Drop and Hook quote

$600/week per two trailers. If easy load unload, and I can still haul around the region to make money except that one day take another $1,200 all included a week. You'll be running 320 loaded miles that take a while to empty etc and renting two trailers as storage, plus moving storage. $2000 a week but could settle for $1,600 at the lowest in your shoes. You will have a $1,200 profit a week pre tax for 5/6 hours of work. Meanwhile you can do whatever else you do on your other days. I think that's really really reasonable to the customer. Which area do you live in?

 

You can charge what you want but remember this we're talking about leaving a couple of ordinary dime a dozen dry van trailers at a customer for a simple out and back run. You got time to kill between loading? So what. There are carriers that will fall over over themselves to get a contract like that for peanuts and wouldn't dream of charging rent. I'm predicting you price yourself out of this one. Nothing wrong with that though. Ordinary doesn't pay all that good anyways so who needs it?

 

@rollin coal He has to dedicate himself to this one load a week, short miles, use of his two trailers. How cheap can he really get? What carrier will really leave two trailers and do the load once a week on 160 miles for less than $2,000k a week? I got 2 brand new dry vans sitting in the yard. Had automotive hazmat run from KY to MI, that was promised money, but I needed a team, and 2 dry vans. I went and got two brand new dry vans, side skirts, etc, you name it. I got a team. In two days everything is suppose to unfold, and suddenly the customer decided it's not a good idea. I don't like dry vans. But I have 2 sitting with brand new tires, side skirts in the yard. I can't rent them out because $500-$600 a month doesn't justify what some idiot will do cause he doesn't care, "he owns a truck". I take a little load pick/drop that can sit for a few days, and drop it to cover it's expenses. Now to dedicated two trailers to a customer again? Guess what? I want $20,000 up front. If the customer doesn't have it, I don't care.

Another guy, pretty big company that I'm close with. Bought 12 reefers for customer. Side Skirts, ThermoKing Whispers, everything packaged. after 6 months he got them back with the roof missing, patched up sides, crazy amount of hours, some needed new breaks, all tires were messed up. They were worthless. He rented them out for less than what he was paying for them, but he got lucky because reefers went into high demand last summer and sold them for a price to break even.

If this guy is going to dedicate a day, and two trailers for a 320 all together once a week for less than $1,600, then IDK.

 

We did this a while ago, had a dedicated customer where we had two trucks servicing them, then was approached by their neighbour across the complex about doing a drop and hook. It wasn't bad at first, 300 miles per round trip but they were disorganized to the point that it became a hassle to get the trailer ready on their end so we can pick it up. twice they missed the deadline for a pickup, twice it sat for an extended week so my driver asked my manager if he can drop the account, and my manager came to me so I said yes, we can do better. It wasn't like they didn't have product to go on the trailer, they allowed their dock supervisor to schedule everything with no back up and he went on vacation so no one bothered to load it.

What was charged was $750 per round trip plus $75 a day for the trailer and any detent time involved at $100 a hour.

When the customer put us off, we up the price to a $1000 a trip to motivate them and had them sign a new contract which they did until a month later they let it sit for a week the second time.

By the way, it wasn't just this issue for the reason to drop it, they were always late in paying the carrier and the carrier complained to us about it.

From what I've heard, they've gone through a few carriers trying to find one who would put up with the scheduling issues, even FedEx charged them more to do this because of their track record.

 

There is a cost to service any account....Labor, fuel, taxes, expenses and last but not least Profit projection for the terms of service. Add in everything you think it will take to service this customer and then add 50% on top for your profit. You can always go down during negotiations if you are too high....bottom line is how much is this account worth to you.


@DustyRoad

 

You're thinking like a guy with nice newer equipment, a truck + a couple of trailers or three, and your life invested in this. You're not thinking like a salesperson at a company with 150 tractors, 400 trailers, and a shop on standby willing to fix holes in the walls and roof that are just a routine part of doing business. I hope ReeferOhio gets the contract at a nice profitable price and beats out my expectations of it making out very good. I just have low expectations is all after years of fighting in the trenches with a dry van on spot. Maybe it's different in Ohio or on that lane in particular.