A Review of Farm2Fleet from the Broker's Standpoint

Turnaround from load to load would be dependent on the driver. Our dispatch is more a means of facilitating connecting you with possible loads out there although if you were to ask i'm sure they could find a load for your truck. Our office sends out several emails daily to customers we've worked with (probably hundreds) that details the location/availability and equipment type. These customers, if they don't already know the unit number and contact info, call dispatch to get it. Then call the truck owner to see if maybe that owner might be interested in their load and start negotiating price if so. It's self dispatch. You'd be doing a mix of finding your own loads and developing your own connections plus having your truck marketed by dispatch and more possible connections sent your way, plus in the last year or so more opportunity offered from dispatch - that would be customers anticipating needs and trying to nail down some trucks to cover.

When rates and freight are good turn around is quick. Sometimes it's not so quick depending on how demanding you are as to what motivates you to roll. When I started self dispatching I discovered myself to being sympathetic with operations at my old company where us drivers (force dispatched)were dependent on lots of miles and not so happy as to why at times we would wait, and wait, and wait on a reload. We would grumble and complain about not being moving and had all sorts of ideas of what they could be doing. When you determine your own lanes, rates and are effectively"operations" then you understand what they are up against having clear vision of the big picture. When you're in tune with markets you'll understand that turnaround and quickly getting rolling ASAP and or turning big miles is not near so important nor as profitable as getting top dollar and making every mile the most profitable it can be. This is not a hand holding company where you just sit and wait for loads.

 

Atlanta should be a pretty good market for good rates right.?

 

I was just looking at the F2F webpage. 72% of the gross seems more than just a little bit on the low side for a driver who is negotiating his own rates and securing his own loads, and then transporting this freight with his own equipment.....just what exactly is F2F doing to merit taking 28% off the top?

 

Is that a trucking company for o/o?

 

Plenty of freight around and thru there. If that's your home you should have no problem figuring out some local or regional lanes that work really well. Assuming you catch onto the game and play it well. I go to ATL now and then due to my own constraints seldom anyone does me any favors leaving so i usually deadhead far away. You wont have those constraints it being your home 20 makes it hammer time if somebody needs a truck...

 

10-4 rollin coal. I have the truck (my avatar/signature pic). Do they have trailers or I will need to my own one?

 

Let's say I negotiated a rate of $2.60 per mile....

I got the rate, am hauling the load with my equipment, and getting what, exactly?

$1.87....

and F2F got .728, or .73 cpm if we round it up.....

28% off the top is a big number. (Especially considering that in my above example F2F didn't really do anything.....)

Now, this is just my opinion, but if someone is going to clip 28% off the top, they should be supplying loads paying north of $2.60...with customers of theirs paying $3-$4 a mile, on loads with some legs to them (1,000 to 2,000 miles), being a fairly regular deal....if you're going to take 28% you need to bring something to the table.

 

That's pretty much it. Negotiate a flat rate of $1,000 and get your cut out of it. But this 72% thing is wrong I believe. Can you provide a link for that? I just looked at the webpage and saw no mention of pay deal or even a mention of looking for drivers, here is what we offer etc.... As far as I know new leases here are at 80% of the gross with, I think, farm2fleet offering up some freebies that I don't get. When I leased on Sept12th 2011 my arrangement was for 89% of the gross getting paid weekly or an option for 92% if I wanted to wait with them on checks. I did the 92% for well over a year, even fronted my own money for fuel, but that gets tiring so I went to 89% every Friday. That extra percentage isn't even an option for newer leases. At the time when i leased on it was Bill's one truck and mine was number 2. When a one truck operator is offering up some somewhat lucrative seasonal work pulling a hopper plus jump into the frying pan free loadboards access for the rest of the year.. well he's gonna have a difficult time therefore the deal has to be sweet to get trucks leased on. As time went on it went down several times until it got firmly established at 80% which IMO is fair for someone leasing on with their own equipment.

As far as what they do for me. A lot. But I hate it when these questions come up. I know we have a lot of haters and detractors in here who know nothing about us at all aside from comments from a few failures who couldn't cut it at any company with this kind of model. There is a core group of drivers here that have been around since the beginning almost. They don't waste as much time on TTR as I do some of them read but never post. I know a lot of people follow what I post and are influenced by it. That is bothersome in it's self as i take it badly when someone struggles and quits. That is why I never tell anyone they should work here because it's so different from everything else and the truth is mostwwon't be able to hack it. It's not for the feint of heart getting most of your work from loadboards. I make it look easy I think a lot of that is stuff I don't even think about it's just intuitive. But this can be misleading to others is why I never say, come over to F2F..

