dannythetrucker joining forces with windsmith

Windsmith is getting all A's as a new-hire. I don't think I could reasonably expect much more. I'd give myself a C- as a boss so far, but I'm improving.

 

Windsmith will be booking his own loads with or without my assistance at his discretion. My bread and butter is loads from the midwest to east coast from Baltimore down to Charleston. Usually when I get out that way it's not too difficult to find little loads up and down the coast. So I don't think he'd have much trouble getting by the house if he wanted too. But we both have the same mindset as far as booking the best load available where we are, going wherever.

We're not Cali legal, so something has to be paying pretty well to even get me west of the Mississippi River. But you know how it goes, as soon as I say I'll never take a load to Colorado one will pop up paying the right price and I'll go.

 

update - I think we're on our way now, finally bringing in the money quicker than we're spending it instead of vice-versa. Was able to land a few good loads for windsmith. In spite of having two nights at a hotel (paid by me) which included some paid training. Looks like windsmith's settlement for this week (from the load he picked up Monday to the load he delivers tomorrow) will be about $1900. I won't know the exact amount until he gets his mileages updated on the spreadsheet. I doubt if he'll do that well every week, I found him a dinger today.

My pay system is a little different, as mentioned he is paid more off of net than gross. So I am able to share more with him when we book extra good loads, but if we book loads where I get shafted, he gets somewhat shafted as well. Alot of drivers wouldn't understand this concept, I think they would want the security of a flat percentage whether I was making any money on the load or not, but I want windsmith to be motivated to book loads that make me money, and forces him to consider things like deadheading, tolls, and rates like an O/O.

 

It didn't work out and Windsmith is back working for his previous employer.

All I can really say about it is it's tough to operate a truck without office support, that's a fact every independent owner/operator faces. I had somewhat of a system in place for Windsmith to be able to take care of these things from the truck, and was willing to take care of his registration and compliance stuff for him. But it was also a work in progress, I think Windsmith was frustrated with things changing, and he resisted any additional responsibility he hadn't had with his previous employer. I expected a lot from him, and it just wasn't progressing as quickly as I needed it too. I was spending way too much time supporting, double-checking, and training him. I needed to keep my own truck productive, I just couldn't afford it.

I guess in hindsight, there's plenty of good reasons why traditional trucking companies do things the way they do and pay office staff. Things like entering mileage, keeping track of fuel reciepts, communicating with brokers, filing rate confirmations, etc.... I mean there's just dozens of ways to screw up any given load.

So all in all I guess Windsmith is alright, he's back doing what he was doing before. I'm okay, back to doing my thing. I don't know if I'll ever try to add trucks again, but if I do, I should have a better understanding of what I need to provide to make it work. I don't think it's fair to somebody to pull them into an experimental situation like I did to Windsmith. You have to establish a clear cut plan, and it's probably best to just start someone as a clear cut employee with very clearly defined responsibilities, and then if they do well in that role see about giving them opportunities for more later on.