Getting started

Mercer Packard Admiral Merchants to name a few but why not lease to one of theses guys and forget about authority. These 3 outfits are good as gold in my opinion

 

You can try Mercer's load board at http://www.mercer-trans.com/brokerage/showloadPopup.asp.

There are a lot of brokers that will not accept OOIDA's insurance from my understanding though, not just Landstar.

 

I'm assuming that you want to be an independant correct? If so have you leased on to a carrier first? As for irp I have always gotten my plates myself. When you first tag your truck you will use the estimated miles from the estimated mileage chart for the state you are going to tag your truck in for the states that you plan on running in

 

http://dmv.ca.gov/mcs/ Read & learn. It's not as easy as buying a car tag, but probably not worth $400 to get someone to do it for you. On the other hand, I'm sure California has figured out ways to make that more difficult, expensive, and time consuming than any other state. You'll fall more in love with government each and every day you're in business. Especially where you live.

Members Edge (DAT for OOIDA) is a slightly better value since it does include credit scores with the basic service. But has lower quality listings in my opinion. Six of one, half dozen the other. Either get the basic members edge for a few more listings (and lots of duplicates) + credit scores, or pay for the ITS credit score upgrade. Same money, but credit checks will be useful. I have the former pair.

I'd advise not getting overly worried about having many load boards to go to. You'll quickly discover that most carrier load boards are worth every dollar they charge for them. Then you have the added fun of keeping up with more logins and passwords, just so you can go direct to the source and see the same cheap or out of date crap they post on the pay services. Bottom line, the load boards are a good way to get introduced to new, potential customers, but not a reliable way to make good money.

So I'll answer your question with a question: Other than "miscellaneous crap you can strap or chain to a 53 x 102 deck," have you given much thought to what commodities you plan on hauling? My trailers have doors and a big refrigerator hanging off the nose, so pretty much 2 load locks and a good broom and I'm good to go. But I know enough about open decks that it sort of matters what you plan to be hauling when you start buying all the straps, chains, binders, tarps, mats, corners, dunnage, etc you'll need to carry with you.

That said, if you narrow it down to a short list of products, you might consider seeing who makes whatever that is, or who buys it. Maybe consider industries in a 25-50 mile radius of home that might be ones to hire an open deck truck and ask them. If they won't book direct, ask who they have on contract and call them. Then take a look where that stuff is going and figure out what sort of industry exists and what stuff is shipping from there. Rinse, repeat. You'll have to do a lot more planning than just surf load boards for the next load wherever you land. The rate you offer going in will be determined by knowing what your next step or three will be.

If you already have that figured out, please forgive my over-simplification. Your post suggests not.