Is load planning a big problem to you?

You can preplan in a slow market (winter time, bad states), but pre-planning in a hot market is a bad idea. You will be leaving lots of money on the table.

 

Well, it depends any kind of unexpected can happen. You have to have open mind and a lot of patience. The nature of the business is break downs, tire blows, constructions, snow, rain, and mountains. Also, there are facilities will load you in little of 15 min for full trailer and sometimes it takes 24hrs to unload or more. So load planning is tremendously hard thing. You have to go with punches. Try to see the bigger picture. Good luck.

 

When you preplan, anything can happen to screw it up totally.

If you do have a preplan make sure you have a team or solo manned tractor ready to take over if for some reason the original truck you planned the load for did get held up.

Mr Murphy is fantastic at destroying preplans in some way. Shippers and recievers only care about themselves. They literally do not give a #### if your tractor trailer is due somewhere 200 miles away in 5 hours time this afternoon. They don't care. You will be sitting there until empty. So much for that preplan.

Any time I get a preplan on the satellite from the dispatch, I take pains never to accept it. I'll get empty when I get empty, you can find me a load then. After I make the empty call. The reason for that is set in stone, its time for me to feed that thirsty tractor with lots of fuel to the brim, fix the small stuff breaking and do laundry or eat up and or rest up waiting for your next load to go get. It's part of routine. Maybe I am out of hours at the end of week, you will have to give that preplan to someone else. Poor thing....

 

There are a lot of variables on the give and take of what outweighs what / time / money / location / need to get to a specific location.

The short answer is NO. Load planning is actually a snap.

 

I love it. Brokers always saying crap like "it has to deliver the same day" or "it has to pick up today" or "it has to deliver this date"
And you know what, those are most of the time a bunch of lies. My shippers call me and tell me about shipments that need to move 3 or 4 days in advance and if I can't help them you know what they do?
They call the brokers and some will hold out on posting the load til that morning for the shipment to be picked up. Brokers use the time of the days of when phones are ringing off the hook(like Monday mornings) to move freight that was sent to them sometimes 3 days ago.

Best plan for making better load planning is to get away from brokers and start handing out business cards to shippers

 

You cannot preplan, if you go to Kroger DC, or Walmart DC, or places like these, unless it is the next day you try to book something. It is good to look at google reviews, that could give at least some biased indication of what to expect at the shipper/receiver Their individual stores are rather good. I learned hard ways, that it is essential to find out not only what the commodity is but also where you taking it from and to whom. Detention is B.S. and overrated - one should never rely on it or even see it as a consolation. It will never make up for a lost load opportunity. I've never had detention paid of more than $250 and it was after a full force collection attempts. I say again, detention is crap and they can shove it, if they think they can keep you more than 3 hours to offload and pay $50 an hour to make it all right. Typically, they set the detention policies in the set up or in the Rate Con. Some will say that they renegotiate it on the Rate Con with additional notes or a stamp, but is it even warranted, if they don't sign it and send it back to you? Load board postings could more often disclose who the shipper and the receiver is to save time asking for it. Lately, I did follow an advice given here by some savvy loadboard sharks who refuted preplanning as a good practice based on the fact that when a day gets darker the more urgent some loads become. Of course, the risk is you end up with nothing ...I learned it the hard way too. Anyway, If it is getting close to 2-3pm and I have nothing, I start to be less demanding with rates and will book the very first something decent.
Preplanning should be done carefully regarding who you book the load with, if it is too stretched, it might be also risky in terms of keeping your favorite brokers (customer for that matter) content with you. If you fall out you are automatically not a 100% reliable, whether it was your fault or not.

 

Find your local shippers and they will have their regular customer deliverys. After a while of making local deliverys (300 or less miles) find your shippers that are in the receivers area.

Use brokers as a last resort