The ugly truth about Landstar

Lepton, Mike and I play the same game in different regions and types of trailers. You get phone calls/ emails from agents you have a relationship with asking or pleading for you to haul a load, and you snipe high dollar freight off the load board, usually via load alerts.

 

Lepton, in the real world when you're pulling premium rates there is no time to cover deadhead with cheap loads. The cheap loads waste time and always end up costing me great loads. example Sunday night I loaded out for $900 on 184 miles, then next morning I book a cheap light weight $450 on 184 miles, that is about market rate "what a broker will pounce on" that put me right back where I need to be... I lost 24 hours on the load with wait time, it was a bomb... ....and a great load popped up out of the original shipper from the $900 rate that a broker called me on and offered before posting... having done the load before many times I knew I could get a great rate on it, but I tried to bridge the gap with a cheap load and lost out.. That doesn't happen to me often but it never fails to cost me a good load when it does.. As it was when the cheap load was finished I got a call on some fantastic steady freight that kept me busy for the next 2 days at very profitable rates, so yet again I survived another week of spot.

My deadhead some weeks runs almost 50%.. When you're pulling $4-$5 a mile it will be like that. You do not have time for anything other than the good stuff. In a years time last year I avg'd 23% deadhead. This year is trending upwards from that. Here is one thing guys like you never realize. When you focus so hard on eliminating deadhead, you end up accepting lower rates on your good stuff because in your mind that is the best you can do. I can tell you if you believe $5 a mile freight does not exist, then you will operate in a manner as if it doesn't and you will never see it, i.e. keeping deadhead low, that is a mindset that affects your whole operation. You should be focused on getting the highest rate possible all the time and let the deadhead take care of itself..

If I had your mindset of, "keeping deadhead low" yesterday, then I would still be sitting in 175 miles away from home looking for a load to get me back home, whatever the price. As it was when I delivered my last one yesterday afternoon I thought nothing of just driving right home asap and not wasting my time with cheap.. I did $2.73 a mile, to the truck, on 2017 miles when I parked in the driveway last night.. You think on a week as busy as that, that I had time to cut the +40% deadhead out? Of course not, because someone else would have been glad to haul the good stuff while I was focused on eliminating deadhead with cheap stuff... Until you network into some good freight you will never understand this mindset.

 

I think you are just a little mad your but buddie got caught talking crap that wasn't true. He said he only does short 250 mile runs that pay $1000-$1500 a trip and he does 1500 miles a week, and takes home $800-$1000 a week, he's not trying to get rich there is more to life then looking through a windshield, what he wasn't smart enough to think about was it's not that hard to add them numbers up and realize either he is getting screwed, or he is lying.

And no matter how you look at it, the more you run, the more you get paid, high paying loads or not. If a 250 mile load pays $1000 if you run another one "running more or just a tad harder" you make more money. Now if I would have said something like you have to run a certain amount to make a certain amount, then you would have had a point, and as far as spouting off about cpm, where in that thread did I mention cpm. So calm down, I didn't mean to call your little but buddy out, and hurt your feelings.

 

That's the big question, and why negotiation skills are vital......

Just how much money is there in this load??

How do I get my proper share of that money??

This is the big mystery of the load board....

 

Reread it, realizing Mike is not the most literate person and you will see it says on 1000-1500 load he clears 800-1000 after Landstar's cut, per load. You really have no idea what your talking about, as usual on these boards. The only people that think the harder you work, the more that you make are the cpm crowd. Those 1000 dollar, 250 mile loads aren't available 24/7 and available in mass quantity, otherwise they would be regular freight and pay far less. Our type of strategy is we'll work 3-4 days a week, or as much as that great freight is available, and let guys like you run 3500 miles a week, do resets in far off truckstops and make the same amount of net.

 

Thank you to landstar, fortycalglock, and rollin coal to explain the concept of ignoring low freight to make yourself available for premium freight and how it works in terms of lost opportunities and averaged $'s per mile. It does make sense.

