How to make money in the reefer business

which brand of thermometer is the most accurate ones?

 

My minimum is $850 net per day and I haul a dry van. Yes, these newbies come along and are use to McDonald wages and drive the prices way down. That’s an insane mind set that you have and probably why we don’t share information with rookies.

 

If you accept a penny, why would a broker give you a quarter? This is common sense people. She missed an entire day of work. Lay over is normally $50-$100 per hour times 24. So actually, she got cheated, but settled for $800. Prime rips their drivers off. They pay you less, so they can pass the incentives (lower rates) to the shipper. They wouldn’t dare treat an owner op like that because we can refuse the overages that Prime cannot keep up with because their poorly paid drivers quit daily.

 

You pull a dry van and you get paid $50-$100 per hour for a 24 hour layover? O-o

 

Excuse me detention. My point is it makes perfect sense. For those of you who aren’t making $100k-$350k and own your own truck, oh well. You can’t teach an old dog a new trick. And why would you want an old dog anyway.

 

I've been an o/o for several years now and I saw some BS that needed calling out.

 

You people who are working for peanuts think everything is a joke. When someone is trying to educate you, listen and take notes. I trained in the woods and got my cdl’s. I had already gone to the bank and purchased me a truck. With my cdl’s not even a week old, I was making $3000-$5000 per week hauling wood. I now own another truck and run van. I average $2.30-3.50 per mile. In two months I’m going to buy a car hauler and work with my brother who doesn’t drive and grosses roughly $15k to $20k per week. The goal is to let your money make you money. If you are expecting these numbers not running your own authority, good luck. You have to sacrifice and work for yourself. So yes, if I carry a load and it takes 24 hours to get the load off; somebody is going to pay me for that lost time. Period. This is a business and time is money. There is no way around that. $800 for a 24 hour detention is reasonable. If you don’t think so, then you don’t know your own worth and are working with and for the wrong people.

 

It's getting really deep in here now

 

I have been running a reefer for about 9 months ,mostly off load boards and I read these post of the money people are making per week and can't seem to make that work. The money can be good like 3 to 4 dollars per mile but I'm gonna sit for at least 4 to 8 hours on a trip loading and unloading.I know the most stressful part of my job now is dealing with the shippers and receivers it's not the people it's the attitude of the companies.They have 30 trucks backed up at the docks and 4 people working to load them.I really did not notice this pulling a dry van.

 

Funny you say that. I get tired of that too. Glad I hung on to my old dry van. I just finished up a month of pulling it and doing power only's. You gotta love a dry load load with those one page BOL's and no lumpers right? Really speeds up and simplifies the paperwork processing. Seems like every reefer load I haul has 20 pages of BOL's (per stop!) and they all have to be turned in for payment, plus lumper receipts. It's funny how if you get a reefer load with a one page BOL you feel like that's a bonus and one with no lumper fee, wow! that's like winning the lottery. I'm back to mixing it up with the ol reefer again now.