Planning A Future Career Path...

You don't have to pay any broker if you get nothing from them. You're just wishing that brokers would go away because you assume that rates to you would go up. They wouldn't.

EDIT: A lot of truckers assume that brokers profit comes from their end. It actually doesn't. Customers who don't use brokers have to hire logistics people to source their trucks. Those people have to get paid (and pretty well usually) and they don't overpay trucks more than brokers do.

I'm a freelance transportation manager basically. I hire trucks all day long, but it's silly to pretend that I have any control over market rates (I pay them... whatever they happen to be) or that what I keep would magically end up in the trucking companies pocket if they went direct with my customer.

 

More fair for you is what you mean. It's all a matter of perspective.

 

Yeah that would be a DISASTER for me. I run about 1000 loads a year off the load boards... Compared to what I generate in revenue off of them currently I pay absolutely nothing. That doesn't mean there's meat left on the bone for them to come in and take a meaningful percentage of the overall pie when the brokerage I am with is paying ~1k a month for load board subs for my office.

 

Just do like Landstar does and attach a deduction on each invoice that comes from a load board load...

 

Wait they charge you MORE to take their stepped on double brokered trash? That's borderline hilarious. I absolutely HATE Landstar. I'd literally have to become a Landstar agent to use their equipment. I know the company has good and bad sides, but us smaller independent brokers they just see as potential victims.

 

Well landstar calls it "Contingent Cargo Program" and deducts $1.75 for it. I read a post on here that claims it's for carriers that don't have a million dollar cargo ins. needed for some loads. I'm rather skeptical though because the times they deducted on me was only when I took a load that was posted on ITS. If the load was posted only on the landstar load board they didn't deduct. The last one they did that to me was Roofing Material, it was plastic roof vents, roll roofing, and some asphalt sealer... under 20k lbs. It being a high value load was never mentioned but it was taken off of ITS and it wasn't on landstar load board and they did deduct a buck seventy-five.

So to me the contingency was that they wasn't able/whiling to cover it so it got thrown out to the wolves.