How to understand the way this works!!!!

Yes

 

Basically its a matter of risk vs reward.

Going into a area that is not generous to flatbeds is always a risk. Love the money going to a specific area/state.....better know what your gonna get into at the other side lol. The flip side of that you will hear coordinators and some of the brokers complain that there are no loads in an area. HOWEVER.....this basically means that they (Mercer) has no loads in an area.....this does not mean that there are no flat bed loads! I have access to DAT and many other resources the brokers use.

I was in an area where Mercer claims that loads were hard to come by.....however....a search within 200 miles revealed over 480 flatbed loads from well established brokers and manufacturing companies. It basically boiled down to that Mercer had no flat bed loads. Mercer did have 50 van loads lol.

I know I am not the only one seeing the 10:1 van vs flatbed load ratio. Is mercer changing their format to favor more vans? I was recently informed from a broker that some of the flatbed loads were being "cut and pasted" from other load boards onto the Mercer board. As you are aware this will water down the rates..

A renown flatbed carrier now being saturated with van loads is very curious. Is their business model or priorities changing? I dont think there will ever be a viable answer. Only the owners and stake holders will know for sure. Time will tell.................................................

 

Went through there. Seen a lone star like yours parked at that TS a couple of days. That's all.

 

My issue so far is pre planning,
Running as an independent it was far more easier to book 2-3 loads at a time because the customer would call an say hey can you cover this load an I say yay or neigh....I've been here a little over a month an things are ok considering the dreadful economy we are dealing with.
However, it makes it kinda difficult for me to plan a week out when you're not certain you'll even get the load.
So far I've only been able to successfully preplan loads maybe once or twice since I've been here an the only reason that took place was because my coordinator was on vacation an I had a guy sitting in for her an he was booking me loads faster than I could strap em down!
How do I stress this to her that your replacement guy is the "style of planning" I prefer without coming off as a ##hole lol.

 

As soon as you are dispatched on a load, Start looking for the next. Try calling you're coordinator and asking what is showing at the next point. Call several times a day. This will get across that you want to be booked out ahead.

 

Yea she's only been there 2 years an she's a really sweet girl an my recruiter asked me if I had a male/female preference when it came to my coordinator. Of course it didn't bother me who I had as long as he/she was putting greenbacks in my wallet. Lol.
She's not the aggressive type an I figured that out within my first couple of loads booking with her an it was confirmed once I had a chance to work with her counterpart for a week. I took a load out to Utah from the Midwest an this guy had a load waiting on me back to the east coast on the SAME DAY AS DELIVERY! 12 mile deadhead at that!!

 

In my experience, the swing shift guys call me about every crap load id never pull. What kind of preferences do you have set with your main coordinator? Perhaps she is setting the minimum rate to high for today's conditions so she never sees any loads to offer you.

 

Honestly I don't even know what she has on her side set for me.
However I change my settings throughout the day on my side. One thing I do notice is sometimes she will present loads to me that aren't even on the board. That can either be a good or bad thing I suppose.
Good: because most of the time she does it I usually get the load
Bad: it makes me wonder how many loads she chooses NOT to tell me about.

 

Its not a mystery on the van loads, most are loads from other loadboard, many aren't loads available still. This gets beat. To death on other Facebook pages.

 

Board position is important, no doubt. Understand it, then use it to your advantage. My experience, cultivate a few agents, I started pulling flat from vans here because of a specific agent in my local area. I exclusively leave home with his loads out of same customer, never discussed anything about board position before, ever, loads will fall to you that never hit the board. This can be disputed by some, just saying my experience has been the best tweaking here is the agent relationship, taking his freight out of the house and being dependable has eliminated any headaches of sitting or holding board position by running short loads for days to hang on to it. Agent driver relationship has been the best thing an old hand here has stressed to me.