California produce season

Are you trying to say that the USDA is getting their data from loadboards?

 

Who knows where the usda gets their rates. I was trying to say that dats data sucks too. Not half as bad as the usda who haven't been close to right since I got into the business, but they definitely aren't accurate.

EDIT: If I had to guess I'd say that the USDA rate is calculated in some old timey way that was used to calculate trucking rates before deregulation.

 

This is realistic. This is pretty much my regulars business model in a nutshell. Except that a fair few of them have vented vans and aren't paying for reefer fuel.

 

It's going well so far. They loaded me early Monday morning and with some creative logging made it to West Memphis Arkansas Monday night. The load is only 10 pallets/23,000 lbs. Ran 729 miles on Tuesday logging 10.75 driving and am reseting in Amarillo Tx. By the looks of it I should make Stockton by 10 pm Thursday night. My first appointment is 0500 Friday morning

 

You didn't have to guess when you made your previous post...

 

Glad its going well for you!

 

I don't have to guess what the produce rates are because I am actually moving the freight in the real world. My first hand data is 0-24 hours old and 100% accurate. This means I've got a fairly good idea how inaccurate DAT's rating products are. The USDA rates are always good for a laugh and nothing more. You could actually rate loads with DAT and only be a little bit screwed.

 

Haul a lot of produce and our customers rates are at or above the high for USDA. And the tonnage that they show is a fairly accurate number. The few customers that we haul for that give loads out to everyone, that rate is far less.

 

I've shown my work by referring to the rates that we can all publicly see. I've even talked about specific markets in specific seasons. A lot of good posters have agreed with those posts because I'm being very up front and honest about the reality of hauling produce.

I only move low value produce (load values <20k) so I obviously could be wrong about rates for things like berries.

The reality is that there are a lot of people on the trucking side who have a very distorted idea of what profits look like on the brokerage side of the business. In produce a 10% margin on a long haul is pretty ###### unlikely. I'm usually making like 300 bucks on a load that pays 4500 from AZ to the east coast during the canteloupe season. The only time my margins get north of 15% is on short hauls where my $/load is garbage. Or they are loads that the customer is intentionally padding in the off season which I don't really consider to be meaningful for market rate discussions.

I can't speak for how accurate Western USDA produce rates are because I don't do much that way. I can say that the FL outbound rates are hilariously high. (the closest one is off by 25%. The worst one is off more than 50%) After glancing at this weeks USDA report I think the Nogales, AZ-> East Coast numbers are the closest to accurate and those are still more than 10% off. The closest load is right at 6% off and it has an extra stop in Philly and drops in Brooklyn. 6% off on 4k+ is far enough off that it would be worthless to me for rating loads.

 

We haul from FL,NJ,NC,SC,TX. the rates we do are at the high side of the USDA. Again, if it's a customer that put's the load out to everyone it's far lower. Rates the same, straight load of lettuce or strawberrys