Doesn't anybody who has authority have sales people to get work?

DAT is my sales rep force. I pay to post for brokers to see which leads to long term relationships.

 

I had been visualizing small businesses that need a shipment, regularly to a destination. It would take several of them to keep a truck going. It just seems like everyone counts on brokers taking as much as 20%, or carriers who take 20 plus who knows what, really. Then there's load boards which are sometimes loads moved past multiple brokers who each took a chunk. I get your point, though. Suppose you had one truck and brokered the loads you've contracted, until you could add another... and another.... rigs and drivers. Seems plausible, for arguments sake. Granted, I'm starting to see the issues that I don't necessarily want, but would that not be a strategy for positive growth of a business?

 

That (DAT) seems to be a pretty darn good sales force, at that. Do you have your own authority, or are you paying a carrier a percentage of each haul.? Explain further please exactly how DAT works. As a result of using DAT, do you ever get loads that aren't posted form relationships you make?

 

Yes my own authority. DAT gives members a simple place to post their availability and capability in real time for brokers AND direct shippers to see. At the same time it allows you to see loads of course. But, yes, absolutely you will get loads that never see the load board via brokers that you get to know....

 

What really sucks is it used to be free to post a one truck operation :/.

I kinda couldn't believe it was free so I understand why they stopped!

 

I reread my post and I hope that I did not come off as too harsh. But this business is not something for passive income, and sometimes if you say it a certain way it's easier to see the fact.

I would like to give you two scenarios and maybe that will help. The first scenario is that you buy real estate and you make 14% a year, which I think is magnificent.

So let's say you spend $200,000 on a piece of real estate and the worst thing of all happens. You absolutely cannot find a renter and you have to pay the mortgage and pay the taxes. If this went on for 1 year and you decided to sell the property, it probably will have about the same value as you paid for it, and if you made improvements it may be worth more.

Now let's say you go and you purchase a brand new truck and a brand new trailer, which probably is around $200,000. Then you pay your insurance which for sake of argument we'll say for a new entrant is $20,000, on top of the cost of tags the cost of the authority itself workman's comp heavy use tax permits and all of the other Myriad of things that dig deeper into your pockets in this business.

So let's say the worst thing happens in this scenario. You can't find a driver, which is very common in this industry. So your truck sits for one year you make all of the payments you pay all of the insurance and now you decide to sell the truck.

Now the truck has massively depreciated and it's worth much less than what you paid for it.

Now in the first example with real estate, let's say you get a renter and everything goes according to plan and you get your 14%, which would be $28,000.

Now let's say in the second example that you do find the driver and he runs and works 6 days a week it's fabulous he's traveling all over the country and and everything looks great.

And then somewhere along the way you realize you're not making any money. Or he quits and you can't find another. In fact when you look at things at the end of the year maybe you lost $20,000 or more. Selling off your investment only deepens your debt, but it's better than the hole that you get in if you kept it.

The point that I'm making is that even if you broke even with the truck you can't even begin to compare that with real estate. To get $28,000 on a $200,000 investment, that's not going to happen passively by buying a truck and hiring a driver. Not to mention that in the end you get the real estate equity.

In the trucking business you will get phone calls 24 hours a day. You will be awakened in the middle of the night with problems. You could be in Florida and have a truck abandoned in Washington. Then what? You can find that your your driver is stealing from you. Even a new truck can be broken down for weeks at a time, costing you money all the while. If you were fortunate enough to build up any amount of business with direct shippers, which would be the exception rather than the norm, all it takes is for a driver to quit or not show up and you lost it.

If you have a real estate company manage your properties even if that cut the percentage down a little, you could spend the rest of your life on a yacht with shapely young beautiful women and every now and then you get a phone call from the real estate company saying they have to hire a plumber or something like that, and you say okay hang up the phone and it's done. Then you pick up your champagne glass and have a toast with your nice beautiful young ladies and go on enjoying your life.

The scenarios in trucking that can cause you problems to make you bang your head up against the wall are endless and could never be listed in any online Forum post.

You sound like a very hard-working level-headed individual that is capable of doing great things. Trucking is not one of them.

I hope that you heed my advice, enjoy the freedom of Real Estate, and have a toast with the ladies.

Maybe someday I can join you

 

Don't take this wrong but this one sentence tells me you have a lot of learning to do just to understand that there is a HUGE difference between this industry and every other industry.

In this industry, those who don't talk to the consignees and shippers near the top don't get that you are not selling transportation services but selling capacity services.

It is a difficult thing to understand, most don't seem to understand why there is so many trucks trying to capture one or two loads, so I get that even if it is explained, it still goes over heads.

 

The bar to enter the trucking business is so low now it isn't worth considering. It almost doesn't matter how good your service is, everything runs on rates, and you are competing against others who operate below cost. Of course they go out of business, but there is always someone new to enter the business, and the cycle continues.

 

Sounds like You could do better at Brokerage. Using the bussiness contacts You have.

 

That’s what I was thinking too. Would be a heck of a lot closer to what I think he’s looking for.