mercer transportation

your absolutely right i keep telling myself that every week. this was going to be kind of the last hoorah. before i say goodbye to trucking and i keep trying to be optomistic and think that its gonna pan out in the end, but i dont know. thank god i dont have a truck payment or this party would have been over 4 months ago! like i ve said in previous posts i like it here , i like to flatbed, definitely beats a reefer in a grocery warehouse but if these numbers dont improve i have no choice but to go simple as that. and as far as going to another company, they re all alike, landstars no prize at least they werent in the early 90"'s when they were ranger, ligon, inway and all that 67 of 98 what the hell is that? these places dont care about you surviving, they care about them surviving, your disposable so as far as jumping around thats not gonna happen. maybe paying 5700 a year for liability and cargo wasnt so bad after all the end of the day numbers definitely were better

 

i have been busy getting my family moved from having my house forclosed on. working on getting my house built, renewing licenses, dealing with power companies and spending 8 days trying to get the hell out of tx. after 8 days i still wasnt number one on the board. its as bad as i have seen it here. i got a cheap but very light load out of tx to KC finally and now i am sitting all weekend here with no load. i am very close to where i bought my truck and i.am tempted to be there monday morning and give them the keys

 

How many days did you work during that 1.5 months

 

ga is not bad, lots of heavy crap but good freight. i agree on fl and n.of pa. i will only do western pa and ny. he needs to stay off that eastern seaboard unless he likes 200mi loads, tarping every one and deadheading to them. its hard for me to make good averages on short loads, cant seem to keep the dh down. i do exceptionally well when i stay running between IL, GA, IN,AL. try to stay in that area even.if it means waiting for a load. if you get too much farther out you will be sitting or running free.

ran into another guy from orientation here yesterday who has only been.home three times since he started, owns his trk and trl and is broke. then he tells me he just got back from CA and spent the whole week around christmass and.new yrs in CO. Tells me he is not making great choices. especially when he said "i figured why not go to CA, it paid good. . $3k" thats not enough to go to ca from midwest. heck there was a $5300 load out there yesterday from kc i would have jumped on but it was a flatbed load. even with 100 trks out there i would have taken that

 

You should of called him out on that, Most trucks gross $200,000 a year so that million dollars of freight your only talking 6 trucks that could cover that max. In the group of 16 people you didn't really think about the numbers much because if your all going after that million they gave back the 16 won't make it long.

It should be like it was back in the day with the old R/R numbers you didn't just get your numbers unless you payed someone for theres or you proved you had a need for a new company

As a O/O you don't run out and buy a 2nd truck just because you think you can keep it busy, atleast I hope no one would.....I ended up with my 2nd truck after giving $170,k worth of freight to a buddy of mine one year I was doing that 1099 thinking I could get a truck and put this in my pocket and could even get some more customers and still run my buddy's truck for over flow.

I ended up with five trucks a office and someone full time to answer the phones even had someone doing outside sales. I have my broker's authority and all, have a website and really have my stuff togather and right now I only have one truck running under my numbers ME. I have almost lost all my customers from drivers doing what they want when they want to do it. I even leased on a few trucks because a buddy of mine has 16 trucks and don't own any of them, he said he makes $50,k or more a year off each truck I'm home every night and don't have to worry about any of them trucks. But after two months both guys started getting wrote up for stuff DOT was having a field day with them and my CSA score was almost at 80 in a few categories. I know what is legal and drivers think it's legal one pulled into the office one day with a bold tire I'm talking 1/32 if that on his drive I told him he needed to go get a tire before his next run he said why they can't right me up for it because it has a new tire next to it.................WHAT?

I have said it in the past and I'll say it again I made more money with one truck than I ever made having all the rest

 

I was home 6-7 days out of the 1.5 months the rest was on road id have to look and see how many loads i pulled in that time some was spent sitting lookn for loads

 

best thing i can say to the new mercer guys is do everything you can to have your next load booked before you are empty, earlier the better. when you get empty with no load you will be sitting

 

That's what I keep doing. When my coordinator calls me and asks if I want "this" load, I tell her I'll call her back after I look at it on the board. I can understand what is going on better by reading then by listening to her. Then I look at least 2 loads into the future if I want the load. If nothing is coming out, I'm not going in.

I'll be in Berea, Ky Tuesday, then I'll probably deadhead home near Louisville, but I look several times a day on the board. I'll take a cheaper load to Louisville if it doesn't need to be tarped.

Pavestone in Cincinnati is moving a bunch of cheap freight. I saw 12 loads 2 days ago. There was maybe 8 last night. All the loads were going to small towns 200 miles away to Home Depots. I used to haul some of it back to Louisville area with my last company, but it didn't pay much and there may be a 3 hour wait at their facility.

I would move all their their loads if thye paid to deadhead back. No thanks.

 

well your right, with everything else going on, i didnt put a whole lot of thought into that number. something that did happen, was one of the 3 guys that was one of the 3 that knew what they were doing and like me was one of the ones that had all their own equip. trailer and flatbed was what they knew and did, he asked dean, "so whats the turn over rate here, i'm just curious" lol.....dean said, we dont focus on that because people are satisfied here.

That pisssed the guy off that asked the question, pisssed me off and a couple of others. later on, me and a couple of the other experienced guys got together and after talking, we just said its either a sore subject or hes just a smarta$$ or maybe both.well not long after, we find out.....its both.

The funniest part at the end of the oreintation, was when they brought that real nice guy in there, and he tried to sell you a bunch #####. I thought i was at one of those 15 minte seminars at the truck show that they try to get you to waste your time setting through. ofcourse, a bunch of the newbies jumped right on all that stuff......i turned to the 2 others guys and said, wow........

 

Maybe Mercer doesn't focus on turnover because it's much higher than it was historically for them. They are unable or unwilling to do anything about it. Being impotent to control it, they just pretend it's not there.

All you have to really watch is the numbers on the trucks from year to year and also know the total trucks in the fleet for that year on average at anytime in that year. For example, if there averaged 2000 permanent trucks in the fleet for the year, and we began with truck number 12000 and a year later we turn out truck number 13000. That is 1000 trucks added, but the total fleet size stayed at 2000. So, 1000/2000=.50, 50% turnover.

Mercer needs to get real and at least start acknowledging problems if it wants to grow. The status quo here is to ignore problems and vigorously attack people whom say the emperor is wearing no clothes.