Double Yellow's Company Driver to Independent Thread

What do you attribute that to?

What do you think will happen to the corn market once it is not affordable to make ethanol anymore due to the low oil prices?

 

Grain prices plummeted. Every farmer with any money at all is sitting on his crop. They say it cost them more to make it than it's worth. So it will sit in the bins till prices come up. I know some are buying bins to use for next year incase the prices don't return they will have a place to store the crop they are getting ready to put in the ground.

The corn market was in the tank way before the oil prices fell. I can't say for Kansas and the Midwest but we grow feed corn. The best rates are hauling corn to feed mills, we haul some DDG out of Kansas and Missouri which is a by product of producing ethanol. But with corn prices already down and what little corn is used for ethanol it's only gonna get worse.

 

I have a good friend of 30 years that owns his own little home ran Brokerage for the past 30 years.

He is one of theee most honest persons I have ever met.

he is constantly trying to talk me out of going t into this trucking so we talk a bit these days.

i asked him the other day what would cause a Broker to go bankrupt.

He said good question.

What is your over head a phone,PC , Fax a desk and a chair.

He than said they raised the bonds from 50 thousand to 100 thousand a while back and that increase ran a lot of small brokers out of the business.

I asked how much is this new 100 thousand dollar bond he says like 8000 a year I am like really that ran people out of business?

Than he mentioned how he books on average 20 thousand in loads a day and with in a week he has burned up his bond.

Now he pays his guys 15 net but still he said in a heartbeat he could drag guys out 4 weeks and get 400000 and run.

So that was his kind of roundabout answer to my question.

The answer is because they CAN

I know he would be pissed if he heard me saying this but I think the brokers should have to have a review monthly and their insurance bond value would have to be upped to cover the amount of business they were doing a month.

 

Baffles me with grain and feed corn prices in the tank and lower fuel and shipping rates yet groceries have still done nothing but increase here where I live.

Hopefully once the tourist go home maybe they will come back down to what they were 4 months ago.

 

My friend owns his own truck and makes about 200K year just in Ks , Ok . I am going to work for him ( he works through a broker ) . I just thought it might be to my advantage to just buy my own instead of bringing home 700 week or so .

 

Why are we talking about grain hauling in this thread!!!!

 

just drive out to the country and take a look at the homes of the ranchers and farmers . Around here anyway a lot of them have horse barns that would make a rock star jealous .

 

Go ahead but don't say I didn't warn you.

sorry didn't mean to high jack just wanted to save a little grief and misery.FWIW I run for a broker too. I made better than 200 last year. That was last year not this year coming

 

Bright One seems to have opened his thread up for a wider discussion beyond only his personal experiences as a newly independent trucker.

Gives the thread longer and stronger legs into the future, too.

Been 17-18 members browsing this thread right now, some already out on their own, others wondering if there's a way for them to make the break and claim their freedom, too... smart!!