Freight and Freight Lanes

Flatbed freight pays more. However, unless you have someone who can mentor you somewhat, it can be a dangerous and frustrating business. If you have good common sense though you can probably make it work.

All they rent you is the trailer, which would be a good place to start so you can see if flatbedding is right for you.
You will need to buy your own equipment, tarps, straps, chains, binders and the like to be able to do the job.

 

I strongly recommend you get into C.A.B.S. class as quickly as possible. You are typically required to have one year experience with Landstar before being able to take the securement class is St. Augustine, but that could have changed and the agents don't know it. As far as freight, the biggest thing to know is what agents NOT to haul for. Their are snakes out there as with any large 3PL or carrier with broker authority. They will string you along all day and not give you a load confirmation only to leave you hanging at 5pm on a Friday. Get on the appropriate websites and learn who these folks are and steer clear of them. Likewise, there are other agencies who will go the extra mile for you. I'm going to invite you into the private LS group where you can discuss specific LS things more openly. I would strongly recommend reading through there and getting setup to run.

Remember, we have an office in Victorville. He brokers out a lot more than he puts on BCO's simply because freight is so competitive on the Left Coast that we're left dropping rates just to keep our customers who are all about pricing, but he will stick to what he says he'll do and if he doesn't, just let me know. I'll also pm you my info and I'll be happy to help you however I can. Good luck! Welcome to the family!

 

We own a trailer, haul oversize and my DH is looking to haul a van over the winter. We live in OK and have to dead-head a lot. There's an agency nearby that has plenty of freight, just not for us. In the past, I was on the truck and we'd stay out for 4-6 weeks. I've started booking loads for 2 weeks at a time. Works well, until someone pulls a load. I just had one pulled yesterday. Original load paid $3700. I had to replace it with 2 loads paying $2400. ####!

I'm going back on the truck after Christmas and holding off from booking to find out about the van issue. I hate the idea of leasing a trailer, while we have one we own, sitting at home.

The thing I love about Landstar, is being able to book our own loads, in advance. I was never able to do that with our last contract. When I was a kid, my dad's dispatcher had him booked for 3 months. I would love to have us booked for a month.

 

It's doable and there are agencies that will do that for BCO's. The problem is trying to remember where everyone wants to run and not run. We're bringing a new girl on that likes to work exclusively with BCO's and I think we're going to give this a test run with a couple of people to see if we can help them make more $$.