Are Freight Brokers Slowly Disappearing?

If there was nobody driving the desk then there might be a better system. They've made their system, but lots of drivers used to have relationships with companies looking to ship stuff.

 

True of some. There are many brokers that make 2 and 3 times more then drivers. You should give it a try. If you could last 2 weeks doing it I would commend you. You would probably find like I did that driving the truck is the easiest part of the job.

 

Think about why that does not exist and why there is folks driving the desk.

 

Corporatization.

 

Well, yes, but also no. A good 40% of my business is small shops with 30 or less employees. The notional guy in charge of shipping at these locations is too busy doing all the other associated stuff that comes with y'know, doing shipping. Or maybe the sales team handles it. Or maybe the poor overworked gal at the front desk. Hypothetical dude/lady neither has the time nor the inclination to go down a list of carriers to see if someone a) is in the area b) has space available and/or c) is going to screw him over on pricing. So, he hits up the brokers he's come to use, and they handle that stuff, so he can get the rest of his stuff that he/she should be handling.

At bigger locations, sourcing trucking can be a full-time job for one or multiple people. That's before you get into container, rail, or other freight. From a pure cost/benefit analysis, it's frequently cheaper and more efficient to have one or two guys handle interfacing with that, and then distributing the freight and tracking it out that way. Brokerage fees are less than multiple full-time employees doing nothing but finding trucks, especially when you add benefits in.

We provide a service to not just one customer, but multiple. I have something like seventy customers I've provided shipping for over the years, with a good thirty of those being semi-frequent to frequent business. I'm getting "paid the same" as you because I'm providing a different service. And at the end of the day, I *want* you as a prospective carrier I'm working with, to make more money. If you're making more money, I'm making more money, because the dollars we're paying you come out of a bigger pot.

 

I’m sure shippers would love to staff and maintain their own traffic departments again, not to mention cutting checks for a thousand different carriers in the accounting departments.

 

Back in my flatbed days my boss did a lot of work for Plum Creek (Weyerhaeuser now). They always had a carrier list for their maxi flatbed loads, but the shipping department would handle finding trucks for their regular truck load stuff coming east. They got tired of people showing up late or the next day or not at all because they found a load paying $100 more. Eventually they started using CHR for the regular truck loads and all the shipping office had to handle was the maxi loads. Instead of dealing with hundreds of people it became two email lists of loads. One list to CHR and one list to the direct carriers.

 

Yeah, there's also this. Invoicing, payment, contract terms, and so on. Just the amount of people who want quick pay or fuel advances is a lot to deal with.

 

Basically outsourcing the same job. Doesn't change that people have to do the work, just adds an extra middleman to take money from those doing the actual work.

 

You obviously have no clue on how this whole thing works. You are at a disadvantage.