Company or Agent?

I don't know anything about the broker schools. I think you could learn more working under an agent or broker and not have the expense of training. I know a couple of Landstar agents who are one man (or woman) operations and work from their home. One woman I know takes care of her ailing parents while still booking freight. Landstar requires that you have a certain amount of business you can bring with you. If I remember correctly, they require you have $300,000 of business in hand. Mercer, Universal Am Can and Mason Dixon are a few carriers who have agents. There are others. I could not tell you the requirements of any of them. I would expect that they would expect you to already have business to bring with you. To get started, you might give some of these and other carriers or brokers a call, tell them what you want to do and see if they can help. Landstar has several agents in southern California. CRST Malone has an agent in Fontana. They also have a terminal in Fontana. Malone has agents, I don't remember about CRST vans. Mercer did have an agent in southern California. Those are some carriers who come to mind. You probably know other carriers you could call. Most of the major brokers will have agents in southern California.

You could also start as a dispatcher. It would probably require you to come into an office, but would get you off the road and expose you to another side of the business and you could probably make some broker contacts in the process. US Xpress and Covenant used to have offices in southern California, I believe. CH Robinson has offices all over the country. Coyote is another big broker with a number of offices. You may just need to do some leg work to find what you want. I know a guy locally who is a planner for a major carrier. He started as a dispatcher a couple of years ago. I think he makes over $40,000/year without a degree. Another planner he works with makes over $50,000, but has a degree.

I think that there are several paths to get to your goal.

 

I didn't mean to give the impression that I was suggesting you could not do what you want. I was merely trying to share some realities of what you can expect and some things that are required to broker freight. I think that drive and a "can do" attitude can overcome most all obstacles. I have found in life that you may need to take a few detours to reach your objectives. That doesn't mean that you give up on your goal, only that you may need to wait and go a different route. The end goal is still the same.

I would imagine these freight broker schools could give you the basics of that side of the business. Any knowledge is good. I have never looked closely at any of them. I have been an agent for a major carrier, so I do have some experience in that area. I have also booked my own direct freight. If you decide to take one of those freight broker courses, I would be interested to know how you like it and whether you think it is worth the money.

 

Disgruntled, congrats on finding a career you want to pursue - that's no easy task! I'm guessing as a driver, you may have experienced working with brokers a little bit, or at least, brokered loads. I thought I may be able to help you see my side (shipper) a little more clearly - especially when it comes to new brokers.

I get at least a phonecall a week from a new broker asking for my service. I literally have a list of hundreds of brokers I could go to should I need it. I think being a "general freight" broker might be difficult to break into - there is obviously no shortage of brokers out there, and most are thirsty for business. These guys are almost all identical. They use loadboards and call and call.

At the larger brokerages I work with (CHR, Coyote...) there is one person I talk to, the sales guy, but beneath him, there are the people that call off load boards, people that work on carrier relations, people that run ops, assistant sales people. I've never worked in a place like that, but it might be a good place to start out? Certainly would get you some exposure and you wouldn't have to pay for it!

As far as independent agents (I'm referring to a person working as an agent for a larger firm) go, you really need to work hard to sell yourself. The best ones I've worked with have established a niche market, either moving a certain kind of freight or certain areas. They've developed carrier relationships and shipper relationships. They can keep trucks loaded inbound and outbound to better serve both the carrier and the shippers.

If you have any questions, I'd be more than happy to answer them. I deal with brokers of all different sorts daily.

- Shipper

 

Disgruntled - I found a guy with a small company with trucking/brokerage authority to take me under his wing.

I can tell you, it's not easy to find customers, because as Shipper said, we're a dime a dozen.

I've gotten RFPs from shippers looking to find stability on lanes, and it's not an easy task. Many trucking companies are booked, or playing the spot market and shopping for rates.

Load boards are just one tool. You gotta use Yellow Pages, call and call looking for capacity - because if you can't find a carrier willing to do the dedicated run 2-3 times a week, then don't even think about quoting the customer, because then you'd just be on the load board hoping someone calls, and hoping they'd take it for less than what you quoted for. You get yourself in a bind and can't cover it, customer gets mad and wonders why they hired you in the first place.

So not only is it absolutely imperative to find customers, it's even more important to grow a base of carrier contacts that can help you out.
Load boards can work if you have a high enough margin, but it's not a guarantee that you'll find a truck, especially one that fits you or your company's safety score requirements.

It's constant digging for customer and carrier resources, and constant digging for lane rate information, quotes that sometimes a carrier isn't willing to give you ahead of time.

What I would suggest is contact customers and try to get on with them, pick lanes you feel comfortable with, and research the living crap out of that lane and know it inside and out.

I've found some shippers don't care about quality trucks, they care about price. Some care about quality trucks and quality brokerage/3PL service and price doesn't matter quite as much. Also has a lot to do with value of cargo. Paper loads and other cheap goods generally require cheapest trucks possible, because shipping costs equate to a much larger portion of total cost, than does say a $100,000 load, where $500 more on the shipping is only .5% of total cost, and is generally worth it if a quality carrier with an experienced driver is desired over a large company with questionable trucks and drivers that just got out of CDL school.

This is what I've learned so far in 3 weeks.

And as far as going alone vs. going with a company, I'd definitely suggest you try and find someone to work under. You don't want to go solo and open your own brokerage authority without any kind of experience and stable business. Doing that is asking for failure.

 

Interesting post BoyWander. Sounds like a lot to digest and learn. It's probably a lot like trucking spot all the time. There are no fast and easy clear cut answers to everything that people on the outside looking in always seem to think. Takes time to learn the ropes and hone skills. Good luck with it.

 

That's just the tip of the iceberg, lol. Another difficult thing to do is to get RFPs from customers along with their comments and/or answers to questions, and try to extrapolate what they might be unwittingly communicating between the lines, to find out if they are in desperate need for this lane or that lane, or if they're good on that and just shopping for cheaper brokers/carriers. Knowing that info, even a little bit of a hint, can help in generating a pricing strategy that gives you just enough margin to 1) feel safe about, and 2)make you feel confident you can get it covered, and 3) still win the bid.

 

And I will say that these brokers that are making $500+ on a load all day, those are exceptions to the rule. Margins are not often made in chunks, they are made in volume and with diligent hard work.

My boss told me the other day "The goal of the successful broker is to find the stupidest shipper out there." And so far in my experience, that shipper is extremely hard to come by.

15-20% is fine, but when the owner of the brokerage takes 40% of that, you're not making $100,000 a year+ unless you're moving 4 loads a day, which is probably 5-10 customers...and it's not easy to get just one customer that you can make more than $50 off of.

 

It doesn't hurt to try, I haven't had a job yet where I have met their requirements but having ambition and an ability to learn will most likely win over an employer vs someone experienced but set in their own ways. Good luck, I'm anxious to hear how it goes!