Picking my own freight baby! My journey to & of being on Schneider choice, the Adventure & Numbers!

For the record I didn't start the IPO thread that was drvrtech77 I believe but I did back last winter predict the IPO.

As for what happens to the IC'S it will not improve until there's a mass exodus of IC'S and not a line at the door waiting to come here.

We haven't hit the bottom yet example today fuel costs rising and both fsc and discounts dropping.

 

They announced the new agreement and it went down hill from there.

 

They made a large batch of peach preserves. However CS was on charge of setting the timer. Half the batch was under done, half the batch was over done, and half had no peaches. To have enough peach preserves to sell at the bake sale (being held to raise money to endow a rest home for 9 series trailers) Lofgren had to secretly buy peach preserves and relable them. He first went to Tennan, but Tenman misunderstood and sent peach moonshine. Support shift got into it and Loftgren was back to square 1. He then found a large enough batch, but the resulting costs of the wasted peaches, the moonshine, and the fraudulent "home made" preserves was disastrously high. To avoid being tossed in jail for raiding the petty cash Lofgren surreptitiously cut the freight rates to IC drivers.

 

You are a interesting dude to say the least. Lol.

 

Sni has always run a large amount of spot market freight on company trucks. With the spot market the way it is now they moved the company trucks into the contract side creating unbearable competition with ic trucks. My problem is not so much rates it's freight availability on loads that at least pay a "decent" rate. I would expect the availability to get better when and if the spot market gets better and the company trucks move back to running that.
I agree with Tennman, as long as there is a line of drivers waiting to go on choice it's hard to imagine things getting better. It still keep waiting for companies like swift to create a true choice like program. This would ease the pressure.
The whole IPO deal is a complete wild card. I don't know what to make of it but I don't see any good.

 

If the ELD mandate sticks, it's going to really jolt the industry. The smaller companies that are having to fudge their logs to compete are going to get crushed. Of course it's exactly what the big boys want. I think it could push rates down even further as the mega's fire the kill shots towards the smaller fleets.

 

SNI took advantage of the market readjusting from the massive high it had from 2014-2015 and used that slight drop in freight to justify cutting rates to where they are now. You go back and read the shareholder reports for companies like Swift and some of the other publicly traded companies for that time frame, they all stated the the market was still strong but expecting a weakening to readjust for the constant high we had the year before, but nothing there shareholder reports did they predict the type of market SNI claims has affected them. If you look at the company drivers during that time frame, they didn't see a drop in freight or miles that was more than the usual time of year drop. Even now when the market is strong SNI still claims it's a weak market and freight is soft. Yes DAT shows the spot market average rates at $1.60 right now, but that means half of the loads are paying more than that and half the loads are paying less than that. A lot of the markets that SNI shows little to no freight or the freight is cheap on the SNI board is actually a strong market with good rates. Even the spot market in those areas are good. It's SNI keeping the rates down to keep the IC's out of a market that they can dominate with the company drivers so they can keep good paying revenue.

The markets didn't completely tanked. They readjusted accordingly because of the huge surge that lasted from 2014-2015 and customers have a surplus of product on there shelves and in there warehouses. Markets have gone back to normal Pre-2014 rates and cycles for the most part. Other companies that haul dry van have seen good rates for most of this year, whereas SNI keeps claiming a soft and weak market.

Yeah, priceless, just priceless. Do you do creative writing in your free time under a penn name?

Rates in the spot market have been good and strong all spring and summer. No they are not the $2+ they were in 2014/2015, but they are still very strong. SNI is still running spot market and taking up the contract freight as well. They took advantage of the readjusting market to make there books look perfect for an IPO. They knew they market was going to come back in the spring time and used there propaganda machine to make you all think the market just flat out sucks no matter what even when DAT reports were showing rates coming back up, demand and volume increasing, but some how SNI still keeps the rates unchanged and depressed for the IC's.

If the market was as bad as SNI paints the picture, then doing an IPO would be the last thing you would want to do. You only do an IPO when you have strong predictable streams of revenue (ie. contracts with customers, SFI lease program) that will have a good chance of increased profits each year. So you want to make the books look good, the leadership team look like they know how to lead, and the costs of the operation to be lean. That is what SNI did when they saw the market readjust last fall. They took advantage of perfect timing situation that benefited them. This is also someone's exit strategy from the company. I can almost guarantee you that one or more of the private owners of SNI will be "retiring" one the IPO is complete. Someone wanted out either because they were done or because they see something else looming on the horizon that would sink SNI and they don't want to be part of it.

Hope that helps answer the questions.

 

Sorry, thought it was you @TennMan. @drvrtech77 , You deserve the credit for starting that thread, sorry for giving the credit to tennman.

 

I agree with everything you said. Extremely well thought out. But just to play devil's advocate if I added 35% to the rate I am averaging now I could not even begin to touch it on the spot. I run for 1.60 all day long(not including deadhead) without all the overhead of running under my own authority and the extra overhead of the added equipment cost.
Once again I agree with what you are saying but it's not as bad as some will make it sound. For the time being you just have to work a little harder and alot smarter
The IPO has me worried. But just another thing in life I can't change and if the #### hits the fan I can roll. Just gonna have to wait and see.
I also applaud you on running under your own numbers. If I could convince myself and had the #### I would be in crossville buying a truck before it's too late.

 

Thanks! Yeah, I make way more than the average and like it that way I don't like being an average person or business. You don't stand out from the crowd.