Rates,Volume,freight,Economy?

it's not going to make a differrence now . rates are bad in every platform

 

Just thinking out loud here, but are all rates across every platform bad all across the country?
When I lived and run down there, I lived in New Mexico, rates coming out of there was always bad, even to the point I would bounce out once in a while. I would then generally try to work my way to where freightwa running well,be it where ever it was, and stay till I was ready to come home. I generally even in bad times got pretty fair money coming home.

 

No I dont, as been said doesn't matter what sector of trucking your in it all sucks. With the exception of heavy hitters like you and scotty... ROFL

 

Same as it ever was really. Not nearly as bad as '15 and '08. Lots of people flocked to the industry, bought the first 2013 truck for 25,000 on hopes and prayers of 4 a mile freight. Throw in tariff's, ELD's..... Idk. it's really not horrible. Lol.
This industry is famous for shucking the weak.

 

As long as the economy is good, people buy furniture. This summer is been really good to me, but I have my own rates and people pay me to pick up their product.
Right now I got more freight than I have trailer, going to have to make two trips next week to get caught up.

 

Me and a whole bunch of other flatbeds spent about 4 hours waiting in line to get a load of brick on, then another hour strapping it in sideways rain, while a steady stream of dryvans came and went without getting soaked or dirty. Or spending a fortune on gear.

Flatbed is hard, filthy work with hours of labor every day that cut into drive time. They have to charge a little more to make up for the reduction in ground you can cover. Im on my 3rd shirt of the day, takes quite a pile of laundry.

 

If you think flatbed takes a long time, just wait till you get to some places that vans load and unload. I would much, much rather fol with flats than vans as far as time. Besides that it didn't take me long to write a shipper, reciever or whole industry off of my list of hauls. 90% of folks that I hauled for were glad to see you oneither end and got with the program.
Bricks was one of those whole industries, that it just took me one load to black ball them off of my list. lol

 

You know youre in north carolina when even the abandoned houses are brick.

I haul a ton of it. Pays better than lumber but you sure wait on it and good lord is a brickplant hot. Those kilns create their own local atmosphere.

 

As for volume, my DAT searches are showing much higher numbers of loads in the usual places, but at much lower rates. Hauls i did 2 months ago are down a GRAND.

I think a lot of the postings are many brokers just spamming the board, and also the bigger junk shipper put out daily lists to many brokers. When rates are good only a few brokers will try to match a truck to a turd haul. But now im seeing 15 brokers all listing the same loads off the same list and not even knowing if its still available because its a half hour updated email. So brokers must be desperate too if theyre wasting that much time on scraps. I think that is indicative of lower industrial output, not just "the load to truck ratio is in our favor."

 

Yep because I'm on here all the time talking about the high dollar freight I haul every day. Not....