Bond & Carrier Payment.

Brokerage school is one of those hands in the pie taking your money giving back no value. G/MAN answered your question. If you want schooling on brokering get a job in logistics with an established carrier. Don't throw your money away on all these shysters out here who are happy to take it.

 

There are broker schools around. You can spend your money taking a course to teach you something you can learn while doing and be paid for learning. There are some things you can learn from books. Books won't teach you how to run a business, nor will they teach you how to sell. There are a lot of freight broker where you live. There are also a number of agents who represent various carriers in your area. You can learn more from most any one of them than you will learn from a text book.

Another avenue you could explore is to become a dispatcher for a company or start your own dispatch service. If you start your own dispatch service you won't need a bond, line of credit or factor. You will be working for the owner operator who runs under his own authority. They will pay you a flat fee or percentage of any loads you book for them. It will give you some exposure to part of what it is like to broker freight. You won't be a broker, but will perform some of the same functions. Rather than calling shippers for loads, you will be mostly calling brokers. Instead of using your own contracts, you will be reading and working with brokers contracts in behalf of your owner operator customers or clients.

 

The bottom line is you have to find customers.

The fact is that you will probably find it very, very difficult to find a customer. Doesn't matter how much sales experience you have, you still have to find customers. Just like any other business.

It's easy if you were an owner operator, all you have to do is put your truck on the load board and have brokers call and beg.
Finding work is almost like choosing an apple from a tree. But for brokers, finding a load is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

What reason does a business have to go with you over a brokerage that they've been with for years? None. If you have any personal or relative connections, you need to exhaust those first.

You can't just go and assume that your sales experience alone will give you business.

 

I don't know who might have an office in Phoenix other than CH Robinson. They have offices all over the world. You might check Landstar and CRST to see if they have agents in the area. You might work something out with one of the agents to learn the business. It will probably take some legwork to find who might have agents or brokerage offices in your area. I believe Global Tranz is headquartered in Phoenix. You might even contact some of the larger carrier who have agents and see if they would offer an opportunity. Universal Am Can and Mason Dixon are a couple of other carriers who have agents.

There is nothing to stop you from starting out completely on your own as long as you have the money. Going it alone with no experience or contacts will be costly. Freight is usually not great out of Arizona. Of course, you also don't need to limit yourself to Arizona for freight, either. One nice thing about being a freight broker or agent is that you are not geographically limited. You can solicit freight anywhere in the country. I get calls from California based brokers trying to sell me on loads coming out of Tennessee and Georgia.

 

Allen Lund has a Phoenix office & a "broker in training" program.

 

Phoenix, AZ - Swift or Knight. Don't laugh. We all know very well anyone experienced would hesitate to drive for them but they do broker out plenty of freight. You never know it might be somewhere worth looking into to learn the business.

 

Are you sure? I've never ever seen any loads from Swift or Knight on the load boards.

 

See them both in the southwest, but probably all van/reefer: