Mercer orientation

yea well I agree...however I did tell her this was only temporary that I let her run my truck so that I can pick up on her pattern...if I like it then I'll stick with it. If not then to the backseat she goes...
That's not to say I'm not on the loadboard just as much as she is scanning freight. I gave her my preferences so she knows I'm not going certain places unless she's offering $$ I can't refuse. Even then it had better be enough for me to have to deadhead out of there if for some reason I'm having to sit for days or can't find a load out

 

We had a good half an hour talk an I pretty much told her my background so I feel she knows an understands she's not dealing with some guy who's only looking to run as hard as possible for peanuts on the dollar. I see where she refused a lot of different loads that sparked my interest. Some paid decent some wasn't worth the paper it was on. However, I need to get out of the mindset of running for myself.
Some of the places she refused the loads were places I know as a independent entity I could've gotten loads out of there.
But I'm with mercer now an just because there is "outside" brokered freight in a area of interest doesn't mean mercer will have freight there. I still have access to one of my premium load boards an I see where there are 100s of brokered loads in that area but absolutely no mercer brokered loads. I'll be honest it's gonna take a min or two for me to adjust but I'll get it.

 

I did "ok" on my own granted the extremely high overhead I had with running your own authority.
Just with having mercer's insurance alone is gonna put $1100 back in my pocket each month!
Now I will be honest an say that if these companies didn't rip you a new one for trying to make a living running under your own numbers I would've stayed that way.
An I don't even wanna talk about the paperwork side of it. Hell I did more paperwork than I did driving just to stay compliant!
Being an independent carrier isn't a one man show...not even a two man show...
I even had my wife involved with booking an setting up contracts an she has her own 8-5 to deal with so ultimately I didn't shut it down only for the money I shut it down because it was just overwhelming with literature (an super cheap rates) that I didn't care to deal with any longer.

 

Van rates are lower with pretty much any company. I won't put the specifics out there as far as mercer rates are but I can tell ya van rates will never be higher then open deck UNLESS you're some type of specialized unit or something hauling high risk high security freight