ya once you get your own authority you’ll see a big difference in rates. also wanted to ask you how long you been hauling for Amazon?
You like Amazon and that's fine. Some do and some don't. Just to be fair, what do you see as the downsides to hauling for them? Also, accusing other forum members of being liars isn't the way to get along here.
i would wait for you to do a full 2 years before you say anything about them. I’ve been hauling Amazon on and off, and I don’t just haul Amazon. I know the ins and outs of their FC’s & DC’s. I know how to work their own program to my advantage and understand the differences in rates when it comes to owner ops and fleet rates. before you go around calling people liars know that everything they say is true. You simply don’t have much experience dealing with Amazon directly as an owner op so you don’t know the hassles of it. You are a lease operator. they will make you drive for free, when you have to drop the trailer at an off site. Yes 6 miles is still 6 miles and I don’t drive for free. they will make you wait for hours before canceling a load on you and they knew the load was canceled when you got there. they will give you messed up trailers and blame you for the trailer being messed up. more horror stories I can tell you. but ones things for sure Amazon isn’t your friend and will screw you over if they get the chance.
My company pulls Amazon freight locally in Canada and we make good money doing it. Not sure how different it is in the States but there are good rates and bad rates. We have been doing it over 3 years now. What sucks though is what pays good now could pay garbage in a few weeks. I have seen the rates on the load board and there is a lot of freight that pays crap. From a company driver point of view it is a bit annoying since the schedules are erratic and inconsistent. Some weeks I'll push over 80 hours a week and some just barely 50. We are a 18 truck fleet running on Amazon freight.
I know i promoted JB Hunt in this thread. Just wanted to update that in last 2 months JB Hunt went real down the hill. Most of the time when i get to a load that says preloaded trailer, shipper says they didnt have empty JB Hunt trailers and make me wait a long time to live load me. When you need a trailer, JB sends you like 250 miles to pick up an empty trailer that you could take to the shipper for your load. Rates now seem to suck, number of loads sucks. Also trailers are trashy. My current trailer only has pins locking on left side. Right side pins are slightly lower than the holes to lock the tandems and its a freaking spring suspension, not even air ride.
I know i promoted jb hunt at first, then kinda trashed it lol. Well, I compared those 2 months to the market and realized that it was just really crappy 2 months back then. Real trash for everybody owner ops. Last couple months it got back to normal. really good pay, and i try to only take 24 hour pu and delivery loads. That one time the trailer pins locked only on one side and i complained about it. but it turned out that by the end of the trip the other side locked from vibration i guess too. I've moved my own trailer before with pins only locked on one side of the tandems, and never had a problem, so no big deal at the end of the day and I didnt see a jb hunt trailer with such a problem again. Anyways, I got anxious few days ago and booked 2 loads Memphis TN to GA, one dry van load and one power only. Well, push came to shove I still cancelled dry van load. It actually paid 300 bucks more, but I was able to drop and hook at midnight, i.e. 5 hours before the dryvan load was supposed to pickup. On the delivery side dryvan load was also supposed to be like 3pm to 4pm. My power only load is 24 hour delivery. I'm still getting like 3.5 dollars per mile on it. With power only, I'm taking it super easy today and I plan to get to delivery when I get to delivery lol. I dont' think I can ever go back to dry van loads that are 99% not 24 hour pu and delivery. I mean even if im late and come at whatever time, I sill can drop and hook 24 hours per day. I can't put it into words how much this is better for my health lol I'm still literally paying 100 bucks per month for parking of my dryvan trailer because I like doing power only for JB hunt.
I’m doing it with a box truck, very profitable. From Des Moines I run to lincoln nebraska with payouts ranging between $900-$1,100. The cost of diesel for the entire trip is around $230. Repeat everyday. However right now, it is slow and they’re paying out a lot less. So I’m backing off until april/may when it starts to pick back up.
Id like to know what kind of numbers younare doing now. seems the freight market is not nearly what it was when you wrote this. So I'm curious to know how Amazon is paying now.