Planning trips. How many loads ahead?

Here's my opinion...

You have to do what is best for your business. You need to generate revenue, and have it already booked and ready to go.

If something out of your control happens, so be it.

If something in your control happens, shame on you.

Think about what's best for your business, and then do your best to follow through.

 

I prefer long haul rather than overnight 600's That load will be in jersey or whatever at the appointed hour provided nothing comes up.

You do what you need to do. But it's holding on to the tail of a tiger trying to unload in time to get to the next reload. Now if you had a local tractor maybe to load that while you unload and swap... who knows what the possibilities might be.

In my time I was in Little Rock day and night moving McKesson trailers to our lot supporting teams who ran it west. They have no time to run to Memphis and get loaded and then double back. So the trailers were there for them. Doing Memphis twice a day back when the construction was going on was difficult. But I got it done. In exchange sometimes they throw me a load of Yakima Washington Apples to Atlanta safeway nw and that's a nice 24 hour break. 12 hours down, unload in a hour and 12 hours back.

 

I've been booking 2 in quick succession every day for the past 2 weeks. I have been known to book 4 or 5 short hauls over a few days before. Sometimes things do go wrong. I mostly do this with people I have worked with a lot and know their particular freight. When an unknown load is in the mix I'm discussing details to make sure it's a fit.

But it's not really as big of a deal as you are thinking when things go bad. No-one is going to blacklist you and if they do its a guarantee they will be calling you again as soon as trucks are scarce. These things happen and most brokers understand that. As long as they have plenty of time to recover it most of them are actually grateful for a headsup. So don't wait until an hour before pickup to give it back lol.

 

It's yesterday's info. And today is not always the same as yesterday. It's a decent rough guide but don't bet your life on it. Volume tells the story. Inbound versus outbound too.

 

@TheRipper but do you think that it's a good move for the business to look ahead of your next haul? I was discussing this with @TallJoe in another Thread because I'm trying to see if I can get better results by Planning 3 to 4 loads in my Drivers calendar.

 

I am not active O/O. With the understanding that I did recieve some schooling with a company that had me in class for months prior to my mid 94 tractor purchasing (Long story short...)

One of the lessons they kept putting into teaching was pretty simple. If you have a load going somewhere from home, always try to have something coming back. If you managed to say leave Toledo (Pulls rabbit... creates a trip using Toledo as home...) and deadheaded to Lima to pick up armor or something good hauls it to Alabama for retrofit (They have a retrofit center there at one of the Depots) you now have a oppertunity to say... get to Memphis from Alabama and haul a Adhoc one time high dollar narcotics load to Detriot where it goes to a hospitals via distribution.

Suddenly they offer you a chance to reload on the spot with cardboard waste back to memphis for a little profit over what it will cost you empty and a oppertunity to run another load to detriot maybe?

Relationships begin this way and continues one load at a time... Detriot is around 70 miles from Toledo as the crow flies.

Always have something coming back where possible. Call it 100 miles radius of home so your empty cost to the home yard will max out at around 15 gallons (6.5 miles per gallon, 3.00 gallon) and 50 bucks max. A small price to pay for a sure loaded coming back into your home ground from anywhere in the USA.

I hope I don't come across as a blathering idiot, we cannot (Who is this we?) depend on yesterday's load for tomorrows planning. There are certain loads like the medicine example i used in which people have to have every day. Once you break into such a flow of freight which is much more... motivating than just a potatochip load... then you will see the money take care of itself savvy?

Back in dec of 2001, JB Hunt sent me from St Louis to central Iowa about a hour east of desmoines. There is a load of beer going to a distribution there. A smaller quieter one.

I stand on the dock and eyeball a whole wall and a entire 1/3 of the building filled with emtpy kegs tagged return to st louis. I asked the dock boss can I have these Kegs back to st louis? He says let your bosses know and they will negotiate.

I let my dispatcher know and the negotiation lasted about 3 hours while I waited patiently to see if I load those kegs back to st louis. Dock boss and my dispatcher came to me and said no drivers have ever shown the initilive you have shown with my kegs. Can I hire you?

I did not think anything of it then, but in time I learned that what I had done was something very special to people involved in dealing with freight and my name got known.

I think such things are worth something someday if I ever live in Iowa I would know what I might want to get into at that time. I used to keep a book of very friendly shippers and recievers who were in a position to possibly make loads where otherwise it might be empty. That book has been lost to time and history now. But small things like that has a value in business in this industry.

I hope that my story and expeirences motivate you in a small way to think be happy. don't worry too much about tomorrow. It will come together when it;s correct and not when it's a money pit.

 

My current job is fleet manager for a small trucking company. Our business model, with our 25 trucks, is similar to yours. We do primarily 300-600 mile, 1-day loads in the southeast and midwest. Typically, I don't like to book my trucks more than 3 days in advance because something will typically come up to throw my well-laid plans out of whack on that 3rd or 4th day. As @rollin coal said, brokers understand and don't really care if you have to fall off of a load as long as they have a day or two notice. That's not what I worry about. I just don't like to do the same work twice (spend time and effort booking a load for 5 days from now, something comes up on day 3, now I've got to rebook something else for day 5). That may not be as big of a deal with a 1 truck operation, but I can't afford to spend my time re-booking a truck that I've already booked once when I still have 24 trucks to go. So, to summarize, 2-3 days advance booking is the most efficient way for me to do it.

 

May I ask you this.

You say you don't like to do the same work rebooking a truck.

You are in charge of 25 trucks and the drivers with them etc. Dont you think booking each one is similar?

Im not trying to be difficult, I think it's awesome you keep 25 people plus employed and roll good revenue with 25 trucks.