Anyone ever bid on loads on UShip.com?

i think the fee's are high that uship charges for not really doing anything besides having a borad to post on... and most things are cheap on their and from what i have seen the shippers rarely get back to the carrier in a timely manner..

room for improvement that is for sure

 

U would go broke trying to keep your wagon load on USHIP, The only way it could work is if you knew in advanced where you where gonna be, start biding on freight before you arrived, maybe that way it could work, but like others say unless you can hit a lick a get a high dollar load, which really isnt worth wasting your time.. Stick with the traditional ways

 

It is a really bad version of eBay basically

 

Exactly

If they made the "shippers"pay a TONU for backing out of a booked shipment

And make them have accept a bid or respond I could see it work

 

Over the past year I have run 2 "loads" with them. Both were taking dogs from WA to CA and both paid about $150. I have bid a lot and like the others have said the shippers are people not professionals and are very bad at communication. I used to bid on other things but now only do animals under 50lbs that I treat like a pet for a couple days then give to the receiver. On both cases both the shipper and receiver met me at nearby truck stops so I did not have to deal with residential roads and payment was always quick (2-3 days) via paypal. Good for my coffee habit but not for making an honest living.

 

As far as I'm concerned, if you ship something, and pay someone to ship it, they are legally considered a for-hire carrier, and needs to have all the proper permits, insurance and if applicable, DOT authority. And UShip should make sure these people have it before they are allowed to bid on a load.

If UShip did this, then it might actually turn into a reputable load board that can be trusted by both brokers and carriers. But right now it's just a piece of crap site, I would never use it.

 

Yeah I mean most of the carriers on there don't have any authority at all right? It's basically Joe Blow with a pick up truck trying to find some short haul or hot shot I would think. I think the % fees are somewhere around 15-20% but they vary from load to load based on size and I heard some other things too. So it's all over the place. I got turned onto this site by a friend not sure how good it is but there are no fees on sending bids and it looks like it's more geared to real trucking companies www.comfreight.com

 

Nothing but a joke why waste your time with this. Even the show is a joke if I had to go through all the problems they do on each load I would get no where. My time means more to me than doing that crap....

 

All this can be resolved by approaching customers direct and believe me, customers worry about two things: how you going to help them and whether you can deliver on your word. In my opinion load boards are a waste of money lead to law suits aswell! There is no short cut in transport my friend believe me.

 

They're a waste of time and money if you don't approach them right. They're can be very lucrative if you do. The trouble is most people view loadboards as "backhauls" and that is all fine and dandy if you have good direct, but it's really no wonder at all they can never get a rate off a loadboard. The brokers love those folks cause they've already established the rate will be a "backhaul rate". Then there's the group that doesn't know when, how, what to negotiate basically no clue at all about freight just picking loads and driving for whatever to wherever. You can sell the latter on $2 a mile to anywhere USA, many times much worse than that on tall miles, and they will take it.