Cheap Freight... What would you do?

The thing to do is use common sense if you know you are going into a cheap area you get a rate that pay you enough to cover your deadhead back out

 

I agree. Everyones idea of cheap freight is different. If you arent making money hauling a shipment than "we" consider it to be cheap freight. The sole purpose of being in business is to obtain a profit. There is no such thing as a backhaul. The only meaning for "backhaul" is a shipment that is bringing you back to your desired location, whether it be the house or your yard or to your best customer, etc... That is what most of these brokers dont understand. They think just because you have your truck posted in Cincinnati wanting New York City that you should haul their load for $2.00/mile because it is going to where you are posted wanting to go. Those $2/mile days are loooooong gone. With fuel costs at over $4/gallon it cost around $1.70/mile to break even with tolls, driver pay, tarping cost (for flatbeds) etc...I know that brokers are an important part of the industry. I have worked and still do work on both sides of the fence. But most of these guys have no clue as to what it takes to make a trucking company profitable. They have no clue about wear and tear and the costs of equipment repair etc... They only see the $$$ when they clip $3-400 off of the customers rate to pay the truck and think that they are doing most of the work. There is cheap freight all over the boards. We get a bunch of it and I do mean a bunch of it offered to us daily on emails from customers. We are copied on the emails along with every other Tom, Dick and Harry brokerage company. They throw it up on the DAT and knock 25% off the rate. Some of this freight is coming through 4 hands before it gets to the truck. We know it, we see it everyday. We weed through the bad brokers and bad customers and go for the lucrative freight. Its a cut throat industry and you have to do what you can to stay alive. I am now rambling, but cheap freight will put you out of business. We wont haul it. STAND YOUR GROUND AND DONT HAUL IT!

 

Guys if you are hauling freight into an area where you know the back haul sucks, first why go there in the first place unless you are getting round trip money on the load out. Secondly, boys if we don't start saying NO to this cheap freight it will drag us all under, I have run the numbers and I am sorry to say but there are times when it is cheaper to deadhead than to haul that freight that just does pay the fuel.