mercer transportation

Duddie keep in touch and best of luck.

 

U know it... Unless i get a call from flatbed guy within the next few weeks I'm out... I'm doing good here but I'm sacrificing time from my newborn and its killing me.. Figure doing flatbed I wouldn't have to really be gone for so long.. But i don't know why @CJndaTruck would reply to a post I made on another section and bring it to this section. I'm not really understanding..I guess it was too much to reply on the section you found the post on.. Not that i have anything to hide or anybody to answer to.. Just find it kind of weird

 

LOL I was wondering about that myself...

 

Oh crud. TBH I had two pages open. I grabbed a soda out of the fridge and posted in the wrong page. My bad @duddie

 

If a guy goes out and buys a brand new w9 with a 2600 dollar a month payment, nobody says anything to him about having to pull cheap freight to make the payment. But a new guy comes over with an lp truck that has a 600 a week payment and a lot of people say he has to pull cheap freight cause he can't afford to sit. Now I realize things have changed since I went to school, but 2600 is still 2600 and it doesn't matter if it's once a month or every Friday.

As for the atmosphere, nah it hasn't changed. before the quality trucks people were #####ing about all the new hires and its gonna kill the rates. Now they blame the quality trucks. A new guy is a new guy and it doesn't matter where our how he got his truck. . It's the same old story since the Roman empire days of shipping by horse drawn wagons.

As for people playing with rates. That isn't agents. They work on percentage just like we do. That's the customer. Happens in this industry all the time. they do a cattle call by emailing a load list out to a dozen carriers. Our agent posts the load at our rate, a driver accepts load. agent calls or emails customer confirming we have a truck for x rate. Customer responds, carrier quoted 300 $ less, if you match it you can have the load. so now agent calls driver saying the rate was cut, do you still want it. Driver gets pissed at agent and blames new guys in a quality truck.

the reality is we have almost no control over rates. And neither does our agents or the people in Louisville. The only thing that controls rates is how many trucks are operating in a region vs how many loads are getting shipped from that region. It's industry wide, not how many Mercer trucks. How many for hire trucks total. Two and three years ago there was more loads than trucks so rates were high. it was very easy to make money and every big carrier was buying or leasing on as many trucks as they could and thousands of tom dicks and harry's with no experience in trucking bought trucks and shiny new dot#'s. eventually the trucks caught up to the loads so rates went stagnant, and even dropped a bit. That was last year. Then this year comes and there are less loads. A LOT less. literally less than half the loads. But the number of trucks has grown in leaps and bounds. Do you really think customers are willing to pay the same rate to ship product when there is double the capacity and half the volume?

ge, caterpillar, the dod, lockheed martin, just a few of the big guys that set the tone for the rest. These guys are very sophisticated and have entire departments of smart educated people watching market dynamics. They know they can get their product speed for less money so they tell their carriers(Mercer being just one of dozens) that they are cutting rates. We can agree, or we can not haul their loads and let land star pick up the slack. does anyone expect an agent or Louisville to tell Lockheed Martin we don't want the freight and they can give all the loads to our competitors?

The good news, eventually enough tom dick and harry's go out of business and large carriers that stopped buying replacement trucks that we reach stagnant rates. Capacity matches volume. Then when freight volume increases in another two to three years, we ride the wave up till capacity catches up and we repeat the same cycle.

 

Spider, you are dead on . I had guys in the driver room tell me 5 years ago hiring us on was going to kill the rates and number of loads. There was 6 of us and i was the only flat. And someone mentioned Pete, and his 1.46 cents

I dont see it. Its guys who panic, who dont adapt to change, and refuse to change and adapt. I am having my best year of the 5 I have been here, I have changed lanes , areas etc etc many times this year. I also sit at night and look at different on load board, and I always ask my coordinator how many trucks are already in an area and how many loads have left that area before I take one

 

Amen brother

 

Finding something close. And being a hotbed are 2 different things

 

Supply and demand ALWAYS drives the market. It doesn't have to be trucking and shipping rates, it is the force that drives everything with a dollar sign next to it

 

I wonder why no one thinks some of those guys are leaving cause they are running to a no elog place,, lol