Honest Question

Best post of the year. Simple direct and to the point.

 

Wow I missed a lot!

There is a secret handshake load grabbing system? Darn I missed that. Can someone teach me this secret?

So what is all this ado about? Some super secret crap? I must really be missing out on some stuff.

 

No, dont think I will. But. There isn't as much buddy hustle loads as you seem 5o think, its simple. Like you said you dont really want to hear it.

 

Dont you know, that what everyone thinks, it cant be that some just work thecsystem like a beast, it can't be that. It has to be somebody doing it for them

 

Moglar, every load I pull hits the load board. Fact is, it takes a bit tolearn little nuances. Like I won't take loads to certain places. unless they deliver on a certain day of the week. Not because of. A special load, but because I know how people think

 

That is my one an only issue with mercer.
Great company to work for, but it grinds my gears that I can be sitting in a area where I KNOW there is freight stacked to the moon an back on the dat board but when I look at our in house board there is no load to be found within 300 miles!!!
I had my coordinator to tell me the other day things are still slow. Smh. I've been doing this trucking thing for too long for you to feed me that line...I would respect it more if you were just honest enough to say we just don't have any freight in that area

 

Most of those loads that hit the board are rebrokered. I met a guy down in Georgia this week picking up at a steel mill an he's a broker as well as a driver an the very load I picked up he sold it to mercer because it was too heavy to go on his trucks an for the price he sold it to him for I wanted to politely ask the crane operator to take those steel sheets off of my truck an I go home for the weekend.
It was double the money mercer paid me to do it for an not once did I ever tell the guy what I was paid to haul it for. Well, I was little too embarrassed to tell him anyway after what he told me he sold it for.

 

I still have my own authority. I have 2 guys with their own trucks running under it. In fact, that's why my decals are still on the side of my truck right above my mercer decals minus my DOT number. But it's there just in case... So with that being said I still have a pretty decent customer base an access to several premium load boards that I scan probably every hour so I pretty much know how the freight is moving nationally on a daily average.

I'll make this as simple as can be.
Mercer is by far one of the best companies ive ever experienced.
Great group of people almost like family.
The staff there is unmatched.
But when I hear guys speak on "learning a system" to be honest there really isn't a system to learn. If you've experienced one load system you've experienced them all.
It's not very much to learn from their system other than roll the dice an hope you ace high! Not to mention a coordinator who thinks I just got out of truck driving school last week ...I will admit that as far as load searches go an load planning..that can be quite difficult at times, more times than less.
I am based out of Bham,al an if anybody has been pulling FB for the past 10 years or so know that Bham al is a jackpot for FB freight period!...there shouldn't be any reason why I'm having to deadhead 200+ miles from Bham to pick up a load when there are over 1000 loads within 60 miles of Bham 300-400 loads just in Bham alone!...one thing I have noticed is that you get a different answer from each guy you run into here at mercer.
Some guys will tell you learn the system, some will ask you what the heck is a system. Some will say son I don't even know what mercer's load board looks like.
Whether anyone wants to believe it or not ALL the loads DONT run the board. That's a proven fact. Same process with landstar. There are always loopholes to any system. I'm pretty sure mercer doesn't know it goes on but hey we are all out here for the same reason an that's to make money so whatever you're doing to get the load isn't any of my business. Some will say get acquainted with your local agents. Well, I took that advice an personally went over to my local agents office. Great folks over there, they help me however they can but when you just don't have the freight you just don't have it. There's no need in fixing it up to sound like the driver is doing something wrong. My local agent has flat freight to keep his guys busy an what I mean by his guys I mean the guys who are on dedicated accounts. How do I know this? Well because I've filled in on a few loads when those guys couldn't do them or he got swamped with too many of the loads.
An secondly, if you don't have a rgn,conestoga or step then I can promise you that for every 10 flat loads you see on the board only 2 of them are paying 2+ dollars or better. Don't get me wrong I'm not one of the HAS to be on a 2+ dollar load or I'm not cranking my truck guys. The average is only around 1.80 Anyway so that's not my issue. I know what it costs me as a business owner to operate so I know what loads will work an what won't work but it gets frustrating knowing that the rates aren't the best an if you wanna stay busy then you're gonna have to drive 200-300 miles for a load just so you won't have to sit a day or two.
I took a chance on mercer based upon the great relationship I had with them as an approved carrier for them, the relationship was so good that I had a particular office talk me into tryin them out as a contractor an I would see even more of the loads that were available. Eventually my plan was to shift myself, along with my 2 other guys over to mercer all together but based on what I'm seeing on the boards, the loads don't look much more better than the independent carrier board. Heck I was getting better rates as a approved carrier for them. I can tell you now that I made about the same money with them as an approved carrier as I have now as a leased on contractor an that's not good at all considering I only ran maybe two loads per month with them as a independent. To sum this up, I'm willing to give things a chance here.
I still have my life line open just in case things don't work but from what I'm seeing here there system wasn't hard to learn at all. Fact of the matter is mercer has great paying freight but it's not enough of it considering the driver ratio here, Which only leaves the decent paying an worst paying freight but what makes it frustrating is that they don't even have enough decent or cheap freight to make up for not having enough top dollar freight!!! which forces you to "cherry pick" when you don't have to cherry pick at all if there was readily freight available that paid decent money.

 

A broker with such awesome paying freight he is driving a truck. Really dude? I got some nice beach front property you can have real cheap. It's in Arizona.

Seriously man, unless some body can put freight bills and copies of checks in your hands don't believe any of the crap they say they do.

 

Yet, he is loading at the same place, with even higher dollar freight? But even at that, if you accepted the load, and agreed to the rate, what's the problem. Look, you had your authority, you know what stuff pays. Ya hear that from every Yahoo on the road, their stuff pays more, etc etc etc.