Wanting to Get into the business the Right way

Good luck. If you are honest with your customers and always treat others the way you want to be treated. Then I'll all workout for you.

 

I think it would be interesting if the brokers had to ride along with a truck driver for a week before they started booking loads. On the other hand, drivers will want brokers to only take a certain margin on a load but will not touch a bad load (heavy or to a worse market).

 

I never had a problem going to a bad market. The problem is ignorant brokers who unknowingly or otherwise underbid loads to poor markets and try to sell them for a lousy $2 rate. They prey on the unsuspecting.

 

Yeah it sucks because my first few weeks on the job I was helping my coworker move his bad freight and just trying to lose as little money as possible. The rate he bid on one specific lane is the rate he will have all year. This is why he has to be a little be "greedy" when the lane is good. Then when demands shift he struggles to book it as close to his break even as possible (which makes him look like he doesn't know how to price loads). But what do I know, I have only been doing this for a month so I could be misunderstood.

 

I don't understand why anyone would bid freight that they lost on for part of the year. But I do understand that's how a lot of brokers do it. Big contributor to prevailing low rates. Add truckers who willingly haul freight for below cost. And it's a vicious cycle.

Like a friend told me one time direct freight is real easy to get. Good direct freight is more difficult to come by. In my experience very few brokers out here have good freight. The ones that do are more often than not asset based.

Typically if they can't find a truck on the open market at the price they or their customer think is a good price, they will tell the customer, "here is your truck, I found one, and this is the rate they want" - so instead of the broker losing money the customer actually digs deeper and pays the cost. That is how it should be. If I were a broker those are the customers I would want.

 

Completely agree. Having to start out trying to cover bad loads has completely changed the customers I have been pursuing. There is no way I am going to try to land a customer that does annual rates after that.

Also, I feel like the good freight is usually not posted on the boards because they will use a the same carriers. And definitely agree, being asset based is a big selling point for a lot of these customers that have valuable/time sensitive commodity.

 

I"ve been trucking since '79 after doing 4 yrs in the Navy('74-78) and eventually went out on my own in 2000. I ended up by 2004 having 95% my own customer frieght and only 5% broker freight. The demand for high quality O/O's with top service (100% on time & damage free) with nice looking equipment and professional attitude drivers is out there. I had so much work build up that I was arranging other friends to and acquaintances haul my freight. I even started setting up riggers, cranes and craters for a very small fee. The thing I kept in mind was, I wanted all my truckers to know that I would pay them well for the work they were doing.

Then one of my machinery dealers told me I'd better stop doing all these verbal, handshake deals because some day somebody will get hurt and everyone is going to get sued and me, being without a written contract, would be up a creek with no paddle. He told me the days of your word and your handshake deals were over. He said he had 2 lawsuits against him like that and he knew he would never see retirement. That woke me up and I decided to get into a legal brokerage position.

I called one particular broker I really respected and his advice was to check out all the companies I wanted to but in the end, the company he was with would stand out and he strongly recommended it for various reasons. I eventually did go with them in '05 and was moving a pretty good amount of frieght, considering I was also continuing to drive full time.

We also started our own brokerage in '06 to cover other freight that I couldn't cover with my customers who were also part of that company's customer base. We always paid on time, usually within 1-2 weeks (often before we got paid), and we always paid a fair rate all the way up to outstanding rates for hot loads or emergency loads. I'm talking VERY good money.

The crash of '08 changed things quite a bit. Businesses everywhere were hurt or going out of business. I lost a lot of customers or had to let others go who wanted to ship cheap freight. The number of brokered loads dwindled drastically and I sold my truck at auction and later my trailer to a friend. I eventually started all over again with another truck and trailer in '09 and built up business gradually.

