are rates falling and will it continue?

Who's predicting that?

 

Maybe I'm wrong but the difference between $4.20 and $2.50 is what brokers are charging.

I get the emails and sometimes this is true from shippers. Expect to pay every bit of $3.00 to $4.00 per mile as a shipper.

 

If you expect highly variable rates, and you probably are, from what you said, i would say to offer your drivers percentage pay based on load board averages, with a bottom rate that wont starve them.

That can be fair to them and to you.

 

I'm driving dry van, rates are so low it just seems economically feasible to lease on to a freight company and let them pay my insurance and tags, running under your own authority for $1.50 not cutting it

 

for me I found it is better for me to sign on with landstar, to be honest with you if you're just running the load boards it's going to be tough to make it pay over the long haul that's all spot market and those rates can get a lot lower than they are now and I mean a lot lower you need to get a direct shipper to at least go out on and use the boards to get back or from a to b it is a lot more steady as far as income doing at least half contract work either from your own or a carrier you are leased too

 

Freight is like water and the law of connected vessels applies here. LS is just one more vessel. If there are too many trucks for too little freight, everybody gets thirsty sooner or later.

 

Unless you're going to Oklahoma, Texas rates have always been poor. Kinda like Florida. Get your money going in, because you won't going out.

 

Rates will increase in springtime, It’s bad now, Brokers are trying to take advantage of a glut of Trucks.They know higher rates are coming in spring. Large Carriers aren’t going to be able to cut rates, due to increased Drivers pay and other costs. This is a normal seasonal slowdown. Economic numbers look good. Rates aren’t going down and either is anything else, except maybe a housing price correction eventually later this year. Just my opinion, no facts, just like all other predictions.Educated guesses , wrong 65% (guessing) of the time.Oh if I could read tomorrow’s paper today!!

 

I'm doing great, that extra $15 I don't blow on parking helps a lot.

 

This might explain why January and February rates have been so low. I've noticed an uptick in the number of loads in the last week, and rates have risen a bit here in the west.

Retail sales sink 1.2% in December in the worst plunge in nine years

It appears that the holiday sales were a disaster, as in the worst seen since 2009 just as the great recession ended. Economists are stumped as to why it happened, because job growth and the economy are still strong and continue to increase. They mentioned that the falling stock market in December and bad weather may have had something to do with it. Either way, slow retail sales means slow freight movement, which probably explains the post-holiday freight slowdown.

They don't expect 2019 to be as great as 2018, but few years have been in decades. I think we'll all have a decent year.