Double Yellow's Company Driver to Independent Thread

I'm with DY on the philosophy of running. Trying to drive my rates up takes just as much time and effort. You sit around all day looking for great paying loads to book, and that moment you took a break to eat or run an errand and lost a load alert.

I'd rather book the best I can find after looking for a bit or with a broker I've dealt with before and move on, than sit all day worrying and hoping I cash in on a great rate. One thing I've learned to do is after booking my load, I don't keep looking to see if I could have done better holding out. Seems like right after I book for $2.50 a $3 per mile hits the board and I've seen it enough to not want to see it again. Ugh

 

I think you guys miss the point on the big score. I get that it's no fun sitting around in a truck stop waiting, waiting, waiting. What I like to do is the big score on the load from home. Granted not everyone lives in an area where the can do that. The way it is around here lately not even sure that I will be for a while longer. After I score that one I can spend about 10-15 minutes before the rush to go load it and check on follow up loads. Usually I will set up one or more follow up loads very quickly after the good score. This is much different than when I first started. I used to wait for scores everywhere gnashing my teeth. I learned it's much easier to build around a really good load or 2 in the course of a week while keeping myself busy that i'm not sitting around twiddling my thumbs after every delivery.

 

I live in NH so I score big when I head home. When I leave it's usually $1.25 on a long run so I dead head 600 miles to Hubbard, OH.

I have in the past set a $2.00 min per mile rate for at least a 1,000 mile run. That hasn't been working out to well lately. I find myself sitting for days and days waiting for $.30 cents more per mile when in fact I'm losing $400 to $600 in profit if I was running.

I just took a LONG run to CA for $1.60 a mile and realized I have a hell of a lot more money in my pocket instead of chasing a higher paid load. So, screw it. My standards have been lowered.

I'm sitting 50 miles from home right now waiting to unload. It's part of a cell tower and weighs 4,000 pounds. Paid $2.20 a mile on 1,600 miles.

As far as quality of service and all that, it's BS. You want the load or not, this is what it pays.

 

A buck sixty all the way to cali? Ouch. I know rates have dropped, but ouch. That's rough. I'd expect that run to pay about 20cpm more, and that's after Mercer takes their cut.

 

Somewhere out there.....there are 10,000 "owner operators" doing it...right now...as we speak...for $1.10....

 

You havent seen the rates lately, have you?

 

This time last year? No way. And today no way. Yes fuel has come down, and it's reflected in rates, along with a general slow down in shipping dropping rates even more. That being said, I'm seeing rates from the east and Midwest to cali at 1.85 truck rate. the short haul and regional stuff I mostly run is paying just under two bucks. About thirty cents less than last year. Those are the to the truck rates I'm seeing at Mercer, so when you guys with your own authority(and the extra expenses it incurs) are pulling for less, it makes me wonder why.

 

Some people have their own authority not just for money...