Does It Feel Like The Market is Loosening Up?

Probably working at a split model office. There's some offices where there's a "broker" who gets the business and he has a carrier team that works for him that goes to find trucks. So, the carrier team probably has a target range they work with. Then, outside of that, they have to go back to the guy who bid the freight/won the business, and see if that rate'll work.

I think @JimmyTwoTimes *might* operate on this model, I'm not 100% though.

 

This ^^^ has always been my assumption. Thanks for clarifying. It seems like with most places you talk to an agent, not the broker, which I've always understood is someone who mainly just does customer service on the phone and makes about 1/5 of what the actual broker does.

Lots of these agents are working at home right now, in fact I'd say basically all of em.

 

There's pretty much two primary methodologies in the brokerage world, or some are hybrids of the other. We've got cradle to grave, which is where I go out, find the customer, get the customer, bid the freight, and book the truck, all from start to finish.

The second is a split model, where there's sales guys who go out and find the customers, and they have a carrier team who books the freight. Sometimes these guys even have a third person who's a sales rep that deals with the customers when they've been found.

There's pros and cons to both models and methodologies. I just spent an hour and a half working on a bid sheet for a pretty solid potential customer who does business with a couple of my other customers, and that was interrupted multiple times by dealing with freight I was already working, etc etc. I don't get as much prospecting time because I'm handling all aspects of my book. The guys where they divide the labor, they have a better ability to get out and find new prospects, work carriers, etc etc. They can spend more time making sales and so on. Buuuuut, now they're reliant on guys above. It also reduces your direct familiarity with the products and equipment you're discussing with customers. Now, that's less of a problem with canned beans and dog food, but when you start trying to deal with various bits and bobs of open deck freight, it can present difficulties for your sales pitch.

Trade offs and suchlike. Part of the game. I'm partial to the cradle to grave method, but that's because that's what I came up through. I'm sure that if I'd started in a split mode brokerage I'd either have a different opinion, or I'd have quit and moved on to something else entirely, lol.