Okay, I-5 corridor has gone dead with an average booking rate of around 30-35%. The rest of the country isn't looking much better. For Company guys, that means fewer miles and a smaller paycheck. For Lease Ops, though, it means the difference between making the fixed payments or ending up in the hole. Here's where your business sense comes into play. Did you plan ahead for this? We know it happens every year at about this time.
Here's what I did, and I didn't know I could until I called in and asked. I got ahold of Rapid Response and had enough money transferred over from my maintenance reserve to cover my tractor lease payment for this coming week. I have continued to put away 10cpm toward this reserve and have not touched it except for a few PMs and minor repairs. I now have enough in my reserve to cover more that 3 months worth of payments, although I seriously doubt that will be necessary. If you have it in your reserve, you can transfer it over to avoid going in the hole. As most of us know, it's much easier to avoid going negative in the first place than it is to dig out once you're there. The purpose of the reserve is exactly for times like this when freight is slow.
If you do not have enough of a reserve, or you unwisely p***ed it away on time off or unnecessary expenses, there may still be other options for you: you can see if you can get a payment or two deferred to the end of your contract, or you can ask to have a payment or two cut up into smaller portions and paid at about $100/week until paid off. Freight booking is something that is out of our hands. How we handle it in our own businesses is entirely within our control. I would suggest, if you are seeing the slowdown like I am, deal with it now rather than waiting until there's a problem. It really bites to see a negative settlement and pray to make it positive next time. Because freight may not pick up next week like you're hoping.
Never place your business in the hands of "hope." Take charge of it now or you will find yourself in a real pickle about three weeks from now. Further, re-up your maintenance reserve to 10cpm until you have at least 10K available liquid asset to your business, whether you allow Swift to hold it tax-free for you or you choose to pay taxes on it and put it in your own bank account. Either way, you have to save for skinny times like this.
The phone number to Rapid Response is: 888-258-7808 or contact your own driver manager. Don't wait on this. It's your business for you to run. It's not IEL or Swift's job to run your business for you.
May the Freight Spirits smile on us soon.
-Taiowa Transportation, LLC
Freight Crunch
Discussion in 'Swift' started by Injun, Jan 7, 2011.
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Injun,yeah what a slowdown huh?It's like slamming on the brakes.I for one am glad you let us know about that (maintenance acocount transfer) I took my first good amount of time off (5 days) and nothing like working for free for a couple weeks to dig outta that hole.I'll learn,lol.I have had 10 cpm mile taken out since i started in Oct,so need a pm and inspection soon,but i have over 2500.00 in the account and good to know I can do that.Thanks
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