Very Little Negotiations

When prices are this high if you're posting prices you might as well post your best price. If you post less you probably won't generate any incoming calls. Honestly this is some degree of true at all price levels as I think about it.

EDIT: Think about the structure of a negotiation. There's a reason why it's almost a rule that the person who makes the first reasonable offer loses. The way I see it I just made an offer to the whole market good enough that you called. Me negotiating further isn't going to be to my advantage. If I'm on the load boards we're within 50 or a hundred bucks of 'take it or leave it'.

 

Because they base the average per load not mile right ? I never even thought about that. If it’s 2.25 average on van there’s a whole lotta 50, 100 mile hops at 3-5 dollars a mile pushing that average to the middle with the dollar a mile distance freight

 

It can be frustrating sometimes. I don't put in faith in the DAT Trendline report. There's lies, #### lies & statistics.

I have a friend doing flatbed out of MN. he's having a hard time getting more than a $1.90 a mile ALL miles average.

Yet, I'm over $3.00 ALL miles with my 53' dry, running the I-5 corridor mostly between Oregon & Washington.

Go figure...

I just finished up this week. Ran 4 easy days, 1700 all miles at $5,400 to the truck and used 32 hours of my 70 hr clock. I could of easily ran out my 70 hr clock and probably turned over 9k to the truck, but I want a life

Yet, if you look at the DAT rates on my lane, it's no where close to what I've been getting. Which is why, as some have alluded to here, it's a SUBJECTIVE number they are putting up.

 

Load board wise- Landstars are at the bottom of my list to call. As a matter of fact, I almost never do. The call me sometimes, but they're always looking for a sucker. In my hierarchy, they're the worst of them all, including TQL and CHR. They double broker, they are cheap. They're a quintessence of why brokers can be hated. I am sure that so called BCOs have different perspective and they can have contacts with good agents, and do well and better than I, but I yet to find a good Landstar agent.

 

I get this one a lot from broker agents, "but the $600 I'm offering you is $4.00 a mile!"

To which my response is always, "you expect me to tie my truck up all day, into the next morning for $600???...give me a break!

I had a Coyote rep I've run a few JIT loads for recently, do that to me yesterday morning. He offered me $700 for a short run going in the direction I wanted to go.

I just laughed and told him $950. He said he'd get back with me and he did within a cpl of minutes. Turns out his "manager was able to work his magic and get me the rate" I wanted.

Now you know they still made money on that load, which I don't fault or begrudge them for that. However, how do you go from, "oh man, we just don't have that kind of money in that load", to a 40% increase in a matter of 2 minutes? LOL

 

Far be it from me to defend Coyote, but it's amazing what a phone call to a customer saying, "hey, we've got an available truck, but he's 'X' dollars higher than what we originally discussed," will accomplish.

 

"Truck in hand" has been the name of the game for quite awhile now.......

 

So you negotiated the extra detention and after TQL agent verbally agreed you put it down on the Rate Con? See, I've never done it, just took whatever they specified on the Rate Con. Shame one me. Not that detention was a very frequent issue for me so far. Now I see what some guys mean when they say here about having the ready stamp with their terms...They just have to let the broker know and when they verbally agree put the stamp on the rate and that's it. The only problem could be that they might deny the verbal agreement and disregard the stamp at the billing process unless they stamp will be signed or initialed by the agent... I may be going too far overthinking that.I guess, I'll start demanding more detention when going to Krogers, Walmarts and the likes too.