Todays great rate

That scenario is what keeps me up at night sometimes.

I want to be able to survive the market swings.

My wife and I talk about these kinds of things and we both feel that its going to be at least another 2 - 3 years before things start to bounce back. Thats why I am busting my tookus now and grabbing as much as I can thats profitable,.. the lean times are not even here yet.

Hurst

 

The thing my entrepreneur father always repeated "the secret to business is keep your Overhead Low"

Cheap money these days makes getting heavily leveraged in the good times very attractive and also seems to be the wise thing to do in business.
We are seeing and going to see an economy we never imagined .

My father has been pretty good at forecasting the economy and he thinks it will be ugly by June
I keep telling him the sky isn't falling but he calls them.

 

Loaded our amphibious excavator on a drivers lowboy in Mobile, Al and sent it to Jacksonville, FL. He never had a flag car, it is 12 foot exactly across the pontoons. That's been about 4 years ago.

 

That scenario will occur that's where it's time to completely sit down. Soon as it COSTS you to move loads. .10 Cpm cost on every load is where it's not worth it anymore. At that point it's better to sit and wait.

Market will be a little better. Rates won't be the same but it will get better, after it gets better it's going to take a hard turn down this year again, and next year it should start slowly picking up. Those sitting are going to be sitting until 2018 to get s load the way it's going.

 

To be fair,.. and this was before I knew the rule. Oscar_theKw schooled me on this one.

I took a Komatsu D61 dozer,.. blade was 10'8, or may have been 11'8,.. I dont remember,.. I'd have to look up the specs. I took it from Meridian Ms through Ala I20 up to NC. Not only did I run the entire state of Ala on i20 with the blade facing forward when its supposed to be facing reward,.. but I later learned that any blade over 10ft is supposed to have an escort.

I got bypass light at Alabama scales too boot. Talk about dumb luck!

Hurst

 

I said "If". And yes,.. I do run southern lanes,.. and that $1.67 load I took was a single pallet hotshot load that I called on from a shipper that I have used in the past to help fill my deck when I am looking for partials,.. only the partial was my load that time.

And right now I am doing my best to stay out of the southern lanes. As you are experiencing,.. rates are too low. I prefer to run the I80 , Il, In, Oh Pa, Ny, Nj and some Md, Va and Carolinas this time of year. I can run Oh, PA and Nj all week doing daily short hauls making decent rates. Not big money,.. but profitable and usually not very heavy.

You prefer to run easy and do your own thing. I get that. I dont, I run from load to load trying to stay in the best freight areas as possible. Its not easy and I stay busy. I miss home a lot. But this is what I do. This is the way I make my money right now. If you dont like it,. then dont do it. Stick to your guns. Thing is I dont want to get caught with my pants down if the rates and freight really take a nose dive. If I need to sit out for a month or two,.. I need to know I can meet my ends.

Hurst

 

Same here. I haven't moved out of the Midwest at all. IL WI MO OH IN MI.

 

I gotta be careful when my dispatch asks me to take a load heading west of the Mississippi,.. Say Ks, Mo or Ne. I usually do it because its paying ok. But then she always wants to send me down to Tex. Then I get stuck in dead freight no mans land.

You guys want to talk about cheap rates? Try $1.33 for 44k lbs from Roma, Tex to Quakertown, Pa. $1.13 from Houston to Miami. Oh hell no. My dispatch was frantic. My carrier gets twitchy and tics his neck every time I turn down a load. The very thought that a truck would sit for the weekend makes him break out in hives.

I fire up my generator, break out the laptop and start watching TV. Cook up some hamburgers on the forman grill,.. gets nice and smokey in here,.. especially if I cut up some onions and peppers and mash them on top of the hamburger meat while its on the forman. Eyes start watering as much as my mouth is salivating. Its all good,.. this is how I keep expenses down. I do about $40 - $50 a week in groceries for myself. Other than fuel,.. I wont buy anything at a truck stop unless I have fuel points to pay for it.

Hurst

 

If you don't mind me asking what type of trailer do you haul? Commodities?