Now you asked what do they offer for their cut. In the beginning it wasn't a whole lot. We are friends taking a risk and trying to find our way. Back then we were unknown. As you can see from the title of this thread we made a good name for ourselves over time. I'd bet the ranch there's at least 75-100 different freight brokers who, if they were members of TTR, would come on here and post all sorts of praise for the professionalism of our drivers, how we always do what we say we will, they don't worry when they book on us, etc, etc. We've all made contacts who give us repeat business.

Now really, and this one has been sort of a shocker for me because i was a skeptic in the beginning. This relationship with Covenant Transport has sent many a very lucrative load my way. I run a lot of lucrative freight that I find on my own and thru my usual contacts who will pay it, or random brokers who need a truck. But within the past year I have seen more and more emails come out looking for drivers on some good freight. That is where everyone's efforts are paying dividends. That was always a goal for Bill to be able to offer his drivers those opportunities. I am glad now for that relationship with Covenant. It is nice to have my company offer up something really good from time to time, that i didn't have to hustle on my own. There was a time when Bill was considering that relationship with Covenant or other prospective non-asset based brokerages. I wouldn't have known it at the time, and I could even be wrong, but i think passing up on those deals and partnering up with an asset based brokerage was the best thing. You know guys go on about how megas can run really cheap and make millions off 5 cents a mile above cost. What has been an eye opener for me is yeah they can do that but they don't get to being mega's without some lucrative stuff to. I've hauled some of their direct that on a per load basis profit was measured in dollars not cents. We are in on this stuff. They don't just post it up for random trucks. Is it direct? No. Does it matter? Not to me it doesn't. We started from nothing and from my standpoint as a driver I think we have achieved what anyone running a truck could hope for. To get into reliable good paying freight. For the time being, and this possibly because I do always insist on TOP dollar, there could be more of it would like to see much much more just need to give it time. I am excited to think the possibilities when we are at the 5 years in business mark.

There were and still are plenty who said it can't be done. Lots who told me and us there's no way. Well we found ways. And back to our roots, when we didn't have that sort of access, we did have our name and brokers who love us. And still do. One of our simplest but most effective marketing tools, IMO, are the email lists going out several times daily to hundreds of those potential customers. People who know us and are set up. I've never heard of any o/o company doing something like that. I don't even know how many loads it has sent my way but I'm positive it's been a lot. These things to me are what I call value. That is what i get for the percentage they take......

 

To clear things up. The 72% of gross would be leasing on under Covenant Expedited that we run and getting all the benefits of a larger carrier while being dispatched by our team. We have a lot of drop and hook freight with this program that isn't available running under F2F. Leasing to F2F as Rollin described we are at 80% plus trailer rental (if you don't have one). The biggest difference is how the two different fleets are structured. With the Covenant fleet it is geared more towards drivers that are looking at running the miles like they would under a typical mile pay carrier. This fleet pays 100% FSC and you get fuel discounts in the range of $.40 per gallon.

We are posting the new opportunity because this is the area that we are focusing our growth for the near future. Covenant is able to provide things that we can't like the fuel discounts, IFTA, Tolls, plates, insurance, etc. Plus with Covenant we have the ability to finance new tractors if the driver is looking to upgrade or start a fleet. Not something we can do at F2F.

It is not secret that I am a huge advocate of percentage pay. But most large carriers are mileage. They have great benefits but that doesn't make up the difference of what a percentage carrier pays. But for over 6-months I have been negotiating this programs where we can offer the big carrier benefits with a percentage pay. Initially we had a higher percentage with the driver renting a trailer. But we had a couple larger customers that wanted drop trailers. So we decided to go with more the LS model and we purchased 400 new trailers to start our trailer pool. We will have a 3-to-1 ratio and that costs money. We will still look at drivers that want to have dedicated trailers but the money just doesn't make sense when we look at what the customers are paying that need drop trailers.

As far as #'s, a load paying $2.25/mile would pay the driver $1.73 with fuel (2.25 - .43 (this weeks fuel) = 1.82 * 72% = $1.31 + $.43 = $1.73.

Now the upside is that when you have tight capacity like December and we are running for $2.50-$3/mile plus fuel the driver see the bump. Or run a 200 mile expedite for $1000.

But I have to be honest and say we are looking at the $1.70 range and the peak freight and expedite is a bonus.

 

To be fair I don't have as much access to drop/hook Covenant trailers as the Covenant Expedited tractors but I do get access to those drop/hook loads from time to time. Profitable loads. I do more work like that than I ever thought I would as a smallish independent outfit. There are small companies and independents out there who never do any drop/hook.