Before deregulation?????

Interesting thread!

 

There is an old trucking country song with a line or two in it where the driver says he's hauling "livestock, I got livestock, alllllll livestock" then after he's driving away from the scale he's singing about "I got pig iron, alllllll pig iron". I didn't learn till later that song was written before deregulation. I thought, until I learned a little about regulation, that it was a stupid song. Why lie about what you are hauling, just as long as the bills match. After some old timers started explaining De-regulation, it started making more sense.

 

Pretty much summed up by correctly by Clausland.Find a good carrier that was a good fit,and get leased on.Good money,teamster benefits.Only x amount of carriers allowed to haul widgets from point A to point B.Rates were pretty much aligned,so you sold service.Customer wants a truck at 8am to haul their boiler to Cal. you did that.You showed up on time,clean presentable safe truck and clean experienced driver.Speak English,have all the proper tiedowns,tarps,etc.NO excuses.Even after deregulation,and rates got cheap,we still had a lot of loyal customers that would pay a premium rate for piece of mind,they knew we could do the job,their freight would get there when they wanted,and in the condition it left.Cheap rates,you get what you paid for,no habla,bald tires,not enough tie downs,torn tarps,etc.,etc.
I started in 69,bought my first truck in 74,ran till 2015,deregulation came in in the early 80's,but wasn't fully in place and utilized,and shippers and truckers didn't really know what was going on till the late 80's early 90's.Was still real good bottom line money to be made then,...but after that,all down hill.
I'll sound like the old curmudgeon here,I'm glad I trucked though the old times,lot less bs,money to be made if you used your head.........now,comfortably retired,.......keep on truckin'

 

Rights meant something, my first dispatch job included reading the daily federal register making sure someone else wasn't seeking our 'rights'...

 

I miss the mafia...we all made money back then lol

 

It could be done... For some reason cement was in short supply and embargoed from shipping out of a state.
Builders in another state 400 miles away needed it badly. (Those were the days of on site concrete mixing. X wheelbarrows of sand, Y wheelbarrows of gravel, Z sacks of Portland, add water to taste and stir it up.) My man had 34 ft flatbeds hauling bale cotton out of cotton country to mills in NC, SC and VA and fertilizer (basic slag) from the steel mills in Bessemer AL back.
He was approached for handling. So, bop down to the cement plant, spread your fitted one piece tarp on the floor; side flaps hanging off, let them load the cement bags (all hand trucks then-no damage) flip up the back
drop, fold in either side, over lap the other side. flip the front flap back, and, SHAZAM ..a very nice low hanging
load. Cement and trucking was paid at office to office level. Hit the scales at the MS river crossing with a BOL for 320 bags of 6-8-8 Virginia Carolina fertilizer, consigned to ABC Farm Supply. Cross and roll. Load at dusk dark and be at the job site by 4AM.

 

just to point out something if you had an authority and a fleet, you had to "publish" your rates, the icc required it to come from you, then they enforced your rates if you deviated from them.

 

When i worked for an ltl carrier in the 90's, they had rate tariffs and they would discount a % from the tariff for their good customers. I still dont understand how all that worked. Seemed overly complicated for a simple move from point a to b.