mercer transportation

You might be right, I don't come to Texas enough to know the rates here or the load availability. I do know that if I wanted a load from Houston to Chicago tho, I'd have to run for less than $2 mile and that's not cool !!!

 

Trucking is easy when their are no equipment payments..... I'm working on that lol

It seems that I do better mainly because I stick to specialty freight and Oversize loads. If I stuck to just steel and general freight, my numbers would be much lower. I also try to only work 3 days a week if I can.

 

it works out in the end, say 2.60 to the truck from chicago to houston and even at 1.70 from houston back to chicago, you still got a 2.15 a mile avg to the truck. turn and burn

 

When it comes to fleet avg.. I really think that is loaded miles... I mean how do they really know how much we dead head to come up with a true average??.. The dead head the contractor board spits out on a load is air miles, only the loaded miles are somewhat close and I use that term loosely...

 

i can tell you skateboard man doesnt care what it is or pretty much even where.it.goes as long as it pays. if it pays he hauls it. thats how he gets the numbers. hes a cranky old man with more energy then me. lol. most guys have their "list" i dont go here, i dont haul this, i dont tarp, i dont work mondays. . . whatever. he doesnt do that. and he yelled at me for coming to CA.

he will pick up and deleiver a load evey day. me personally i like a load that will be on my truck a few days but i am fat and out of shape from pulling vans. heck i am still sore from loading and tarping this load on friday

 

I can't imagine throwing chains for those kind of numbers. My low month is $14K to the truck and high is $23K in a month period slamming doors on a van. Hardly ever run more than 2,000 hub miles a week home just about every night picking spot freight off contacts I've made via loadboards. I've taken off 14 weeks this year already.

 

I tell people that every week I see box freight paying more than flats, it's also why I sold my flatbed in 06 to get a stepdeck they paid about $.50 more a mile over flats now they pay the same and more people want flats than steps

 

Yeah Skateboardman, I'm starting to see things this was as well. I've been only doing searches for loads paying over $2.50 mile and I do alright, but I'm starting to look at the entire picture of a round trip and as along as I can avg $2 mile to the truck, I'm doing good.

 

Flightline, hearing you say that is surprising to me. From my conversations with Mercer drivers I get the impression that Skateboardman is on the low side. I would not send so many people to Mercer if I thought they couldn't make $15-20K a month on 2,000 miles a week. I would tell them to come over here and swing doors. My van guys make that but I figured with flats at Mercer you have the ability for more upside.

 

your talking averages. problem with averages is you have to include thr lazy and the incompetant. i have been happy but i will say last week was way off from what i saw my first two weeks. as for the long term nothing but time will tell.
mercer in my opinion suffers from one of the same problems landstar does. the system itself attracts the lazy. not to say these guys with the huge sleepers are all lazy but alao they are set up to spend their time sitting waiting for the loads they want