Brokers, Please explain the plummeting rates these days.

I should be laughing, but I cant. I know what that’s doing to a household full of innocents in a lot of cases. Brokers are the reason people always said “if you want to make a small fortune trucking, start with a big one”.

 

Yes, and it's not even really the brokers (except the occasional less than ethical types) They all pretty much get the same 10-15%. If someone made it a habit to try to get much more than that, they would be figured out real quick.

 

How easy it is to get authority, second chance finance companies, factoring companies, and people buying a truck but holding onto their “driver” mentality have just as much to do with people getting into a bad spot as the brokers do.

How many people would even buy a truck and get their authority if factoring and quick pay didn’t exist?

 

YESSS!!!!! I would argue that THIS is the largest single group of factors contributing to the rash of companies failing every time there is a market correction. Most of these people have NO business being in business, and should have remained an employee.

 

An ethical broker? That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all year. Yeah they work for 10%, 10% of what’s left after they bounce it through a numbered company and grab 40% off it there. Every one of them are what you find on your shoe at the dog park. Explain this to me. Why is a guy selling a kitty he doesn’t have a horrible excuse for a human being, yet a guy with no trucks selling transportation services isn’t?

 

Because brokerage and driving a truck are two totally different skill sets. They are selling a service to the guy with the freight. They are bringing the guy with the truck to his door. Driving a truck is the easy part. Any ####### can do that at least well enough to not run over stuff most of the time. If you doubt that, just look around the truck stop next time you are there. (A Lot of people would be SOL if not for trucking. They would be living under a bridge) The general traits that MIGHT make someone a good driver don't necessarily translate over to being a broker (or an owner operator)

By your categorizing an ENTIRE sector of the econony by the worst among them, you are doing PRECISELY what folks do when they assume all drivers are fat, disgusting, smelly slobs, that travel from city to city serial killing, popping west coast turnarounds, and throwing out piss bottles.

 

It's a two way street. Can you imagine how many brokers with a family to feed are going to lose their jobs when 40% of freight is gone and what's left is going for 2.10 a mile. Unpopular opinion I'm sure, but everyone is in the game for the same reason. Unless you want gov intervention, the good brokers will survive along with the good carriers. Way things are heading, maybe no one does.
Just like oil drillers, it's hard to run a business when you don't know what's coming every four years on election day. This one feels different to me. Just a matter of who can hang on. I was a child in the 70s but #### the 80s where good. Hope this turns out as well.

 

Well there’s a vigorous defence of the indefensible.

 

You can not agree with brokers all day, but there’s no denying that they sell convenience. Shippers no longer have to have a traffic department. A couple emails a week and their loads aren’t their problem anymore.

Truckers played a part in the rise of brokers, too. Back in the mid-2000’s or so when I was pulling flatbed Plum Creek had a direct carrier list for their maxi loads, and they would list their regular truckload stuff on a load board. After getting tired of guys committing to loads and no call no showing when something better came along they decided at the time to contract with CH Robinson. Suddenly all their regular truck loads weren’t their problem anymore.

From the business owner’s side of things, how many positions do you think were cut nation wide as shippers started moving away from handling their own freight? On the other end, how many employees would they need now to verify insurance and get carriers set up when they’d be dealing with hundreds of different carriers per week and also would additional people be needed in accounting just to handle payables for the transportation? It’s one check for one company when they’re dealing with large contracts. Large corporations are likely saving hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by shifting their transportation worries to freight pimps.

 

I'm not defending anything, definitely not the minority that perpetrate fraud. I honestly dont give a rip what the broker makes. If I make enough on the load that it's worthwhile to me, I will book it, otherwise... on to the next one. It's not like there is a monopoly. And in brokerage like trucking, despite what the whiners say, the big companies don't control that much of the market. Small brokerages and 1-5 truck operators still conduct a large majority of all freight transactions.