I believe the small trucking companies are facing the end

I tend to see small carriers on Craigslist and both small and megas on indeed.
The megas have a lot dedicated runs out of KC. Check out Crete. The have a 4 days on 3 days off out of KC 95% drop and hook I was thinking about if you can take a nanny company.

 

It all depends upon how they are set up to face challenging times. We're small-ish (75 sleeper trucks, 20 day cabs, and 15 spot/shag trucks), but have been actively preparing for this day for the past decade. We haul food products in reefers, have spec'ed the trucks to get 8.5-9 mpg at 78,000, and kept debt out of the picture.

Old-timers have taken notice, and we've gotten a lot of unsolicited applications in the past few weeks from drivers from 55-80 years old who have seen the writing on the wall at their current employers. We're at the point that we're taking the older 2018s from our part-time drivers that slip-seat, detailing them, and sending them out with full time drivers. We can hardly wait for our 4 replacement trucks that were supposed to be here in March to come in (new ETA: August), just so we can plus up our fleet closer to normal size, as we're currently short 9 trucks (4 trade-ins, 1 in subrogation after tow company damage, 1 was in a shop when the shop burned down, and 3 that were involved in collisions over the past winter that can't get parts (cab panels and re-cabs are all backordered).

But as I said before, we aren't based in Missouri, and we run the Midwest, rarely Florida. We just assigned out our last 2021 available (a driver likes the older trucks and volunteered to get in a 2018 when given the chance so his became available) to a driver who, ironically, is coming in today from Kansas City. We're good, we pay fair, we get drivers home when they need to be home, we don't play games with paychecks, routing, or fueling, and we don't babysit. That's why we have such a low turnover rate and about half of our drivers have been here over a decade.

 

We are currently looking to hire OTR drivers. All of our drivers are getting into 2022's and are getting over 3000 miles. We currently have around 40 trucks on the road and run mainly Midwest, South, and Southeast. All based on drivers preference, you don't want to go to X state/region, we won't send you to X state/region. Give me a call at (210) 627-8275 or an email at Spencer@mtitransportation.com