Ive always wondered.....

Well actually it is a good idea, you get paid when your trailers is being used, its not a free item. You make better money off a trailer for one thing the maintenance is much lower.

 

Thats why you see so many trailers belonging to lease companies that dont even own power units.

 

Did intermodal for a company. They had chassis. Some how the chassis went to the east coast. The chassis were leased and they had to pay for the chassis. A year later they were located .some trailers have the # on top. Occasionally do power only for a company. The trailers have a GPS device but they never have the correct location for the trailer

 

A few thoughts on this topic. Intermodal is not the only reason you see a tractor pulling another carrier's trailers. First for someone new to the industry it can be confusing at times. It's easy to confuse a leasing company trailer with a carrier's trailer. I remember once being sent to Campbells Soup in Texas and being confused because I could not find my load. Turns out the broker got angry at the company that first got the load and gave it to my carrier. It was not a serious problem getting the trailer back, because I took it and dropped the load at Campbells Soup in Ohio. I doubt the carrier never knew I was pulling their loaded trailer. In this business, I have seen so much "crap" like this it would shock you what can happen, but it does! Example? Just a few months ago a NC cop stopped a driver with a load of toilet paper. The load was legal etc. That trailer last I heard had been stolen, I do not know the final outcome of this story! I did hear that the load did get to it's destination!

@Mike2633 you asked a great question about logistics. There is a carrier that shall remain nameless, that spent the largest part of the 90s cutting throats in this cut-throat business. They undercut a lot of carriers all across the US and took over a lot of contracts because of it. Then a number of years later they ran into serious logistics issues. They started losing loaded trailers because they could not keep up with them properly. To this very day, they are still missing trailers from that era! There is a place near my hometown in Georgia that has 3 of these carriers trailers sitting as storage units. They lost hundreds of trailers during that time. They also lost a lot of business. I can't count the times I have been asked to go to a terminal or drop yard and do a count. To report via phone or QC the units sitting there and their numbers. I was even asked once by the permits office to check the registrations. Carriers and trailer leasing companies can solve their logistical issues in different ways and this depends on the number they have. This is why it is CRITICAL to make sure when you drop&hook you change that trailer number and mark the locations when you do on the QC. Still trailers do get lost, that is a fact!

 

I’ve always heard your run of the mill standard consumer grade durable Goods 53’ dry van Trailer freight was pretty much a cut throat business. I know Schneider on there forums I remember reading years ago there guys would go to an account to drop off and they would run to the empty trailer lot and there would be stacks of empty trailers and they would go to grab one and the trailer would be all full of crap from that plant and just storage junk that the plant couldn’t Bring it’s self to throw out.

Yeah it’s common trailers go missing and get stolen it happens for sure.

A trailer gets into the system next thing you know there is a change of plans and instead of the trailer being at the warehouse it’s over at Gojo Soap in Akron, Ohio and then from there who knows. Next thing you know it’s sitting on the street in front of some old warehouse in on Quincy Ave in Cleveland, Ohio.

 

Hey now! That carrier was supposed to stay nameless!

 

In my power only contract, it says to return empty trailers within a certain time. I think it's 4 weeks. I don't care about this since I legally can't haul anything than "their" freight.
But what they do, is a lots of business with what they call Asset Based Logistic ( ABL). Those outside carriers bring their trailers in the pool, they pull our's, we pull their's. From time to time, I hear, we need to bring that trailer back. They may have similar agreements with their ABL carriers.

On the company trailers, we now have satellite tracking. As soon as the trailer is assigned to my plans, I can find the location on the app on my phone. The location is updated every 30 minutes while moving and once a day while parked including a date and time stamp. The system works fairly reliable, I would say 99% and is very convenient at larger trailer yards.

 

Oh oh oh my bad, I thought you were talking about another big wig carrier like JB Hunt or Swift or someone like that. Shhhh I'll be quiet.