How many loads can I do off the load board?

It's not a bad dividend stock, but it's never going to have great upside because the Schneider family controls the voting shares, and the Schneider family doesn't really care about the share price. Going public was mainly about retaining family control as the older generation of stake holders passed their sliver of the company on.

 

don’t they separate their truck and brokerage firm revenues?

what I mean is the 1k profit per truck doesnt include the profit from the cost of load?

example: Schneider charges customer $4.50 per mile for the load , then tenders load to truck for $2.70 pm to truck. Truck profit is based on 2.70 per mile not the $4.50.

 

Overall net income per truck, per month is just under $1,100.

Yes, truckload revenue is broken out separate from logistics, just as intermodal is, but it gets 'sticky' trying to break everything down into it's component parts and getting a usable answer.

 

That’s what I thought, each division needs to make money and when it’s no longer cost effective to assign loads to their own trucks, those loads go to their load boards.

 

Oh, it gets SO MUCH more complicated than that.

Capacity is the main determination for what goes onto "outside carriers". After being told is was more profitable to broker out loads and have company trucks sit, Don Schneider famously walked out of the conference room and shouted "LOAD ORANGE FIRST" in the bull pen. Even if outside carriers can haul it cheaper, if we have drivers sitting in a market the 'outside board' dries up in a hurry. Even if we take a loss by having a company truck haul the load, it's better than loosing drivers because they're frustrated from sitting.

Then there are the loads that we can cover much cheaper than our 3rd party carriers, but it still makes sense to broker them out. Take the multi stop pick up loads in Chicago - we can cover them cheaper than the 3rd party carrier we've contracted with, but OTR drivers get cranky spending all day playing around in Chicago even though the pay is equal to a 600 mile day. Plus, we don't have many guys that want to start their day at noon and run to midnight. It's just easier to contract it out to a company who has convinced it's drivers that making $60,000 a year with no health benefits doing local work in Chicago is "GREAT MONEY".

Or you have the loads that we can haul at a healthy profit and can easily cover, but outside carriers are willing to haul for "WTF CHEAP". We'd actually 'make more' by putting the company truck on spot market freight that covers fuel cost than hauling the contract freight. We have a contract out of Orlando that only gets a company truck when we can't get an outside carrier to haul it. It's more profitable to dead head our drivers out than it is to haul those loads.

And that's before you start with the inter-company fighting. I'm VTL, but if I get pulled in to 'help out' on a dedicated account, that dedicated account gets "charged" for my time. Bulk truck parks at an OC - bulk gets 'charged'. Van truck goes into a bulk or intermodal yard - van gets 'charged'. It even gets broken down by division. I'm in the GB division, and if I relay a load the GB division only gets 'credit' for the miles I run. If another GB driver picks up the load, we get 'credit' for the remainder. If another division grabs it, we get 'charged' for the relay, unless there were service or serious productivity reasons.

 

a lot of companies run dozens of trucks hauling only spot market freight. It can be done. The last company I worked for did that. Not a good way to keep drivers or run a company but can work for a while until you build those relationships with customers. When I would bring contract work to the company and they couldn’t close on it, I left.

 

Thank you for this, were they profitable and how many trucks did they have?

 

You're gonna get eaten alive. Spot freight is garbage for most of the year. If you're smart and stay in the hot spots you can do OK with one truck. But you're not driving the truck(s). You'll have a bunch of bottom of the barrel, finicky, whiney drivers that aren't fit to get jobs at better, more established companies. You'll always be looking for drivers, dealing with expensive torn up equipment and probably lots of theft too. Let's not forget being taken advantage of by broker contracts that you or your people won't read and are never in your favor. You're green and the sharks in this business will spot you from 10 miles away. Grasping for straws will be cold comfort when reality bites.

 

OP, You should listen to this ^^:^^ and read it over a dozen times if needed. I've got nearly just shy of 30 years experience and had my own Authority 25 years ago. Brokers saw me miles away when I ran a few loads and still I got swindled. It happens even to those with experience & back then my money was thin so I got out and drove for companies instead. 2nd time around I saw the marker overall 15 times the money more then back then and went lease on o/o. Yes, I had to change a few carries, took a 'hit' because of corrupted unscrupulous cut throat business owners but now I'm back in the green. Experience does matter when it comes to sharks. No friends in business especially trucking its always business 1st.

(Remember, this is not the most profitable trucking market because of capacity) Trucking Industry Forecast for 2023 | ACT Research

 

Just my opinion, and my take on the overall

OP is looking for a free education of the trucking industry. Sure, some of the posts have been negative, not what the OP wants to hear. Clearly the OP has been studying the Youboob stars and has it all figured out.
Would like to see the face, when the first insurance quote comes in, or the deposits required for all the other things that get paid. The list is long.