mercer transportation

I feel for ya man, I really do. If I weren't a single guy with no family to raise; I wouldn't have made it my first year without seriously neglecting my truck's upkeep. By the way, have you noticed how bad many Mercer trucks look now compared to a decade ago? Sheesh!

I've been with Mercer for 1yr, 6mos, and I'm at a point now where I plan to just run the wheels off my truck this year and try to transfer as much of the equity out of my equipment as possible, then when I have a major breakdown, I will sell everything and go back to company driving, most likely local if I can find it in this crappy economy.

I've found, that an operator who wants to do things right and not cut corners, and also wants to work a normal amount of hours and not be a slave to this industry; that guy can't do that and survive the way things are in trucking. Bottom line, I can't see doing this and doing it right, and for that, taking home less money than a company driver. It's all BS!

And you guys that write off what I'm saying as, "Well, it's your BUSINESS to run, and other guys are doing SOOOO GREAT..." Implying that I'm a ####### for not making money. No, you guys are wrong for not making money, but by miscalculating, overstating, or ignoring the facts of the numbers; you THINK you are making a lot more than you really are making. That's fact.

Company drivers may get fleeced by the company in many ways, but they have no financial risk. As an owner op, we have a huge amount of financial risk, and the carriers and/or brokers and agents do the fleecing instead. At least this is what a college graduate in Management has learned in over a decade in trucking and 1.5 year as a Mercer O/O.

I'm I wrong?

 

I was pointing out he exaggerates the proper length of a week. He also, lost on those loads going in and out of New England, it killed his average with the deadhead out of there, but I never really brought that up.

Basically, he's a Pollyanna, or has a positive bias, which gets himself into trouble, or lures others into trouble.

Why is it so hard for people to just look at numbers without the bias? Are you guys too insecure to say, "Yeah, I was wrong, that crap sucks. I need to change something here."

Why attack the messenger instead for pointing out problems in an effort to make that change?

 

first off, you cant assume it costs flatbed22 1.30 a mile to operate, everyones situation is different.

but even say thats true, flatbed 22 is happy, is running like he wants and seems to be consitently generating revenue.

and you CAN book loads ahead consistently. to do this takes only a couple of things, working the load board and have a set idea of what your targt load rate is.

i see a lot of guys who wont book ahead because they are afraid something better will come up 6 days away. if ya see one live can live with take it and dont look back.

right now , i am booked ahead til next friday i deliver orlando mon, del columbus oh wed and havelock,nc on friday next week. i had all that booked by thursday this past week, i started looking for a load out of nc thursday as soon as i had all this booked, i can almost guarantee i will have that one booked before lunch on monday.



last week i delivered north of panama city at the 231 and i-10 junction (cross ties to the railroad 2 miles south of the loves dropped right beside us231) at the loves a guy who leased in december was sitting and had no loads no calls from the coordinator etc. he was very disappointed, he didnt really know how to properly look at the loadboard, i went over it with him over lunch and by 2 oclock he was booked on a panama city load to texas and then 15 minutes later he was prebooked on a load out of houston at 1.80 with 22,000 of pipe to nj


he was very happy as it would get him home and he hadnt been there since leasing on. some of you will still pick that apart, but my point is here was a guy who said he couldnt get ANY load, was ready to give up and 1 1/2 hour later had a whole new outlook. he also called and a talk with contractor relations and a convo with the coordinator.


kmx7022, i know you are frustrated in all this, but you seem to be taking posts the wrong way. oscarkw posted a page or two ago he had changed his operating procedures and things are working better, i have changed mine also. i havent been using the same parameters time after time. i also dont depend on my coordinator exclusively.

i do things perhaps differently than some, heres an example my target for all miles is 2.00 , but that isnt set in stone. heres an example, if i take a load to houston it will pay over 2.00 or i dont book it, then on the way out there if i can book a load for a 1.70 (avg rate out of houston) i take it if going to a decent area and get the heck out of dodge.

now whose better off long term , the guy who goes out to baytown sits for 4 to 5 days waiting for the majic load that probablay wont happen , gets peed off, and finally takes a load for 1.70 . or me who took the buck seventy, delivered and had another 1 or 2 loads delivered while the other guy just loaded?


one thing i have learned in 33 years on the road this business constantly changes, you have to change with it. having tunnel vision and one specific way of navigating the waters will doom you.

what i post is straight up, i have nothing to gain from bullcrapping anyone. i only post this to possibly help someone whos trying to find a way to make things work. first thing one has to do is open their mind to change.

i talkied with a guy at louisville this week and heres a part of his story ...... " when i went to laredo i sat their for seven days, the loads were cheap but guys still came in and loaded them, i finally took one after 7 days and left ...... then next time i went to laredo i sat for 5 days before i took a load...... then i went to edmonton and sat, then i went to edmonton again and sat.....""" you see what i mean??? when i was a kid i burned myself on a hot stove, i only did it once. i know kids who have kept grabbing hot stoves many times.

the moral is, look at what you are doing and tweak it, the way is there find it. read these pages , take someones advice and dont assume somebody drove out from under their trailer with the airlines still attached,lol


and me , my airlines are mounted from back of the truck to tl underneath with quick disconnects and also with quick disconnects behind the cab still in case i get towaway, i also carry 2 spares airlines with quick connects and 2 gladhands with quick connects them.

and if i can ask, kmx why cant you book loads ahead? what seems to be happening where you cant?