Unfortunately, we had to close down the brokerage when OOIDA and other big trucking conglomerates pushed for the $75K bond, fleecing us with the idea we would be protected from the criminal element of thieves in the brokerage industry. That was a sad day when we gave that up. Our amount of business didn't justify a $75K bond. Just like the big push now for us truckers to increase our insurance coverage drastically, which will cause to pay much higher insurance premiums, is a farce, so the broker bond should only be according to how much business is conducted. For the big mega brokerages to have a $75K or even the $250K bond means nothing if they are doing millions of dollars of freight each week. Our small brokerage didn't do $75K in a whole year. We were just slowly and very carefully building it up. Our big concern was to pay truckers quick and at rates that would keep them wanting to do my loads. I loved what one trucker told me that emphasized why I always got the trucker to answer his cell when I would call. He said, "I LOVVVE seeing your number come up because I know Marty has a good paying load!" That's how you make it in brokering. If you want to really succeed, you should see the customer AND the carrier as your customers. Not just the one who pays the freight! If you want good, reliable truckers to haul your frieght, then pay them well! If you want, like so many worthless brokers out there, to just make the profit yourself and not care about the trucker, then I hope your business falls apart and you end up with nobody to haul your cheap freight. I have my own ways of determining who is a good broker and I'm usually pretty accurate. I won't do business with brokers who don't speak respectfully to me or other truckers I know. We share information on good and bad brokers. I won't do another load for a broker that shafts me on a load, whether it be bad information or detention pay or any kind of lying. I just went through this with a company out of Monroe, NC called RJS Logistics. They won't ever have the privilege of having me haul any of their freight again. They (Mike Lee) lied to me and that's all it takes to ruin a relationship. It's over. He also tried to get out of paying me, but I knew the game and was always one step ahead of him. I'll be posting that story as well soon.

I'm training a girl in my brokerage now who will understand the trucker side of things and will be honest and fair with the truckers. I'll be taking her out on loads so she will know the hard work that you all have to go through before she will begin brokering loads. She will be one of the best because I only want the best reputation.

So, those posters who say that brokers are just legal thieves, I say it's just like saying all cops are bad or all truckers are using speed and tired and causing wrecks. Sure, the bad ones get the biggest press. The rotten brokers give the rest of us a bad name. But, as I have made my practice, I keep a list of the good brokers and the few outstanding ones who I will haul for. The rest I block from my searches on Transcore and IT and when I see their phone number come up, I don't answer and I delete their vm for requesting me to call them back. I've told others to lose my number, including even "customers" who made the bad mistake of telling me they got a truck to do a load cheaper than the truck they already agreed for me to send in for their freight - after I dispatched the truck! That won't happen again.

Bottom line, you need good customers who pay on time and you need good truckers to haul your good freight. That's the only way I want to do it.

 

You're right, Rollin coal, that's the way it's done.

 

Aggravated, there are bad brokers out there - no doubt. There are also some good ones. Those are the ones you need to haul for. There are also bad truckers out there (from the broker's perspective). Since I'm an O/O with my own authority and trucking since '79, I think I can speak from a qualified background of experience.

But then, there are bad truckers, too.

There are truckers who are just plain stupid and don't know how to deal with a small problem situation without getting all pumped up and starting an argument with a shipper or receiver. Some guys have this macho image they think they have to live up to. They're so puffed up with pride they can't see their slip is showing.

There are guys who I've seen out there totally ill-equipped and haven't a clue what they are doing when it comes to securing a load properly. There are other guys who will give their ETA to the broker and/or the customer but miss their appointment without letting anyone know. Some have actually missed three or more appointments in a row that they made themselves, not their dispatcher. They can't even keep up with their own self-made appointments. Others dress like they just came from playing basketball or like they've crawled out from under a garbage truck after doing a grease job.

There are idiots that drive like Atlanta or DC four-wheelers. Numbskull drivers that pull out from a dead stop into a lane from the emergency lane without building up speed first. There are drivers who never check their tires, brakes or lights and then complain about a ticket at a scale. Or, the ones who tailgate up on a four-wheeler when traffic is heavy and they're not going to get down the road any faster cuz the four wheeler in front of them can't go any faster than the one in front of him.

So, there a good and bad brokers. There are good and bad truckers. You just have to choose who you'll be associated with.

 

after 21 years of owning my own restaurant(s), im ready to get back to something i really enjoyed doing. i don't remember as much animosity between shipper /broker/ carrier back then.(and it was really small scale) maybe my memory of it is glorified. during my freshman/sophomore year of college i have great memories of helping small independent produce farmers (my grandfather and his neighbors) find more affordable ways to get their onion and potato crops to markets in NYC. instead of selling at a discount to bigger farms. it was the late 80's and my father had an excavating contracting company that needed to purchase ALOT of equipment in a hurry. I missed classes to co-ordinate deliveries of everything from Terex TS 24 scraper pans, and D3 through D8k Dozers and Cat 215 through 245 excavators. i didn't make any money at it because it was for family and close friends, but i did really like the logistics of putting it all together. sorry for the babbling just giving some backstory as to why im looking to start a new career in freight brokering. ive got more pieces of the puzzle to put together before i take the leap but i will be following your posts to see how it goes, maybe even picking up some wisdom on the way.