Room for More Trucks or Maxed out?

It's about the same. Cutthroat. But it's the megas depressing the rates. They run on numbers, averages, and numbers of trucks. If they make a few cents to a nickel a mile for all their trucks averaged out, they are happy. Those numbers sur we won't work for the small guys. But I think, here, we have 2 bigger issues to worry about. 1 is our govt. The FMCSA is out of control. They just keep making more and more overbearing rules, mandates, and regs with no justification for them. And they absolutely do not care what anyone else in the industry think of it. 2 is the seeming mad rush to replace drivers with automated trucks. I just read an article elsewhere on this site that there was an apparently successful test run with platooning trucks in Europe. Article said it would be here in 5 years. It may not be all doom and gloom, but I really dont think young new entrants in this industry will retire from it. They either won't be able to, or won't want to.

 

Over here, it's the one truck operators that don't know what a P&L statement is, much less how to price accordingly. The largest mega of the megas here, Swift averages over $2.20 a mile for all 25,000 plus trucks they own. Most owner ops can't touch that number. In most industries, the competition looks to the front runners to mimick their operation at least on a couple levels. Not in trucking. They spout this nonsense about the megas running cheaper than they can, but it's a fallacy. The megas have HUGE overhead, so they have to have the rates to keep the shareholders happy. Swift made 317 million net profit before taxes last year, around 13k per truck after everything was said and done.

 

That's my point. If you meant 13k a year, that's chump change. About 250 bucks a week. Unless you can buy a heck of a lot more for 250 than we can here.

 

You realize that's after driver pay and benefits, HR, Dispatchers, lawyers, CEO, CFO, COO, equipment underutilization, lawsuits, etc. They're still averaging 2.20 per mile. That would be around .80 a mile profit after driver payroll to an o/o. That's my point. Charge the same rates as swift and the small time o/o is making bank!

 

Its about the same over here. Smaller profits margins for guys like me still figuring things out and trying to hustle brokered freight. Still trying to score direct shippers with enough freight to keep me busy. Eventually things will click.

All I can do is try to maintain minimal expenses,.. hoard as much cash as I can and keep on trucking.

Hurst

 

Where did you get the info on Swift?

 

SEC and MCS150 filings. That's the beauty of publicly traded companies. If you look up CHRW, you can see they average 20% off the top on brokered freight

 

No room for more there are plenty of trucks out there. More truckers more competition