How do you determine freight pricing?

The lumber/construction supply store in my hometown was bought out a couple years ago and ever since it has been going downhill. Non of the contractors like dealing with them anymore and in-fact avoid it as much as possible (not due to the employees, but ownership and how it is now ran).

Well I see this as an opportunity, as I want to get into (local/short-haul) trucking anyway, to have a kinda private lumber yard, specifically for the contractors.

Essentially the closest city with more resources is about 1.5-2 hours away. When you factor in the time to shop, get everything loaded, and the driving, you can easily spend an entire day making a supply run, which doesn't work well for construction.

My thought is I get a tractor/trailer (likely a flatbed) and once a week I can make a supply run. All the contractors will make a list throughout the week of what they need, then I will go and pick it up and bring it back.

Now because life happens and there are always unexpected variables, sometimes you need stuff now and don't have the time to wait for materials, so I would like to make a small lumber/supply yard in which I can keep the most common materials, that way if something urgent comes up, they don't have to waste time driving all the way to this other town. It will also provide me with a kind of staging area. That way they can either come pickup the stuff themselves once I return or if they want me to deliver it, I can transfer the load to a smaller truck, rather than dragging a 53' trailer everywhere.

It is a small town, so I'm not looking to make a killing off of this, part of it would be to help them out, because without the contractors we wouldn't get very far with much of anything. But I obviously don't want to take losses on this either, I will have to meet with all of them and make sure I get enough people, because doing runs for 1 or 2 companies isn't gonna cut it.

So how should I do my pricing? I know trucking is typically done by the mile, which is fine, but that wouldn't get me much (75 miles at say $3/mi is only $225 per-company, which I'm guessing would just be enough to pay my fuel... I'm not sure what kind of range to expect from full tanks)

I also plan to be doing vocational trucking (gravel, dirt, etc.) so this won't be my main source of income. Like I said it's partially to help out and contribute to the community. I think there's a good opportunity here and I don't want to miss it.

Of course I can also charge a small fee for storing materials in the yard, but I'm not sure how else to go about this and how exactly to figure out how much I should be charging.

If you guys have any advice/ideas it would be much appreciated

Thanks

 

Oh absolutely and because of that I'm not just going to jump into it. I personally know most of the contractors, so I'd just meet with them and propose the idea. Even if the whole storage yard idea doesn't work out, I think so of them would be willing to pay just for the delivery. The biggest issue is getting enough people on board so I can keep costs lower.
Like if I need $1,000 for each trip, then the more companies I'm hauling for, the less it will be per company (5= $200/wk, 8=$125/wk, etc.)
I think there's a good market for private transport in general, especially class 8 trucks... there's a lot of light duty box trucks that run stuff all around, but not many with full semis

Splitting the difference wouldn't be a bad idea, like I said I'm trying to find a way to contribute and help out along with my actual job, so I'm not looking for this to make a ton of money. My expenses + $21/hr would be fine

As for getting larger discounts, that likely wouldn't happen. I would need to be doing huge volumes of supplies every week to get better pricing than the contractors get, which I don't see happening