Mercer's new load board

My business partner was Brett. He found me a halfway decent brokered load heading east out of Phoenix once when there was nothing on our board to be had. But mostly I just called him if I had a question about d/h windows or something. They recently sent out an email saying they found that a lot of freedom drivers were being dispatched by their business partners and that it needed to stop, but I was never part of that racket. Thought maybe that's what you were referencing.

Help me understand this? Are you saying freights a bit thin a week out? or that you can still book a week out even though freight is thin overall?

Not leasing. Buying thru Lone Mountain. They hosed me hard but I've survived so far.

Thats not bad. Definitely surviveable. If I plug my cost per mile into your gross, I come up with $7900 net. I also started around 1.30 at Interstate but worked hard on upping that average despite the slim pickings available. Actually the one repair-free month I had there I was able to net $7100 on $15000 gross. That was on about 8600 miles but taking zero home time. Came in handy, as I had spent more than that in repairs the month prior. Trial by fire I guess, or an inexpensive education. I was on my way back out west to see if I could replicate those type of numbers when they announced that they were pulling the plug. Luckily I hadn't crossed the rockies yet. But I feel like I was just starting to get in the groove.

Pff. Maybe not. On the other hand, a Jarhead may be worth more than a nonjarhead. Especially in such a dangerously naive culture. Hats off to you both, good sirs.

 

OK from other reading I think I'm starting to understand that the agents at Mercer each handle their own region? So this would mean you're staying mostly within a couple regions you're familiar with? or near home or whatever?

 

Yeah I didn't get a lot of that, but then again I didn't really want it either. Would rather learn how to figure it out myself. Trying to go from nothing to having my own truck, trailer and authority in 3 years. That's why I started in reefer instead of ez-mode dryvan, and also why I went from there to Interstate instead of to ez-mode Schneider.

Put it this way. Western Express has a bunch of 2013 Cascadias. Most are OK but one got wrecked hard, like all upside down and sideways with the trailer on top. So they have it towed back to their body shop and have their laziest grease monkey slap it back together as halfassedly as possible. They make it look halfway decent, then lump it together with 99 other regular fleet Cascadias with regular fleet maintenance, and sell this batch of 100 Cascadias to Lone Mountain.

That wrecked one is the one I got. And the price for this one was higher than most because of the low miles. But the miles were low because it spend 6 months being rebuilt. I did my research, but because it was an in-house job there's no record of any problem with the VIN. When LM learns of the bent frame and bad kingpins, loose and missing bolts and bad bushings and whatnot, do they help a recently homeless guy out? shave off a couple payments, knock the price down to the same as the rest of the unwrecked batch? Nope, they do absolutely nothing. I've spent twice as much on repairs as on the payments themselves - over ten grand in six months just fixing stuff that was wrong with it when I got it.

The stuff like the bent frame and bad kingpin are one thing but there's so many stupid little hassles that need to be diagnosed. At least 3 dozen loose and missing bolts have been found so far. One of the bolts holding one of the steer shocks was loose, like not even close to being tight. Another time I start getting a bad knock sometimes when I hit a bump. Sounds like really bad news from the suspension but nobody can figure out what it is. Turns out there's a plastic fender panel that is supposed to be held on with 2 bolts and one of them is missing, so it bounces. It's a 60 second fix, but its an entire day in the shop to figure out what's wrong.

Some people might call it an expensive mistake, but at this point I'm still able to see it as inexpensive higher education. Going in with my cost of living being near zero, I figured I could afford to boom straight for o/o, learn on the fly, make expensive mistakes and still keep myself afloat. So far so good. There's still some nagging issues but it looks like the worst is over.

 

Oops, I didn't realize that post had got so long. My bad.