Brokers, Please explain the plummeting rates these days.

You're the pimp. Shipper is the prostitute. Trucker is the john.

Only two pieces of that puzzle are truly needed to make the business transaction work. The third wheel is just there for convenience sake.

 

Jimmy, if you wanted to be popular you should have been a fireman.

 

... cameraman for the fetishists

 

To be honest, most drivers aren't exactly big picture thinkers. A lot can't be bothered to look more than 1/4 mile down the road when driving, let alone think about the next load, and the one after that.

 

Not that I would understand how the prostitution dynamic works, as I am a church going broker who spends all his time reading the good book, but the shippers pay the broker, and the broker pays the trucker, so technically the shipper would be the john (they are paying) and the trucker would be the escort (they are getting paid).

 

Haha fair point.

 

The biggest reason truckers say that is truckers themselves. Tons of people buy the most unaerodynamic thing they can, with terrible rear end gears, a heavy 18 speed that very few people actually need, put an aggressive tune on it to be able to brag about climbing hills, and proceed to run at 80mph from stop to stop. Then they cry about fuel all day. It wouldn't hurt so bad if they wouldn't drive like an absolute ###. I get passed repeatedly by the same trucks all day sometimes, only to end up at the same stop that evening. Several times I have left Cheyenne about the same time as another truck, and beat him to the Boise Stage Stop after being passed by him all day. Then he sat at the counter in the restaurant and complained about fuel prices. (Back when they were around 2.20 or so) His truck was a T660 so not horrible aerodynamics, but had 3.90 rears and an 18 speed. (Never went off highway, or hauled heavy) He also bragged about running 90mph across ND and Montana. He got mad when I explained he was losing AT LEAST 3mpg on that speed alone, and maybe more from stopping every 200 miles.
He said "when you been driving 6 years like me, you can tell me something..." I have been driving just over 20 years.

Sometimes, drivers are their own worst enemy.

 

Well there’s drivers, and there’s truck drivers, and they are very different creatures. I don’t have anything in the yard that puts less than 600hp to the ground. They’re out there pulling trains doing 5.5-5.7mpg. With W900B’s and L’s. Most of the new ultra efficient aerodynamic eco-friendly electronic wonder buggies around them are lucky to do 4.2-4.5mpg. When they run, there’s some question about that a lot. Give a truck driver big horsepower you get fuel mileage back. Give the same truck to an idiot you won’t be able to keep fuel in it until he blows it up. The stops are huge. That Billy big rig profiling through every parking lot it fits in through the day is a huge chunk of fuel and time. Realistically, even stopping at the roadside to cool off a tire or a quick load check is 20 minutes or a half hour lost by the time you get it going again. A years worth of that is bound to add up to a pile of money.

 

You nailed it. Well said.

 

Well yes. In an operation like that, you need the truck to be spec'd correctly. A full aero modern truck built for fuel economy is going to have at least 2.90 gears, some are as high as 2.56 now. That truck is going to struggle all day pulling trains just to maintain speed, let alone get that combination moving. But put those two trucks head to head in full load OTR ops with legal weights and 53'van, reefer, or tank. The W900s will struggle to get 7mpg, and most of that is dependent on not having a meathead driver. The other truck is fully capable of getting nearly 9, and even 10+ under the right conditions. Using boost gauge, exhaust temp, and throttle position, I can pull nearly 8.5 on a load from Omaha to LA via I-15 across some fairly rugged terrain. I just have to be OK with not running up against the governor. In one truck I owned, I could get almost 8 back in 2006 in a 1997 truck. But that one had no electronic limits imposed on it. My W900L with a Detroit 12.7 could get 7.6mpg if I wasn't in a hurry. (I miss that truck) with fuel surcharge, I could still make money with that one, even now.