Average pay structure for brokers

Thats how every business owner works, or at least the successful ones. This includes brokers.

 

This is also why as technology improves we're going to see real power transition to smaller operations and away from bigger entities. There's just no way some big corporate 3PL is competing with me successfully just like there's no way some mega trucking company is going to do a better job for less money than a decent one man show trucking company. The latter has probably been a trucker for 10+ years and only has to pay himself rather than 4 layers of management. He's also very unlikely to get lazy and not bother to find himself a load... And if he does he's probably at home lol.

The only advantages the megas have is the ability to hire newbies for nearly no money (the savings aren't nearly as good as they look once you take the legal costs into account) and the ability to do capital expenditures about 50% better. They get better deals on equipment, fuel, tires, and maintenance basically because at their size you pay wholesale. You can smash those advantages by being 10-15% more efficient about running your truck. Anything beyond that is gravy which can be bargained away to keep the truck loaded when times get harder.

 

Sure if that broker is THE owner or one of THE owners. Everyone else is punching a clock or salary and may or may not "take their work home with them".

A owner wakes up thinking about what it is he fell asleep thinking about.

 

I agree that 90% suck. But the same can be said for truck drivers and owners. It's no different than any other industry that has practically zero entry barrier.

 

The big problem with those that b****h about brokers is that they are not capable of selling themselves to a customer, thus making brokers their only "customer'. It's laughable. Pretty easy to negotiate with someone who has a load and needs a truck vs someone who has loads and already has trucks. The standard answer of the anti-broker is that the broker offers a cheaper rate, then b*****h about how much they are making. Doesn't add up(well, maybe with common core math)

 

Really boils down to this- everyone's got a piece of the puzzle that is the freight market. Bad brokers don't good accounts, just like bad drivers don't get choice loads. Plenty of riff raff around on both sides of the market. Just ask the driver that got me chewed out for showing up to an active jobsite in pajama pants and flipflops last week. He cost his company any further business from me. For all the horror stories of bad brokers, there's as many about bad drivers out there, too.

 

Absofreakinglutely. I always get a giggle out of the broker bashing rants. You know the typical brokers don't do anything but leech off drivers. Its like they think all drivers are great. When the truth is a good portion of them can't even show up on an agreed time. Heck id guess over 25% are habitually late, and of course its never their fault. Its traffic and blown tires. How many times a month do you get those two excuses?

 

I get blown tires less when I ask for pictures. Traffic is at least two to three times a week. If it's particularly egregious, I fire up google maps with a traffic overlay on where they say they're at. "Weird, It's showing green here."

 

Ya don't get me wrong, tires do blow out(or in my case get cut out at job sites) , but its a once every couple year event if you run quality tires.

Traffic excuses is my biggest pet peeve. We all know every major city has terrible traffic, not leaving yourself extra time for it isn't a traffic problem, it's a trip planning problem. Sure you can't plan for that multiple car pile up that completely shuts the highway down, but hitting the north side of Atlanta at 8 am when you got a 9 am appointment on the south side is just poor service.

 

Pretty easy now, just ask for the e-log printout. Hard to lie about where you were, when you were. I may not like them from the truck side but great from the broker side.