile. I said for 2.00 a mile it will get there sometime tomorrow after 11 30 am.

Broker company was called Control Brokerage. When all was said and done they came back get it there by 8 am and we will pay 5 bucks a mile for the load! I got my paycheck from my company and they paid me an extra .40 cents a miles on top of my regular pay for that load!

This is one reason why I wanna become an owner operator! I can make my own rates and like some said if they won't pay you the rate you want don't haul it! I seen freight go from one dollar a mile to 3 dollars a mile in a matter of 30 minutes because the dead line was closing in on the broker and they needed the freight to move asap otherwise the broker will start having to take a lost just to get a driver to haul it!

If more drivers would stop hauling that cheap freight drivers would not talking about barely making it!

 

no, i wasnt straightjacketed by hauling exclusively direct accounts, it was a specialized deal. we hauled mobile homes from the factories to dealer lots, and we did modulars to customer lots, and i also did the crane sets on the modulars, i had 2 set crews for those, a foundation crew, a finish crew for inside and a outside finish crew. when we hauled a 4 piece mod, one truck stayed with the section to get to the crane and after set would haul back the mod carriers stacked, 2 trucks would piggy-back back to factory, and the third would load one escort on the rack and pull another back. the freight wasnt exactly cheap 4500 a section from south ga to key west just for the haul bill.


that was the bread and butter. we did that at full tilt for 14 years. i saw a problem with the home market a while before it collapsed, it was folks getting houses who often didnt have jobs, couldnt even get electric turned on, etc etc.

when the factories started closing , i began cutting back, wasnt hard cutting back because i dint have any payments on equipment and i ran the show from our house. after my lease guys found other places , it was time to stop.

you should try being a 8 truck operation knocking heads with bennett motor express, pinnacle and arkansas transit. all we had going for us was service and on time delivery and the fact i could do a complete turn key deal on a house. i know all about selling yourself in order to get a much higher rate, all those aforementioned companies were far cheaper than me. but not a one of them could deliver a house from ga to key west fl by the next morning at 8 am when you could only cross into the keys between 2 and 5 am.

 

I want no part of any extra trucks I can't drive myself until I figure out a way to clone myself I remember a toter company in TN or KY ??? between Lebanon, TN and Glasgow, KY on US hwy 231 - several years ago before the bubble burst of '08 - they had about 30 toter trucks in there, now there's nothing but a building with an empty lot.. All the mobile home manufacturing places look like ghost towns everywhere I've ever seen one anymore.. I remember when they were all bustling busy places...

 

bill, is that the hardest thing to get across to someone coming to your company? just asking, because many times when offering advice to someone who has asked how i operate, i find they are like addicted to miles.

i find some who simply have to reload the same day they empty out. i have even seen some take a 500 mile load that paid less than 250 mile load with the 250 mile load going to a better area.

i guess it is a habit from being a company driver where pay was based on miles or maybe a former lease/purchase who was on mileage contract.

 

yep it was gang busters, i was quite lucky in that the 6 guys i had leased were all leased to a manufacturer as a private fleet, i hauled from there also , and when they decided to do away with the private fleet, they offered me all the hauling if i would lease these guys on, i got 6 guys who all a minimum of 20 years hauling mobiles and modulars. all i had to do was keep them with permits, i was extremely fortunate. which is why i also kept operating til they all found other places to go.

i dont think that business will ever get close to what it once was. and i 100 per cent agree with you on the one truck deal, for me just dealing with one truck is like a vacation.

 

At one time I was at about 50-to-1 ratio on people wanting to lease to ones that leased on. Now we are at about 15-to-1. Not that we have reduced our standards I have just gotten better at getting to the point on thought process with people and just ending the conversation. In the past I as really looking to learn as much as I could know I just don't have the time to talk to 100's of drivers a week.

So that is building up to answering your question - most that I talk to and don't hire are focused on miles. I have gotten good at spotting phrases that are red flags or keys to move forward with the conversation. So the people that don't make it past 2-mins of conversation are mile addicts.

Of the drivers I have now that have been here for a month or more only 1 I would say isn't interested in following one part of the model or another. But it is his business to run and I am not, nor will I ever be, the type of person that says "you have to run this" or "you have to run this way" (we do have some business that if you agree to participate you have to follow very detailed guidelines).

So for the drivers that I have it hasn't been an issue and most are tracking $80-$100k a year (after fuel and before maintenance/truck payments).

But I think a lot of reason why is the selection process because in the past I have mentored a lot of LS drivers. Even going as far as looking at loads with them. And I can say the two biggest issues was getting to look at shorter mile runs and negotiate for rates (not driver fault but some better paying loads brokers would not book because of time at LS). Most of these drivers that are averaging below the $1.50 just can't see running anything shorter that 1,000 miles. And the funny thing is that many of the didn't average much more in terms of miles than my guys do. But they would run 3,500 one week and then have to reset and maybe sit looking for a load then only get 1,800 the next week.

 

Yep. I rarely take a load over 500mi anymore. I like to load, deliver, and possibly reload the same day or first thing next morning. It's a bit more physical work but the miles I get are well paid miles.