Time=Money?

Maximizing miles and not being patient is a lose, lose situation. You have to be willing to lose a day or two now and then. You also have to be willing to deadhead at any given moment further than 100 miles,much further. You have to know your lanes and what is good versus what is not so you don't sit.

 

Stay where there is consistant freight paying well, if you can. I like to do 200 to 500 mile loads that unload within 18 hours. It's nice not to just drive, but get out and do a little manual labor for a few hours. The gross pay per day is less but my fuel is less per day too. The rates are higher than average and my net per day is usually the same to better than doing long haul. Long haul rates stink plus I get stuck in bad areas doing them. I like staying in a region or two that keeps me busy and pays me enough to cover all costs and make 300 to 400 bucks per day, every day in net revenue at least.

 

There is no "secret". Some times you get really lucky and hit a streak where the freight is good. Some times, you hit a streak you just scratch your head.

There are markets that tend to be "hubs", chicago being one of them.

Or you can go on a "junk market" tour and really clean up hitting markets everyone says pays poorly and you hit it right and go in for great and come out smelling like a rose too.

But BE PREPARED TO SIT.....

I booked one load this week out of town. The rest all came to me. I posted myself empty and what I expected. I also started a distribution list that goes to all the brokers I have emails for.

 

you're not going to get many "factual numbers" on this because if you

A. take a load, then you don't know what you missed the next day

B. wait a day, you may get a better load from there, but you don't know what load you missed out on wherever that load you passed on delivered.

If you want some numbers, here's some numbers for you then. Let's say you deliver to Baltimore with a stepdeck on Monday. Let's say everybody you're calling is offering you $1.65-$1.80. You think if you wait a day you might be able to get $2.25 or even better, but you know if you take a load to IN there is plenty of loads there paying $2.50 up to $3.00 maybe more. So

A. you wait a day, make $0 (actually lose a little for all your timed expenses like insurance, cell phone, load boards, etc...), but then Tuesday fate is kind and a broker calls and is in dire need of a 53' stepdeck to haul a bus from Indian Head, MD to Camp Atterbury, IN and you get $2.75/mile or

B. grab that $1.80 load. On that load you probably net $360.00. And on Tuesday you find a load going back to Baltimore @ $2.75/mile.

Obviously, there is a lot of variables here but you see in either example you are going to be getting a $2.75/mile load on Tuesday. So the question is do you want to make $360 the hard way on Monday, or do you want to make a bunch of phone calls ?

A lot of times I make this decision based on how much paperwork I have, how bad my truck needs cleaning, if I need to do some shopping, etc... If I have a bunch of stuff I need to do and I'm not satisfied I'm getting a good rate, it's pretty easy to decide to wait and see if something better pops up the next day.

 

Time = Money

If Money = Time, then we can say that Time(2) = Money to the second power, which would be cake. So if Money(2) = Cake, then Cake = Pie. Ya dig?

 

i think old teamsters who used mules had the question on there minds. i could never get any set pattern about that. sometimes you come out good other times not so good. i would guess 50/50 with a 10% plus or minus based on luck let us know if you if you get some solid info.

 

$2.11/mile on 800 miles
$1.65/mile on 750 miles
$3.45/mile on 550 miles

versus sitting and waiting for only great paying loads, take the $1.65/mile to a better paying area for the cherry picked load.

 

Isn't that called the law of average? When Ichiro played for the Mariners it was certain that now matter how he started or the slumps he got into, at the end of the year his average was around .300 with 200 hits plus.