Load Board Truths and Myths

Spot market for brokerage firms is like playing the stock market. They're buying and guaranteeing they can provide capacity for the shipper/seller. Pay a dollar for the stock and hope to turn it for a 1.50 +/-.

A lot of them got burned big time in 2017/2018. Oftentimes paying more than what they bought the options for.

What I understand is that some have pulled back from buying large blocks of freight movement in lieu of an upfront and agreed to percentage.

In turn, a lot of shippers are moving away from traditional contract carriers, where capacity contracts are hammered out and agreed to for many mos ahead, to a more real time management of their shipping costs by letting the 3PL's cut each other's throats.

In turn, padding their own pockets while companies and individual operators are racing to the bottom trying to stay alive on brokered freight.

That's what happens when capacity is super saturated the way it is now.

 

Is it realistic to expect to garner direct shippers as a broker through over the phone contact & relationships? Pretty much I have a really long list of shippers I know take brokers, I'm just hesitant about how to approach convincing them, as my only competitive advantage is that I'm able to absorb losses which can be transferred as load savings for the shippers

 

From my understanding you dont own a truck or even have a CDL is that correct?

 

Rollin you certainly are a veteran. I would not dispute what you say. I am only grasshopper trying to snatch pebble

But when I say relationships I don't mean that you have relationships with Brokers that are going to call you and give you top dollar. I suppose that can happen sometimes but that's not really what I was referring to.

I really meant that once you're in the business and working you may have a few Brokers that you do work with and they know the lanes that you run and when they get those loads they may call you before it hits the load board. From there you have to negotiate but that's more what I was talking about.

Now I must catch fly with chopsticks...

 

I'm not sure I get what you're saying. Being able to absorb the losses is not the way to Market your business. No owner operator goes into it and says hey you know what I work for less than everybody else I can lose money.

When I looked into brokering by all estimates it was a minimum of six months of cold calling to be able to even begin to get any kind of clientele. You just have to have the grit to get on the phone and don't stop and don't get discouraged with no because you're going to get no no no no no no no no. You might get hundreds and hundreds of nos or more for every one yes.

That's just timing and selling and getting to the right person at the right time.

 

*** sorry for the long post...

I'm going to attempt to answer your question the way that I see it.

First of all you have to realize that this business is very diverse. Different types of freight different parts of this industry different ways people run their businesses different areas of the country different times of the year everything goes into this in such a way that almost no two people are exactly alike in their experience. There's some segments that may be doing better than others or doing better in certain areas or better at certain times or worse at certain times. I can understand that you like to see Trends and you look at things and you can analyze them and get an understanding of it, but looking at different people's individual stories is almost like rolling Dice and wondering why you don't see the same thing every time.

@Midwest Trucker runs mostly load board Freight from what I remember in his posts. But he has office people that their full-time job is everyday every moment of every day hammering the phones to find rates that that business can make money. These are people that do this every single solitary day at least 5 days out of the week 12 months out of the year except for the holidays obviously. The daily doing of that probably gives them almost a sixth sense about what they can get or what they can't get and even by the number of calls they make and numbers they're trying to get they probably can gauge what's going on along with economic factors and whatever else. Because they are on the phone every single solitary day they probably have at least some relationships with Brokers that they use over and over again. But it's that daily day in and day out banging on the phones that makes them able to do that. Maybe you can do that part time, but it's like anything else. When you do something everyday you become an expert at it. When you do it part-time you can be okay at it I guess but it's difficult for anyone to be an expert at anything doing it part-time.

Some of the other guys that say things are great for them are guys that have been doing this for some time, they have their groove of what they're doing and where they're going, they know what their Lanes pay and again, because they do it every single solitary Day Day and Night without fail for them to produce an income. They may be in a better area or better area right now or they may have some Brokers that like to use them and that may help them but there are a lot of factors that go into it. It's not as simple as two guys sit down in front of a phone next to one another and one guy gets great loads and one guy gets lousy loads. There may be some of that but that's not really what you are seeing as you are looking at different people's experiences.

The guys that tell you that load board Freight is bad are correct. I appreciate your enthusiasm but if I was somebody that had real estate Investments and I knew how to invest in the stock market and having money to invest wasn't a problem I would never be doing this. NEVER. And if I wasn't somebody that had a truck with a mechanical engine and I knew how to take it down to pieces and put it back together again, NEVER what I be doing this. If I wasn't somebody that was always around trucks and Equipment my entire life and I have a garage and a yard and spare parts, engines, and trucks,, NEVER would I be doing this. I don't understand why you are but that's your choice. Load board Freight is cheap it's often heavy a lot of it is stuff that's recycled and double and triple brokered and some that's not even real, so for you to find something reasonable is going to take an enormous amount of work.

You can't go by what someone else is telling you even if they show you their numbers for the week. It isn't that what they're saying is untrue, but it is not true for you. I honestly don't know how you can do this part-time and come out on top of it. Maybe you can but let me just say this.

There have been guys that have come on this forum that were brilliant. I mean brilliant, educated- some guys that ran large companies some guys that were incredible salesman guys that could do things and had knowledge that you could never believe. Some guys were mathematicians, statisticians, engineers, business owners- you name it they've been here. I'm talking about very smart educated intelligent well established guys that thought that driving their own truck and starting that type of business would be better than being in their cubicle or their corporate life or better than their other business or whatever. Much like yourself they looked at it from the outside and felt that they had it figured, yet positively most of them if not all fell by the wayside because it became something much more than they thought it was going to be.

And even to just put it in very simple terms. You could have a couple breakdowns that if you work part-time you lost money for the year. Even something that simple if you combine that with a few Brokers that don't pay or go out of business maybe somebody hits your truck and your insurance rates go up, you have a few cargo claims, some Hefty DOT fines...

All of that would dwarf what you make part-time.

I'm certainly not telling you not to do it, I've enjoyed the thread and you're an interesting fellow, as were the other Fellows I spoke of.

So here's the metaphor for Trucking that I would not say just to you but to anyone, especially someone that isn't planning on this full-time and doesn't have a big background in it.

It's like a guy that did pretty well for himself and he's got money burning a hole in his pocket. And he finds this crazy chick that everybody tells him that she's a gold-digger and he knows for sure that she is. He knows she might take him for every penny that he has he knows that she may stress him and age him in ways he never dreamt of, he knows he may come home one day and she cleaned out his bank account, he knows that he may look in the mirror one day and see knots all over his head because he's constantly banging his head against the wall. He knows his life may suffer, his health may suffer, he may even die at an earlier age and he understands that this could cause him more headache and heartache than any human being could or should ever endure. He knows that it's an extremely good possibility that one day she will kick him square in the nuts as hard as she can and laugh when he falls to the ground. He knows that while he's lying there writhing in pain she'll look him Square in the eye and tell him she found someone younger with more money that has a bigger thing and then she'll spit on him as she walks away with his best friend. He's seen her do it to other men with his own two eyes and yet for some reason he's happy to be next in line.

And when we say why why why would you do this? He says, "I think it'll be fun."

My novel is complete. Good night

 

Yeah I have neither, but by the end of the school year I'll have enough for my broker authority

 

Is the 1 client per 500 calls accurate you would say?

 

Well I'm not a broker so I can't tell you with real-world experience but I did look into becoming a broker and all the information said 6 months to a year of constant cold calling to begin to build a book.

I would think 500 calls per customer is probably a minimum accurate figure. It could even be double that.