A new guy's perspective and ??'s.

Just the short time I have been looking into this I have found you really need to do your homework. I would avoid CRST. Just my 1/2 a penny's worth. Depending on where you live, check into Millis Transfer.

 

A trucking company has to be in a position to fulfill an excess demand that may rise overnight due to a number of reasons, so they have a 1000 trucks (say) online in the fleet at a given time. They have fixed costs associated with all of these wether there is freight demand to run them at 100% capacity or 70% capacity. So if most don't operate anywhere near capacity and sit idle at times, it's ok, it costs the company nothing, they are not burning fuel, they are not paying a driver, etc. They have found they'd rather all trucks run at 60-80% capacity than try and hire and layoff to meet current demands which can fluctuate wildly from quarter to quarter for a variety of economic reasons. Hiring quality drivers is a difficult, time-consuming, costly process so layoffs due to reduced demand that may or may not be only temporary are unheard of in the trucking industry (for the most part) They'd rather their 1000 trucks run 2000 mile/wk than 750 running 2700 m/wk and park and layoff 250 units/drivers (and those 250 can't be called into service overnight or even inside of 3 months barely) These are generalizations and I hope I've made sense with this.

And the large "mega-carriers" these facts are even more pronounced. They have to find creative ways to keep their drivers content enough to ride out the slow periods, hoping an uptick is not too far down the road. I realize new drivers coming into the industry are almost forced to work with these mega-carriers in the beginning, but once you gain some experience, you will probably find the small to midsize carriers offer the overall best gross weekly pay numbers and operate on a more consistent basis.

 

Biggest issue right there. And the driver normally comes out on the short end of that stick all of the time too.

Last week alone because of how something ended up, I was ready to just clean my truck out when I got home. But thankfully there were a couple guys I talked with and it was nice to have a place to vent.

As such, things were avoided that could have been an ugly situation.

Were things corrected? Not in my eyes. Will they be corrected? Not in my eyes.

This is a costumer driven service industry. Receivers literally have the transportation companies by the balls to do what they please. If that means they make your company sit for 6+ hours on a dock, your truck is going to sit.

If they tell you it's going to cost you $50 or $190 or $240 to unload your truck, it's going to cost you even though it's their freight, you'd think they'd want it off your truck with a grin and a nod.

But life isn't that way.

And the driver is in the middle between the consignee, the dispatcher and the shipper.

And no K-Y to enjoy it with.

 

Just found out today at my place of employment at the employee meetings not expect any K-Y lube until at least 2014 and there are no guarantees then either...ouch!

 

Then there are the various tax credit incentives to hire (to replace those who quit, get fired, etc) that keeps trucking companies constantly in hiring mode, and the fact there is no freight demand is of little concern to them. They have to deal with the reality a quarter of their fleet may sit parked and unoccupied at any given time due to driver turnover rates. They seem to find it's more profitable to hire constantly and not accept attrition, then to run lean and near capacity. which brings us back to my earlier post ... they have salesmen fighting to land the 50 load a day accounts and the last thing they want is to not be able to provide the required assets (over and above the norm) to the Georgia market next Monday, empty and ready to load and move.

 

Not really. but at the same time yes.

You have your seasons that something ebb and wane. It's a given like construction season, planting, harvest etc.

If you can get into mid-process materials, then you get better forecasting.

My background is also industrial management so I understand the JIT and all it means and how it functions. So I can see the sustainability of getting into the process flow materials. But understanding THAT, you also understand that the production volumes are order driven. And if customer orders are down, you know freight will be slow then too.

Groceries and their related processes are about the only thing "consistent" if you want to consider anything like that. But then, you have consignee's that will stick a truck on the dock for 6+ hour detaining it. Why?

Well, the shipper takes a huge order and stuff 3-5 products on a pallet that the consignee ordered. I have such an order on now. Over 36 different products on it. It could take 3-5 hours for them to break it down and count it all.

The consignee does not want to accept the order until it's counted every single product and broken the load down.

While he's doing that, the trucker is sitting in his truck fuming because he's not getting detention pay and being forced to sit there earning no income because he's paid mileage, not percentage or salary.

And since the "driver drives the truck" and doesn't touch the freight, the lumper gets $180-250 to break the load down. Often times paid on a 1099 from the consignee.