Instant O/O and Load boards

I posted a response and it disappeared..lol... Anyway Ive been leaning towards flatbeds. And if frieght in Florida is good enough to get out and back home then I may just do that. I ran flatbeds back in 1992 for a small company in Edgewater Florida. Mostly ran concrete roof tile into Miami after Hurricane Andrew. There were no rules back then it seemed. I ran Florida , Georgia and Alabama and was out 6 days home 1.

 

Unless you're hauling a dedicated run of uncovered, "standard" sized loads - a flatbed trailer is alot like a sailboat - prices are fairly low, and the "hidden cost" is in the rigging (and both can sink your #####). Once you have your flatbed or stepdeck trailer (cheap in some cases), all you need are a few thousand (maybe again what you paid for the trailer) dollars worth of chains, binders, straps, winches, tarps, ropes, clevis', and the best part? Luck is, you'll be wearing all those out every single day, and they ain't light. And you might want to throw in a few ladders while you're at it - there's nothing like trying to toss a stiff frozen tarp over a legal-height load in a storm - and pulling them over doesn't work if you value your tarps.

If anyone wants to learn flatbedding, it's best to go work for someone big and learn it first. When loads come loose, drivers go to jail.

And if you've never run your own truck, let alone loaded a freight bed, I just hope I'm not sharing the road with your first 100 loads. Have a nice day, and good luck.

 

$500 a WEEK?! What kinda operation do you think trucking is?! $500 a week..... I'm still reeling. Fuel is $0.80/MILE (and higher in some areas these days) depending on your true mpg and your truck. And $2/mi freight is generally a myth these days, reefer loads generally run lower than that - unless you've got a "hookup" no one else does.

I'll speak in Rob's absence in saying that Rob spent every dime he made trying to keep an old, underpowered truck (formerly owned by a STEEL COMPANY - first mistake) on the road. Lesson? When looking at a used truck, look for the "suntan" of the trucks previous owners decals on the body. Figure out it's past, or don't buy it. And if you see a STEEL COMPANY as the previous owner - RUN, don't walk, AWAY. And never try to pull a bulk trailer with a "Super" 10 speed rated at 1,450ft/lbs torque without knowing it's limits.

Rob got a crappy truck, on it's last leg, and paid for it dearly. If you read the thread, realize that every dime he "earned" went right back out in repairs. I spent 28,000 miles driving with him in my truck trying to get him back on top of his - while a good friend of ours pieced his truck back together a number of times for next to nothing. The "engine mount incident" should've totalled his truck out, and she was salvaged back together with used parts at a shadow of the cost it should've been. And the "gearbox incident" was simply mind-boggling, the gears looked like blower pulleys (no teeth left whatsoever), and that would've been another small fortune he didn't have. One of the best friends a man could never ask for pulled that truck back from the scrapper a number of times, and many others stepped in here and there along the way. Reality? A good truck can make you money (not much these days), and a bad one can take everything you have.

I tossed in the hat at $2.75/gal, and sold my truck a few months ago (after she sat for almost 2 years waiting for the game to change). And it wasn't easy to sell my truck for anything close to what she should be worth. I'd never even think about stepping in to OTR these days, and yes, it's that rough out there. Rates haven't changed, and the Dept of Energy never set up enforcement for the "Fuel Surcharge" policy that was supposed to adjust for anything above $2/gal diesel fuel.

If you adjust for the cost of fuel and everything else involved, you'd find that the rates should be somewhere in the $4 to $5/mile range across the board - to be where they were 20 years ago before they started falling off drastically (staying the same as the US Dollar lost value causing inflation). Anything less doesn't make money without alot of strategy.

 

Hwypilot I remeber reading at the begining of the thread that Rob had an issue with the clutch on one of the first few days he owned that truck. Was that the same issue that ultimately doomed that last load or was that an all new transmission problem

Also I have to agree that it is not right that fuel can be as priced as high as it is but independent carriers dont seem to have any ability to pass along the costs to shippers. Ill bet any amount of money the shippers passed along higher costs to their customers because of fuel prices then contiued to pay less than $2/mile to ship products

 

Yeah, that is the kid. Hope he is doing well and just sick of the negative talk about what can and can't be done. Biggest obstacle for new owner operators is negative self-talk and second obstacle is all the others wanting to pull you down.

 

Well the good news, if I should even call it that, is that Ive run flatbeds back in the day and Ive owned both sailboats and motor boats. LOL So maybe its just that I never learned. Great analogy though and I think the saying is the same for boats and trucks " The two happiest days of owning either is the day you buy it and the day you sell it!" Im still a good ways away from going down the O/O path. Luckily I have a good job and time to plan.

This forum is an awesome resource between the posters like Rob willing to give us blow by blow details of their journey and the others like you and hundreds more giving advice and information on the industry I have the advantage of at least taking my time and building a plan. I can identify frieght lanes for all types of commodities and decide what type of frieght to haul or even just drop the idea and find something else to do. Of course none of that is possible without the posters on here being honest with both success and failure. So thanks to all of you! From what I can tell as Long as you pay it forward you're good to go.

