florida produce

It is my experience it takes a few hours to get loaded, then there is a dead head with a few hours more. Not too bad. The kicker is when a single driver has worked today to load and is rolling the 600 miles to make two stops tomorrow. It can be done. Im not trying to be difficult. It's something Ive learned not to take from dispatchers and have them put a team on it. We became a husband wife team eventually so all this thinking about overnights went bye bye,. No problem.

 

USDA reports. Previous week.

 

Reefer is really screwed up like that. I did many 300 mile reefer loads last year that would pick up at say 7pm on a Monday night then were scheduled to deliver the following afternoon at 5pm.

Sometimes it was frozen and sometimes not but it always had plenty of shelf life. Then there was the produce with a short shelf life that would pickup at 10 or 11pm and deliver by scheduled appointment time the next morning anywhere from 200-650 miles away, this stuff had hardly any time to spare it was load it and drive all night.

That's just how it goes. They don't move the stuff at a schedule convenient to me or if they are they have some big contract carrier making all the easy money or brokering it out to a schlub doing it for nothing.

 

For those of you who do not know about this report, this will help on produce rates



http://www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/wa_fv190.txt

 

Speaking as someone who works inbound and outbound FL 365 days a year as a broker I can tell you that you'll NEVER see rates like these out of FL outside of produce season. I have no idea where the USDA gets their numbers from but it's sure as heck not the actual spot market.

If you run FL you want to be getting paid nearly all the money going in. You need to make 2.60+ per mile going into FL to justify the 1.25 or less you'll get coming back out. I generally paid 2300-2600 for Evansville, IN area to Orlando area with a FAST load (3-4 hours on produce) and unload (under an hour) in the IN produce season this year. That was for 830 loaded miles. Most of those trucks were deadheading back to Atlanta and then getting some freight back to IN for like 900 bucks. 2400 was the most common price point going to Orlando... 3300 to run 1700 miles and make two pickups and two drops isn't incredible, but it's available in bulk and is very consistent.

 

Just did a 1500mi run to MA for $2800...$1.87/mi

 

MA is almost as bad as FL. This is why. You can get decent rates to CO as well out of FL.

EDIT: Also the USDA has that lane 3600+. Kind of proves my point.

 

yea you're right on that but it was on the way to home

 

I could see a trucking company making money by running a triangle from the NE to the midwest to FL to the NE again. Seems overcomplicated to me though and it involves driving in the NE for no real gain. Seems like you'd be better off running the MW to the NE and back again or the MW to FL and back again than having that extra slightly below average leg that adds tolls. You're still going to get garbage per mile from MA to the MW anyway.

EDIT: Of course if you sign a contract to move something from FL (flowers maybe?) to the east coast for 2.00+ a mile it becomes a very good thing. But then I'd probably just run the NE to FL and back again. Simpler is always better. The more markets you make your dispatchers work the worse the results will be. Knowing the freight and the players for a regional spot market is a pretty big deal for getting good results.

 

I think the rates quoted by the State are off the top, before brokerage is extracted. Sooooooo, the trucker usually will never see these rates, but the shipper is being billed this amount by the broker.