are brokers optional?

Yes, they are optional. You can be your own sales person knock on doors get your own customers, or you can hire a sales person to go out there knock on doors to get customers for you.

 

Or you could get a family member or someone close to be a broker give the cheapo loads to the Chicago Volvo club and keep the good paying ones.

 

Easier said than done-
Businesses aren't just going to feed a broker work for you to pick thru good and bad loads.

Especially now in these times.........Established carriers and Brokers are having tough times

 

If sitting for 2 weeks and walking from company to company to get a load back home is an option, then certainly you can do without brokers.

The longest i ever sat looking for a load was 2 or 3 hours trying to get out of syracuse. Maybe 40 calls and a bit of sweating on my end as the day ticked down [booking loads is a bankers hours game] and i contemplated deadheading to buffalo or pittsburgh for better chances the next day. Without leaving the spot i dropped at or wasting much fuel/time, i was able to book a nearby load to pittsburg then a good load from there to where i wanted and had a record week.

Without brokers id probably still be sitting there. They only suck when they suck. The rest of the time theyre the hand that feeds.

 

I haven't hauled for a broker in well over a year. I'd hazard a guess the last broker load I pulled was in May, maybe even April of 2018.

 

How long did it take you to get to that point? Not making any statements, just curious.

 

About a year, a little more. I started running heavily for the brokers bouncing around mainly OH and IN while I worked on soliciting smaller local shops around home and slowly built up a small customer base and worked hard to keep them happy on their shorter runs. That has been the key for me. It keeps me close so I can reliably provide them with capacity and I'm always close enough to DH home.

 

Good deal. You feeling any market downturns? Is this contracted scheduled freight or call in day by day gigs?

 

I've mainly hauled for construction contractors this year, so I'm probably not the best person to ask, but my other customers are still holding pretty steady, about the same volume as they shipped last year.