Questions about large brokerages

Rollin coal - yes CHR employees in Chicago are on commission. From what I know they're required to hit a certain goal, then a portion of everything else goes in their pocket. Sometimes there's a "senior" rep who trains the kiddos and then their books go under that senior reps name.

I really like the Huntsville office. In fact I could probably name the people you've spoken with there. Yes it's true, a broker can book any load from any office... If that office will let them. Up until the day of the load, it's the controlling office's say as to who books the load. This is where the interbranch competition comes from. Ten different people from different offices may all want the same load, driving prices down.
When someone cross-books a load like this, 40% of the margin goes to the broker who books the load (or his office since he doesn't work in Chicago). If it's a loser he doesn't lose anything, only the branch who has that ownership of the load loses. But if someone is taking a loser believe me they're just happy they have a truck on the load. The problem is in the soft market like right now, people do not want to let other people cross book because it's taking money away from their office/them. When things got like this I would just book loads from other offices and take 0% for my office (or book it in the Chicago reps name so they could get the commision) so that I could keep my carriers happy and give them what they want.

its t's definitely better to have a relationship with one person. When I would search for loads for carriers I would put offers in on everything that way I could bring the carriers I liked different options. But this only happened with people I had relationships with.

 

281ric - Absolutely. Often when quoting a lane we'll look at a history. For example, if I was quoting a lane Atlanta to Chicago I would take every shipment for the past month within 50-100 miles of Atl going up to 50-100 miles of Chicago. Take the average of that and you have an easy target for what pricing should be like. As far as looking in a carriers history, not so much. If you have a relationship with a broker he's probably already thinking about how much he can get out of certain loads. If not then you're getting quoted the average. Say you've done the same load every week for a certain price and the broker can see that. Yes, that broker may try to quote you that same price if it's reasonable, but our rates change with the market and so should yours unless you've struck up a deal for year round pricing.