 

Oh, I make money, I wouldn't still be here if I was losing money. The problem is, how much time do I spend making that money? Is that money compensating not just my labor and time, but is it compensating my capital investment in equipment and the risk to that capital? These are huge issues that are to often ignored by guys without a clue to assessing the unseen, or not so obvious, aspects of business. It'll catch them though.

No, I can't assume it costs him exactly $1.30 a mile to operate; but it's pretty darn close. And, it doesn't matter if his equipment is paid off or not, there is still a cost for the use of that equipment. If you have everything paid off, like I do, and you neglect to hold money aside to replace that equipment, then you are simply sucking equity out of equipment and calling it profit. If you plan to stay in this business you must make enough money to replace equipment AND pay yourself. Regarding paying myself, in order to be happy, I need to make more than $40 to $50K a year. I can do that working for many OTR companies. There are also a quite a few local and regional outfits where I can do that.

That tired old line about, "...everyone's situation is different..." really irks me the wrong way. It's BS! We aren't very far apart except in whether we value our capital risk, whether we account for equipment replacement and save money in escrow for it, and probably also where we buy fuel. Fuel is a big cost. Mine is typically mid .60s per mile. The fuel surcharge doesn't cover all of it, being around .50 just on paid miles. Deadhead can also be another factor but not usually too far away from 20%.

By the way, is there an emoticon for beating my head against a wall? Because that's how I feel much of the time when talking business with truckers who jsut don't want to see it.

 

i have been at mercer for 2 years , i did over 200,000 on 104,000 loaded and empty in 2011. i did 184,000 on 95,000 miles this year. this year i took 9 seprate times off of one week to 10 days for different things, kids hs graduation, basic traing grad , airborne school etc, 1o days once to build horse corral and put metal roof on my house.

my truck hasnt been neglected, i do fine and am content. i avg 6.3 mpg with a c-15 cat. i work the load board like crazy, my wife who homeschools our youngest, looks at board at every chance.

the differences on this thread are the normal differences you find anywhere thru life.

some folks that make 50,000 a year live like kings, the guy next door is in a constant struggle. they make different decisions.

two guys the same model truck at same time, one runs forever, and the other falls apart . they made different decisions.

its the same here , guys make different decisions, spend their money on different things, do things differently, and end up in different places.

the guys that never change, keep making the same decisons when things are going bad, stop learning new things when things are going good, will ultimately fail or stay in a constant struggle.

i have done well and am very satisfied here after 2 years.

its like the guys who sit and complain about taking loads to west coast and sitting for a week , what do they do when they reload to the east coast, they reload to the west coast and sit and complain for another week, and they do this all year long. but then as they say, i like running west coast.

and brodgers , your response is a cop out.

some of us are making money, i been at this for 33 years , i havent starved yet.

 

rockyroad74, i have managed to survive 33 years in trucking, i have been owner op for 24 years of it. i raised 5 kids, bought an paid for 90 acres of land, and built my own house. my personal life is debt free, i got a pretty good handle on the business end of it.

my point is everyone is different is people spend money in different ways, they maintain equipment differently, they have different maintenance costs, they have different hobbies and personal finances etc. those all figure into how a person views the money he is making and his happiness.

the fact is you could give 5 people a paid for new truck , apaid for trailer , and the pick of any load before any other driver, and a 50,000 maint fund each and in 2 years one guy would be way ahead of the others one would doing great , one would be holding his own aand the other two would be belly up, the 50 grand gone and the equipment in shambles.

 

For the record. I said I made lemonade. Meaning i made the best of a bad decision. I didn't listen to skateboardman and not go to that area.
I still made money and it beats sitting and going into the negative.

I would do it again. When they plow all the roads first.lol

 

I'm too lazy to go back and look, but I read a new tractor leased on has to be able to scale so much. Is there any leeway on that if you have a APU and ramp/bridge system on your tractor and trailer? What if you have two trailers, can you have one inspected to qualify for weight and the other gets a free pass or do both have to qualify for weight? How is Texas for freight? Maybe not now, but as an average for the year? How are they going to handle 2005 trucks and California?

 

Maybe there something I'm not understanding.....

I hear of drivers sitting in Cali for a week because "there are no loads", but I'm seeing a bunch of freight for $1.79 - $2.10 a mile going to various parts of the country.

I understand that I would have to wait in line, but once the load hits the contractor web, I was thinking that load is fair game.

I would take a "cheap" load out of Cali for $1.79 a mile, but that load is 1300 miles long which makes up the difference.

Am I missing something?

 

As far as the weight goes, its a bunch of bs, no way they are actually sticking to that. Everytime I'm in Louisville they are putting on atleast one new big house. If you want to use both trailers they will both have to be inspected, and unless your empty weight is absurdly high, you should have nothing to worry about. Texas outbound freight is horrible right now, Thursday night I did a statewide search and it only showed 3 loads and one ltl. Plenty of freight going there tho. Not sure what the deal is down there, maybe we lost an agent or something. Last year it was pretty good getting back out of Texas, second half of 2011 i was down there almost weekly, and come back out with really good rates. So far this year I won't go in there unless the load going in pays for a bounce back out. Len wrote a blog awhile back about CA, basically said that we really should consider ungrading equipment to meet emision standards. I am not going to worry about it, when my tags are renewed next month I will not even be registered anything west of Texas, not worth it here, in my opnion they just don't have the freight out there, not worth it.