good or bad brokers

Be interesting in hearing what you feel is the driver for these rates?

 

Don't blame brokers for the cheap rates. If you want to blame someone, look at your fellow owner operators and carriers who take freight at the cheap rates. Set a minimum haul rate and if a broker or shipper won't at least meet your minimum haul rate, then don't take the load. If the broker needs to move the load he will find a way to make the rate work for you.

 

To many people own trucks who have no business owning one.

 

Been a while since.

Term I like to use is "bought a job".

I find it interesting that many in the "no cheap freight" crowd fall into this as well. They have no understanding of the market.

Rollin won't put anything in his trailer that pays less than $2. But he has a plan and understands what he is doing so on the other side he is making it work.

 

Bought a job is spot on.

Personally I think guys who figure up what their bottom line rate per mile is are most of the problem. they compromise to much because they have it figured up on a certain amount of miles a week so they are afraid to set in fear of not getting those miles. Now don't get me wrong, you do need to know this, but you need to then forget it. Learning to work smarter not harder is the key to success.

 

Amen brother, to #### easy for fools to buy a truck that don't have a clue about running a buisness.

 

But imagine what we could accomplish if we work HARDER and SMARTER.

It seems that trucking is one of those businesses that people think because they can drive and have the ability to get into a truck that then the business planning part is looking at the rags at the truck stop.

Can you imagine if when I came up with my meat slushy idea for dogs if I just ran full speed a head because I had the money to do it. It would have been too late for me once I figured out that the cashiers where getting sick from the smell. Glad I did some market testing.

But seriously, the problem is not the cheap freight. It is drivers that don't understand that this is a by product of a certain business model and they don't understand the difference.

Only retailers that complain about Walmart prices are people trying to compete with Walmart. If you can't compete then change your business model. But the whiners don't even know what business model they have so how could they change it.

 

The problem is most can't seem to do both at the same time. they get caught up in that "gotta go" syndrome and tend to forget about the smarter part.

As for the cheaper freight, yeah I do blame truck drivers. the reason is they are the ones who except them rates, so trying to blame someone else is really pointless.

 

But spot market rates are driven off of contract freight. And in a neutral market spot will be cheaper than contract. So when a broker is going in and bidding excess freight they are already having to under bid contract rates.

So remember the Megas don't have a load to load business model. They are looking to make an average rate over a period of time. So they are the ones driving the rates.

When I think cheap freight it is likely opposite what others are thinking. I look at what people take INTO markets with over capacity as the cheap rates. Because these drivers are taking freight well under contract freight. Then coming out they are getting good rates (while most say they are cheap) because they are getting rates above contract.

About a month ago, with fuel, dry van contract from Dallas to Chicago was around $1.25/mile. Chicago to Dallas was $2.65/mile. Now, many would say if you got a rate of $1.40 to Chicago that was cheap. But in that market you beat contract and that is good.

Problem comes when they take the load down at $2.20. That is cheap because it is so far under contract.

Remember all this is based on neutral market.