Bed Bugging

The van line business is a shell of it's former self. When I started with NAVL in 1976 our new products fleet had over 2000 trucks in it. Combined with hhg and electronics there were close to 4000 trucks, plus agents.
If you see 3 hhg trucks on the road of any carrier in the course of the day it is a lot.
To illustrate. Origin agent loads a trailer, we haul it to dest agent who delivers it. There is so little money in the linehaul their own drivers won't accept the shipments. And we don't make any money to speak of, $1.40 mile
Self service(U haul etc) Pods, plus the fact that the frozen real estate market prevents people from just moving to get a better job has killed hhg. Electronics is as bad, specialty logistics providers have taken over LTL high value shipments.
Lease to an agent, he will be happy to abuse you teaching you how to load vans, then screw you later on by giving high $ shipments to his favorite drivers.

 

Hug is definitely not what it was with discounts up to 78%. I do special products with a Mayflower agent. Yes some of the specialty products carriers have taken some of the business but it also depends on what agent you are with. A large agent with a broad customer base still has good rates. Yes there are discounts involved but you can still make a good living.

 

And don't forget the fly by nighters! Small local outfits farm their out of town moves to one truck operations that don't know what hours of service are.

 

If you think those agents will rip you off,they ain't
Got nothing on a outlaw frac sand company.
Do your homework.
I know drivers who've been shafted out thousands of
Dollars doing frac sand. Lost everything

 

Two things.

I don't know what bedbugging is.

Second the Moving industry is a shell. A hollowed out overpriced survivor waiting for the glory days again which probably will not come around.

Besides anyone ordering up a PODS container to fill it and have it moved for them it's kinda steep. I suspect UHaul is the future of moving believe it or not.

 

One thing.

Yawn

 

There are advantages and disadvantages to HHG but it's certainly not what it was. The van line situation has changed a lot but I do think signing with an agent rather than the van line sounds smart, but the trick is picking the right one. I do know there's a serious driver shortage for CDLs in moving. Not many people who wanna drive trucks also want to run around carrying heavy stuff so you'd have that advantage if you can hack it, but you'd need to develop some serious skills first. I'd recommend looking at a larger independent carrier based in an area you'd like to live in. To really make money at it you'll need a lot of skills. You'll need to be good at moving, fit enough to do moving, able to run a crew of a half dozen guys you don't know, supervise them, interact with the customers, interact with the company, DOT, etc. The paperwork is also crazy regular to normal freight. Every piece gets inventoried and condition reported. Figure on 30 sheets of paperwork for a full trailer.

here's the tag line if that paragraph is too long or boring:

Moving: It's a long con you can't do for all that long.

 

My ex works in operations for a large HHG company in Indianapolis.
According to her the only benefit to running HHG is low mileage to the operator, but time wise it's not near as lucrative as a decade ago much less the 80's. There is too much local competition now, and the POD setups by ltl companies.