Landstar Questions

With your 21 years of experience as your guide could you define what you mean when you say "dont pull cheap freight"? If I take a load at 3.00 to start a trip then 1.50 to keep me moving then 2.25 to get me home am I pulling cheap freight? What if I run into Florida for 3.00 then dead head 600 miles back to Georgia for a load taking me 2,500 miles at 2.50? The 600 mile dead head cost me around 250.00 for fuel but I like going to Florida so to me its chump change and just a cost of doing business my way.

You see I pull the freight that keeps my business profitable and makes me happy I dont really care what it pays. I have a friend who has operating costs that allow him to be comfortable pulling 1.50 freight all month long if thats all there is. Really your rate should be based on your personal business needs and nothing else.

Honestly they need to ban the phrase "dont haul cheap freight" from the english language,people that use it tend to really not have a very good understanding of even basic load planning or logistics but they repeat it because it sounds cool. If most of the guys I hear dribbling that phrase would spend just a little more time educating themselves about how to improve thier business and less time spreading BS around I think they would be suprised what they could pull for. It reminds of the group of morons out there that are always calling for strikes and shut downs to improve the industry. They want everyone else to make changes but wont put in even just a little effort to improve thier own situation.

 

Pulling cheap freight is the root of a trickling effect across the country. It will effect you sooner or later. Cheap freight by my definition is making just enough to say, "it's enough money to get by and at least it gets me home." I've been out of the owner operator phase for a while so I can't get into numbers because the fuel is about 3x the price. Just by looking at the numbers and knowing it's about a $1.10 a mile to operate a truck with a $1,000 payment with diesel price of a dollar a gallon. I'll give a ball park figure on the minimum I'll haul for based on fuel prices where they are today. I'll base a 500 mile trip. At 5.5 mpg it will cost $341 just to drive over for fuel. Some owner think that's where the buck stops not realizing how much they are spending for each mile they drive or idle. Many don't realize how many extra miles they get short changed on a dispatched 500 mile trip. So I allow an extra 10% to take care of the game playing. So at a $1.10 operating cost at a buck for fuel, I figured an average $3.75 which comes out to be $790.00 just to drive over there after I subtracted the buck a mile fuel cost off the $1.10 prior operating cost per mile. So $790.00 then add the 10% millage the break it off in ya with. We now have a grand total of $869.00 or $1.73 just to drive over there. I'm going to be cheap and say I'll do it for a buck a mile. It would cost them $2.73 a mile for me to haul. That's the lowest I'd go. $1 a mile is fair enough but I wouldn't be doing the Toyota heel kick jump because I'll need to work the numbers on trying to get home. If the company I pulled pull for takes a percentage out, I'd charge lots more. I've been driving long enough to know landstar does take out around 30% so my minimum rate would be $3.25 and that's slightly less than $1 a mile. Dispatchers didn't like me when I was an owner op. If I was a millage paid lease driver, they'd have to pay me a 2 bucks a mile plus a $241.00 fuel surcharge on a 500 mile trip. That's fair in my book.

 

First off you proved my point by showing that the numbers used in your examples are your numbers and not the other guys. I could not stay in business with those kind of operating costs,but thats a seperate issue on its own. Im not sure what kind of operation your using as an example,it may be specialized but the rates you would be getting would reflect that. Bottom line is those numbers are horrible in todays world,at least if you plan on being profitable.

For the first six months of this year my operating cost per mile including fuel and my 1525.00 truck payment was .84 cpm. My average MPG for the last 90 days is 7.4 and my cost per mile for fuel is .48. Just the 2.00 mpg of fuel I save at todays prices is about 500.00 per week or 24k per year! I like to say my fuel savings pays my truck payment.

Again its going to be different for each operation which is my whole point against the "dont haul cheap freight" phrase. I feel pretty safe saying that even at my desired set rate of 2.25 per mile and less than 25k in weight I would go bankrupt if I was working with your numbers.

 

That's why I'm no longer an owner operator. It was too much work to get paid a fair shake. I bought my truck with an equity loan which made my payment cheap. Something like $100 a month which allowed me to claim twice because I claimed my interest on my home and depreciation on my truck. I had very little debt so it all also allowed me to sit at home if the price wasn't right. They also knew not to call me if the numbers weren't right because it would be a wasted phone call. It's amazing what freight pays when they can't find a sucker or someone that didn't care. Nowadays I'm completely debt free and driving a company truck less than 8 hours a day.

 

Ok you just took this to a political LEFT TURN!
But all joking aside I keep hearing more and more chatter about EOBRS, I'm an OLe Dawg have no clues about theses things and how they work???
Heck have to have my daughter set my phone up

 

It is amazing how differently we can all look at the numbers.

 

Is anyone going to GATS in Dallas? I was trip planning to go on Thursday. Does Landstar give away anything cool at their booth(s) to current BCO's?

 

Ok. We run with Panther now and we have to book our own loads on occasion to get out of a dead area or get home. I figured it would be a bit different but not that much. I haven't done a lot of self dispatch but I've done enough to have an idea of how things should work. I ALWAYS include the DH miles into the total mileage (just seemed like the smart thing to do). I wanted the advice of someone who has done this much longer to make sure what I have been doing will work at LS. Thanks for filling in the gaps. We're excited to be coming on and working with some of the best in the business.

 

You get a free lunch but not at the booth. Usually after the lunch/safety meeting you get a hat a pen and misc knick-kacks.

 

Dewey will you grab me a pen? I just spent two days and 1300.00 on a new DPF for the horse. I had to sell my last pen for a bag of top ramen.