Brokers

Well I am little surprised I guess. The big brokers are very clear on this.

And IMO I consider them partners looking for loads for me.

And I don't want to run the same stuff over and over so I would never want to take full power over a dedicated route anyway. Just me maybe.

I like the various calls from various brokers for various loads going to random places.

 

I am not a big broker.
I am happy to find you as many loads as you like and you are free to keep using my services or go direct to the shipper. You run your business how you like. That's how a free market works. Also Small companies with under 10 trucks very rarely go direct to the shipper, so you are in good company.

 

I tell ya one thing! This sitting around quoting load part blows!! I wanna drive man!

Ahhhg!

I guess that is the one thing I miss about working for someone.....just go to work everyday and work!

@PSUMoose ....anything going out of the Cleveland Ohio area!?

 

I've booked loads out of Lincoln electric and Eaton, but they're all van loads and it looks like your pulling a flat.

 

Also most of my customers are pacific northwest so most of my loads are out to OR, WA, ID, and MT

 

Many of you think the broker keeps all the money and waits for someone real hungry to come along and take it cheap. I personally am friends with two brokers. If they don't move the load tomorrow morning they don't last long and another broker takes over.

I helped one of my friends set a rate and make a bid for the contract. She moves 10 loads a day 5 days a week out of Texas. She makes $50 on each load, that's it. The rate she put out was so good she has the same guys taking all the loads. She doesn't do a thing.

My other broker friend is in with Nucor down in SC. They have a rating scale. You start at the bottom. If you move the loads and the carrier performance is good you get more money on the loads. Nucor sets the rate, not the broker. It's in your best interest to put as much money as possible on a load so it moves and you move up the ladder.

I can't remember but there's like 5 levels. He's at like 3. As you move up you get more loads and more money. You also get better lanes. He still has to compete with other brokers for the same load until I think he reaches level 4. He posts the rate he's paying and always beats out everyone.

Most all shippers will not deal with a carrier. Too much trouble and work. They send an email to the broker on all the loads for the week or month and that's it, handle it.

 

I love this argument! Let me tell you a story about the destruction of the garbage business.
The industry's biggest, baddest broker, Oakleaf, had sucked up all the good work without owning one single truck. Until... The industry's largest hauler swallowed them up. Waste Management. It's really not too much different for local haulers. Waste Management took all the work for themselves that they could hand and let the little guys fight over the scraps. Waste Management's national accounts division even kept a lot of Oakleaf staff.
Little known fact: Waste Management's trucking division will operate in the red as long as the landfill is making money. Which is exactly what happened in NYC. To the point where that red line got way too high (or low) and WM shut down the trucking operation and kept only transfer stations, hauling to their landfills, open.

It's a shame truckers have no unity. The damage we could cause. The good we could do. We have the power to shut down the country with the snap of a finger, but that finger is too busy picking your nose to figure this out.

 

This is because you brokers convinced those shippers to eliminate their shipping department staff! It's not that they don't want to be bothered, it's because they were stripped of their staff and the ability to do so by slick talking brokers loooooong ago. So while you may think you're one of the good ones, you're really not. Your kind turned the business around backwards and left the power on the wrong side of the freight.

 

He is right in the part that most shippers will not deal with carriers, brokers only club. I know this.

But,, timing is everything. Wait til the first of the year. Shippers will add you to there email list, and spam you 3 Times a day on out going freight. All you have to do is make a few phone calls at the right time.

 

Shhhhhh! You're teaching the new mini-broker how to do it