It seems to me that the critical factor for getting to the point you can consistently work in this manner is that you need to have some people skills and network with brokers. In other words, you need to be a salesman and marketing manager for your business in addition to being a truck driver. The "cpm mentality" as you put it might be residual thinking from the days that an O/O may be leased on at a fixed rate. In that situation "running and gunning" makes the most sense. However, playing the game within Landstar (or as an independent) requires that you give greater value to the total dollars generated per loaded and deadhead mile... that, and picking lower weight loads to reduce stress on your equipment.

 

oh that's each trip, so he says, $1000-$1500 for 250 miles, and he does 1500-2000 a week on the low said that is six trips, so then you are saying he clears $4800-$6000 a week. So that's $249,600-$312,000 a year free and clear, yeah that's pretty good, you should be a recruiter.

I think you should just admit he was trying to make a point, and used made up numbers. Just because I don't lease, doesn't mean I don't read what the lease guys are getting paid, you act there is some load board out there that no one else knows about. Brokers arena going to pay more than what the average rate is for that load, and it only takes a few swipe of the keyboard to find what the average pay for a load going from a-b is.

And to end this conversation, I will admit you, and your buddy, make more money, and run less miles than I do. Just in the future use real numbers to make your point, it makes the rest of what you say more believe able, and you don't have some guy come through , and add up the numbers and go woo, something is off here. Have a good day sir.

 

Again jb17.I am not ''dedicated'' to this everyday 24/7.Some guys are dedicated to this freight...This may be a 2-3 times a week for me.Sometimes only 1 time.Then my NYC FREIGHT may show up for $2,500 for 300 miles to Queens/NY NY.If thats not happening i will have another agent with great rates call me..So the numbers are not fake.This week it will be 2 rounds and then i am off to do my ''show'' freight....

Again JB17 i will never haul ''cheap''.Thats right,NEVER EVER NEVER....And i will not destroy myself and my truck working on a CPM basis..Yesterday i got a call to ''move'' a trailer for L/S..The total trip was 31 miles.They paid me 500.00....You stay with your CPM and you would of made your 31.00...And your company would have made 479.00...Yep,they are doing you a favor...

 

You do realize that he was using an example of one of the loads that he does, he doesn't do the same load every time. I always use real numbers, and rarely use the load board. As far as what agents charge, some customers require service over price. The trick is to find those customers and give them the service they need and charge accordingly. I rarely haul commodities like steel, lumber, etc as I have no desire to price compete with the carriers that haul them. I'll leave that to the CPM crowd. I have customers, not agents, that ensure my availability before scheduling shipments. One only ships one load per month, but they know me by name, and I ensure their piece of machinery that took a year to build and test arrives in the same condition it was when I pulled out of their bay. You have a lot to learn and it is healthy to be skeptical, but truckers have a tendency to get close minded and believe that everyone operates the exact same way they do. There are guys that make way better money than me, as well, but I have no desire to move out of FL or be gone from my family that much. I've been gone 4 days now, and my 2 yo doesn't understand why I'm not back yet. I'd never want her to think daddy being gone a week or two is "normal".

 

This mentality of running the wheels of your truck is not the smartest way to run a business as an o/o...

you don't want more miles like a cpm o/o would think....

you want more revenue per mile...


example.... 1st o/o... Has a 500mi run and gets paid .90/mi + fsc...lets say fsc is .50/mi so that would make $1.40/mi totaling $700..

2nd o/o get paid pct...like Landstar if I'm not wrong..65%...

let's say he's running same load in general & the gross rate is $1750 not couting fsc which comes to 3.50/mi gross... Add in .50/mi fsc which would make the load $4.00/mi...

1750 x 65%=1137.50 then add fsc of .50/mi which is $250.00 for a grand total of $1387.50..
That's a differnce of $687.50 for running the same miles..

this is why An o/o who's just starting out needs to learn that running more miles doesn't necessarily mean more $$...

all your doing is burning more fuel for less $$$...the goal is to maximize your revenue per mile on loads and not how many miles your truck turns.