How selective is Landstar? And other Landstar questions...

It's going really good, actually. I've been lucky to not have had any serious truck problems, it's might have been a different story if I had a major breakdown. I enjoy the freedom and the money is pretty #### good too, on the other hand Landstar is very safety obsessed so they make you do inspections and go to classes and stuff like that. Do not make the mistake of going into your 120 day inspection while under a load - if they find something wrong the shop will hold your truck hostage until it's fixed. Luckily they were able to replace the brake quickly and I still made it on time, but it was stressful.

The load board is interesting. Took me a couple of weeks to really get going with it, and it's always a bit of a gamble between taking a safe and cheaper load or waiting until the last day to see if something really good shows up, but it's usually works out pretty profitable either way. Don't get tempted by really well paying loads going to Florida, you will get stuck there.

 

Also, you got to have patience or sort of Detachment to human beings sometimes. Brokers can be annoying. I have not have to deal with anybody who was clearly a crook or a jerk, but I've had a couple of really sloppy ones that were very frustrating because they didn't give me the right information and then were hard to get ahold of. I just blacklisted them. And it also gets frustrating when you are you're calling on good loads and they are already taken, because sometimes the Brokers don't take them off the board right away after they are given away.

 

I don't understand what is so difficult about the Landstar process. I did the whole thing on the road while running with Werner, filled out all of the PDF forms with my little electronic pen on the Galaxy Note. Took pictures of paperwork with my phone and sent it to them. Took no more than a cumulative hour of my time maybe, didn't even have to fax anything.

Then when they gave me the okay I peed in a cup, took my truck to a TA for their inspection, put in my notice with Werner, and asked for a load to Dallas as my last load with them. A week later I was running my first Landstar load.

The whole process took like 3 weeks and virtually zero downtime.