Have you / Will you diversify to stay in business?

Bull$hit!
You attacked that guy for his trying to be versatile and resourceful when situation demands it.
Unless you were joking which would've been a good joke.
For the most part, It takes as much as a pigs tail intelligence to haul different types of trailers. Don't make it a rocket science. This job is a low skill, analphabetic skill level job and if it weren't then the good irreplaceable carriers would nothing but laugh at the twinkies, as you call them, trying to undermine them.
If something took such a tremendous amount of skill and hands on experience, there would be no way to approach that domain.
Perhaps there are carriers like that, too dear for their customers to be dropped in favor of someone else wanting to haul their freight for 30% less and good for them but those in the apple barrel fearing a bug deserve that fear, becayse they are nothing special.
Everyone with a ounce of oil in the brain can easily haul cabbage or gravel in Summer and army tanks in winter. With a little preparation Cattle and pigs too, If they had such a desire... I don't see anything wrong with that. If you are replaceable then you are replaceable and that's determined not by you but the market.

 

Yeah so your saying any re-tard can pull any trailer and do a good job ?
1st off there's this little thing call experience
2 I've around long enough to see these Jack of all trades drivers f more thing up than you can imagine
3 what he is talking about is what alot of members here are complaining about in a couple other threads
Guys that jump around are the ones that also are the rate cutting .. POS that make it hard for everybody
I got a extra trailer sitting in my yard come hook on to it see how you get along .. I'll take 18% of your weekly gross for trailer rent and your responsible for tires and insurance.. and any damage you do to it

 

It’s comical at this point. There are threads here also saying that brokers control the rates, but by god if someone switches trailers it’s going to ruin the rates. Lol.

One of my best friends started out with a truck and a hopper when he was 19. He grew that company to where he was loading over 40 trucks a day. Now he’s 32 and has nothing but gas cans and bottles, no hoppers, but by your reasoning he should’ve stuck to welfare wagons until he died.

 

That's not what I said there's nothing wrong with starting and finding your nitch... just like your friend did
But if reread the post I quoted that is not what he has intentions of doing
Like somebody said it cost money to have multiple trailers sitting there for your convenience
Their like a horse
. It still eats & needs cared for even though your not riding it

 

I actually chatted with the CEO of the company I run for the other day and I asked him how he was faring in this current market environment. He said it was challenging, and definitely not turning the profit he was going back two years ago but things were still good. “ we built this company to ride out these storms and come out the other side“ basically I asked him based on the ideology that I want a job security. Lol which he appreciated. But here’s the other thing he told me. For the decades he’s been in trucking he set a business model based On a profit margin. And he shifts that in to what rate he’s getting per mile or per load. And as he put it “I simply don’t go below it. Ever”. Now he went on to say we’ll get creative, will start taking more broker loads, more creative loads, less frequent loads, to make those numbers match but I won’t go under it ever. I don’t run my trucks for a loss. He went on to explain now of course there’s an occasional load when you have to get a driver back that might run at a slight loss but it’s far and few between.

I think more truck drivers need to have this mentality. Figure out exactly what your costs are and your break even point and what profit percentage you’re willing to stay out there and run for, and just simply don’t go below it. Take a day off, get out of the truck go see some local sites, do whatever it takes to wait for the load that meets those expectations.

Otherwise, you really truly are just a rat in a cage running on a wheel.

 

Not as easy as just going out and purchasing or even leasing a trailer and hauling gas, water etc. Plenty of tanker companies in the area already have the corner on that market most likely and with little to no meat left on the bone. Better off just leasing on with someone.

 

We're getting a step deck and doing super loads.

More is better.

 

Answer to thread title:

No/No.

 

No way to to tell yet. Hopefully it works out for you