Small Fleet with Mercer

Thanks, we went straight for our intrastate dot number shuttling some loads for a warehouse. Bought an old 91 T800 for 11,000 and an old 96 Great Dane van for 5500. This was in '08. Eventually found DAT and started doing some out and backs to get our feet wet. Bought an old 99 T8 and rented a trailer to bring on a 2nd truck and hired our first driver. Eventually applied for our interstate mc so we could cross state lines. Then bought a newer few year old sleeper and started our first "OTR regional" and got our 2nd hired driver. Eventually had 3 drivers and was able to stay back in the office. Applied for broker authority to increase our capabilities and learned that for a while. Gained the confidence and platform to feel comfortable bringing on a owner op, added another truck, got to a point we could bring on an office person to help, and off she goes...

We now run 6 assets, 2 owner ops, and 12 trailers. Work with 100's of brokers while having developed half a dozen solid customers. On the other side we work with 100's of carriers aswell. We were able to get a small warehouse to HQ out of and brought on a 2nd office person.

Take your time with growth and build the base first, then up from there. Don't use factoring, save and run on your own money.

 

I am also a small fleet owner. I currently have all three of my power units leased on with a small company in north texas.

I have been researching mercer, and am interested in putting a unit on with mercer.
Here are a few of my questions......

1. I was told by a recruiter that flat bed averages $1.60ish to the truck, can some one confirm or deny this?
Also dose that number include all miles (loaded and empty), do thos numbers include all revenue ( FSC, Tarp pay)?

2. How do you pay your drivers? Mileage, percentage, or other? How much of the tarp pay do you pass along to your drivers?

3. How are your drivers dispated? Do the utilize the coordinator or do you let them dispatch themselves?

 

1. That will be to the truck (all revenue) LOADED miles
2. Up to you. How do you pay them now?
3. Again, up to you.

 

1, all loded miles, so when you factor in deadhead that gose down correct?

2&3, i know its up to me but im wondering what others have found works best for them and why.

 

Call them and ask about number 1. The rest of us can only make educated guesses. My educated guess is if that number is accurate, It just means we got a lot of people here who haven't a clue how to make money.

As far as number2&3. The answer is none of your business. You are my competition in more ways than one, and i don't know you from adam. No one is going to help you run your business. Well, no one that knows what they are doing anyway. That would be like a landstar agent calling me up and asking me for a list of my customers and rates for them.

 

Yep. And like Spyder said....if that's the average, we're doing better than I thought we were.

 

Not necessarily. It just means many others are doing very very poorly.

 

Well thats a poor aditude to have. IMO
I would help anyone get to where i am.
I take joy in helping others, its obvious you do not.

Im not asking for specifics, just whitch method others use and why they think that works best for them.

It was my understanding that mercer o/o were willing to help others but i guess you could be the exception.

 

It really doesn't matter how someone else pays their drivers. If you've got a small fleet I would say keep doing what you're doing. As far as dispatch goes, again up to you how much control you want the driver to have in your truck making money.

As far as tarp pay goes, the first time I found out my boss was keeping ANY of the money that I worked for I'd be gone. In my opinion, you have no right to any of the tarp pay. Yes, tarps cost money but so do chains & straps. You going to take part of the drivers pay for using those also?

 

Chains and straps dont get torn up quite so easily. I could see a guy keeping 20 bucks per tarp load up to x amount to replace tarps when one gets torn up. Similar to an escrow situation. A good set of tarps can easily run into over 1500 dollars and can be ruined on every single load by a driver that doesn't care. The best way to make a driver care? Affect their wallet.