Back to flatbedding... Driving a flatbed is not completely new to me although the regulations have definitly changed. I did only run in the south east so the whole frozen tarps and straps are not appealing but I imagine that sucks even for a northerner. I dont mind having to get out and do some work and as an O/O I wouldnt do it unless Im being paid for it. What Ive learned on this site is that rates do suck so Id take my time and build a plan, figure out what my break even is and if it does not appear I can make more than that on a regular basis then I wouldnt move forward. It does not make sense to get into a business that will ultimately be a loser. Ill do what I can to set myself up to be successful then if Im failing Ill readjust the plan. But like I said before I have plenty of time to set this up for success and thanks again for any advice or information

 

Since i started from nothing and made it maybe a quarter of the way i'll tell you what all i saw when making my plan, and what all really happened.

For the better part of a year i worked on my plan, how i'm going to get a truck, what my bottem line would be, how i'd get freight and so on and so on. I looked at load boards and everything saw what freight was getting moved for and where most of it was going.
How it really went.
Half of the freight on most loadboards dont have a rate and chances are when you call on them it'll be some b.s rate where you'd probably be upset you wasted a few of your unlimited minutes to even make the call. The freight that is worth a dime is usually gone before you actually finish dialing the number but no one has removed it from the board. I came to find out really quick that central Florida is not the place for a flatbed, nothing coming out.. Lumber coming from the north of the state back in but that's pretty much it.. Flatbed freight is either in the North of Florida or south west around Ft. Myers.

Next issue was how brokers described freight. "Palletized cable" get to shipper and it's coiled cable thats going to be used on a crane, no chains only straps. Well you were expecting pallets, so knowing you dont have coil racks you book the load, get there and it's coils, how do you load coils with no coil racks.. don't worry, it's not the first time it's happen'd they might show ya how to use your dunnage to secure it.
Equipment
Tarps aren't cheap, nether are chains, binders, dunnage (neva knew wood was expensive). Straps, and bungees are fairly cheap as long as you dont get them at the TS, but a big help is to search CraigsList, some driver is either buying new stuff and needs to get rid of their old, or is getting out of the game all together. I bought my tarps, straps, bungees (200cnt), edge protectors and dunnage ("8" 4x4, "16" 2x4, "16" 2x4) for just under $1000. I didn't get binders until 3months in, i got 10 from a guy off craigs list for $150, a wire brush and sum PB Blaster and they work just fine, never got chains, ended up shutting down before i started running steel.

Money
I decided to factor my loads, didn't want to wait a month to get paid... I didn't know much about how the money flowed, if i knew then what i know now, i would have just let the broker keep 1%,2%,3% and get paid 24hr after delivery. Most factoring companies will try to hold you as a slave, as in if you sign on with them you can only factor with them, and some want you to factor ALL of your loads with them and them only. I was lucky enough to just by chance happen to choose a company that allowed me to only factor the loads i wanted to with them.

Fuel
Get a FleetOne Fuel card, the $0.06 discount on cash purchase applies to the card, and some stations will add an extra $0.03 on top of that, you just have to look through their dictionary to see which one's are giving the extra discount. The other great thing is that even little mom and pop TS accept it, and alot of regular gas stations.. Ever stopped at a Pilot or TA to get fuel, and diesel is $4.50 and you look across the street at the Shell and it's $4.00 even? Big TS have an up charge for the convince of parking and the blue water you use to clean your windshield, dont forget about that penny they give back to you on your rewards card. I was getting all of my fuel at the Murphys infront of the WalMart down the street from my apartment the whole time.

That's all i can think about right now, the rest will hit me while i'm takin a pooh later. I tend to think about the things i've done and how i could have done them better.

 

The cure for tarp loads - don't haul them. I have trucks that do not carry tarps and we make money every day. The cure for a negative attitude - much more difficult to figure out.

 

Mitchtazz... I have been checking what I could in terms of loads and believe me my reseach is very limited. But it seems that if there is anything going out of Florida for FB its either Tampa, Jax, or some towns Im not sure of like Whitehouse Fl. But of course that is coming from sources that are probably steps below what actal O/Os consider to be their lowest source for loads...lol. Im in east central Fla and some key areas seem to be between 90-150 miles from home so thats my minimum DH from home. Then Id have to figure longer DHs from those numbers. I just have locations and not rates so if the rates are low, which Im sure they would be, than it wouldnt make sense to DH to those loads. Im not that interested in Reefer and I dont know if vans can do better based in Florida but FB at least seems to offer higher rates in other areas so Im going to start working on understanding frieght lanes and see if that will help me make a more informed decision on which way to go. I still like the challege that FBs offer but it all comes down to dollars and cents.

I was reading your post and it sounded like you were writing in past tense. Are you still an O/O or did you shut down? I wasnt sure if I was reading it correctly.

 

He's a company driver now.

What is keeping you in FL? If you can move, do it. That will be the best investment in your business.