Find good rates?

You won't know that until you know what it costs to run your truck.

Insurance will be a killer.
Truck payment
Fuel
Repairs
Employee wages (your pay)
Employee insurances
Employee taxes
Company taxes
And all the other costs. Until you know what your costs are you can't guess on a freight.
rate.

OOIDA has a really good beginning O/O course that will break all that down for you.

 

Yes, I have to agree with the majority of the replies on here. Your Cost per mile will make you or break you. When bidding on a load rate aways average up per mile on that rate to keep in the green. Not only Truck expenses such as Maintainr, Fuel, etc. But also keep it mind your weekly wage breakdown, if you drive your veichle to your truck thay veichles fuel, etc.i always base my rate con from my home address including deadhead miles and the traveling miles to my Truck. Understanding your minimal margins helps you stay in the profit margins.

 

There are your fixed costs. Insurance, truck payment, plates, 2290. Stuff you have to pay if you don't drive.

Then your variable costs. Fuel, maintenance, ifta, lodging, food on road, tolls, etc.

 

Do you know where the freight lanes are for your type of trailer? You can grab a load that’s paying a decent rate, but it goes 1000 miles into a dead zone. And suddenly all you see on the load boards are $.80cpm freight that’s super heavy.
You’re paying someone to move their load. You just got pimped out like a streetwalker.

There are certain jobs where you have to fingerprint a load, certain jobs require lots of securement and tarp. I factor everything in a day rate. No matter what I am doing, I want a certain amount of money every day I am under that load. For a load to pay me to go into a dead zone, it has to pay me to bounce all the way back to the freight lane. Sitting in dead zones picking through garbage is a huge revenue killer and a massive waste of time.

 

Understand the rates you see on the load boards are a beginning negotiating point. Brokers will do things like post the load from suburb #1 of a Big City to a suburb of a different city. Then maybe JUST before you accept the rate or afterwards, you learn the pickup and delivery locations are further than advertised, making the rate less. The broker may have 75 loads in Houston picking up on Tue going to various cities but he will post 200 loads each with different pickup locations around Houston, and different rates, with maybe even a similar scam on the delivery locations. Then the broker sees which suburbs of Houston and suburbs of the destinations generate the most calls. The broker can list those 200 loads with 200 different rates. Most of the interest will be in the higher posted rates. When most of those 200 loads are gone, he knows the callers asking about the low rates are the desperate callers and he will use one or more schemes to reduce the rate more. One YouTube channel I used to watch to learn about load boards was https://www.youtube.com/@steadytrucker

I've heard experienced owner-ops claim there might be 5, 10, 20 or 50 phantom loads on the load boards for every real load. Load boards are not retail stores where you just get what you were told or pay what you are told is the price. I feel like new owners/leasers just assume ever claimed price is carved in stone. The brokers often lie about origin & destination, dimensions of the load, amount of work required to get loaded and likewise "forget" to tell the driver about those details concerning the delivery. "Oh I didn't know the driver would be required to hand unload each raspberry individually with a plastic spoon" even though he brokers 20 loads per week and has heard this complaint every single time it delivers. As soon as you book the load, call the shipper and confirm the details and any requirements and likewise for the receiver.

 

A warning about using ChatGPT. My day job is an analyst and i am a Pro level subscriber to OpenAI (which means I pay a ton of money for increased compute capacity and priority queries in models not open to free users. Not bragging just want the OP to understand that I know what I am talking about here in regards to using ChatGPT. I am not a truck driver but I will be soon as I am retiring from analytics, that's why I am here in the noob forum asking questions and learning. ChatGPT is one of the most amazing tools ever created by man, in my opinion. I use it daily getting help on rewriting and optimizing SQL queries and Python code. What I pay for it monthly, is worth it, in my job.

Here is the warning. The more complicated a question is you ask, the more data you have to include in your question if you want a reliable answer. Complexity is not determined by subject matter either, but instead is determined by complexity of interaction with the user. Yes that statement is circular as well.

That means if you ask it "How to maintain productivity in your typing job", you will likely get an answer that looks pretty thorough and well thought out. Then go right back and ask it "How to maintain productivity in your typing job, but that you just broke your right hand and cant use it". You will get a very different answer now because you have included a constraint that will affect productivity. It now knows what its dealing with and why you are asking it the question and now it can better provide an answer more applicable to your situation.

In my career rarely is GPT able to provide me code, exactly as asked, when I question it at the beginning of a problem. Typically I will have to add on to and change my question in multiple ways to get what's needed. Sometimes it will only get me in the general ballpark of a solution and require me to figure out the final result, usually because I don't fully understand the problem and/or haven't provided enough input. Over time I have gotten better at how to ask it things and get to solutions more applicable, but there is some amount of me training it over time and it training me over time also. Be careful with what it gives you. Ensure you are giving it as many details as you can for a more thorough answer.

 

Well said & important point.

 

That should be telling you all you need to know. Get a company job.