Booking reefer loads vs dry van?

Some carriers work directly with shippers while some look for freight on loadboard. Unless you can have a good account directly with shipper there is no point of having reefer, I've tried hauling containers, flats, reefer and really easiest is dry van. The point is if broker really needs reefer and u have one and u happend to be in the area you will get the money, if freight is slow trust me brokers don't really care if they need reefer they know load will be covered easy so they pay just as dry van, I really don't see the point of having reefer unless you can work directly with shipper that needs reefer

 

Lol YES, big time..since I was 5 year old

 

Yea they won Chamions league in 85 which is also when I was born so they have been part of my life since I started watching soccer

 

From my experience. Pulling 100% brokered dry van freight off load boards since late 2011. And since mid 2016 pulling a mix of 25% dry van freight (all in a van trailer) 75% reefer freight (and nearly zero dry loads in the reefer).

Typical reefer freight from the load boards ALWAYS pays better than typical van freight. Even when freight and rates were down for both segments reefer was always decent whereas van absolutely sucks.

Yes there are some garbage rates posted for reefers. It's load board freight and that is to be expected. Posted rates are not a trustworthy gauge. No-one laughs at a $1,500 quote on a 500 mile reefer haul even when freight is down in my area. That's pretty much a low end "book it now" kind of rate with a reefer anymore. Try that with a van even in the best of times and they cry bloody murder.

Reefer is much better than van freight. My van collects cobwebs staying parked most of the year. You're in Chicago. A great area for both vans and reefer. But reefer rates there and Wisconsin blow van rates out even when van rates are solid.

You don't need direct accounts with one truck to exploit the demand for reefers. I have brokers in my home area begging me to consistently haul their reefer freight. For some OK rates. That never happens with my van. Guys who say it does with van freight are working REALLY cheap. It's just not in my hard wiring to work with that consistency and the same brokers all the time. I just don't care for it. Some people do but I prefer to roll the dice mixing things up and have no issues at all loading up that reefer.

You can watch some loads start cheap and very dramatically go thru the roof rates wise as the day progresses. You'll see this much more than with vans. The worst part and my biggest complaint about reefer is the odd shipping and receiving hours. And LOTS of shorthaul loads 400+/- miles that are 2 day transit times based off weird shipping hours like a 9 pm pickup time and a 17:00 delivery time the next day. These have to be priced right to be worth it. Brokers love to push a flashy rate per mile rates on these odd hours 2 day transit loads that are actually a loser to your profitability. Rate per mile is not the way with these it's revenue per day.

 

That is the whole point of a posted rate and one of the oldest broker tricks. It mentally anchors you to automatically assume that is the limit of what the load will pay. Which is sometimes true but sometimes it's wishful thinking. And it's not really great rates it's going rates. You just always have to push to figure out how far they will go.

Posted rates have their place. You can gauge what's going on by looking at them over time. They go up and down with the normal ups and downs. I always sort by posted rate too. I look at the 15 day averages on DAT when there isn't a posted rate. That's a decent ball park usually. But ultimately I know what I need going somewhere to be worthwhile so that's what I go after regardless of posted rates or 15 days averages.

Besides there are other details that affect a rate and make me ask for more money. Especially screwed up shipping and receiving hours that effectively turn what should be an easy 1 day short haul load into something that actually eats a lot of usable hours in 2 days of your time. See a lot of those with reefer. But that's not necessarily a bad thing it can lucrative.