new too the business, how to find good freight

Those next day reefer loads you should be doing 3.00 and up. What is your fuel cost per mile, pre ifta? If you start looking at it like that you will come up with the smartest way to buy fuel. Easy to quickly save money by where you buy it. Do you have yourself on a decent discount card yet?

 

You need to do 2 things
1. Get a fuel card. The choice one of this forum is nastc. Search and read up on it. There are other choices, but get yourself on one of them. You are buying fuel in a very expensive way. Learn how the discounts work and price you will be paying and also learn how ifta works so you can plan where your cheapest fuel stops are.
2. Create a short list of brokers who have regular freight in your lanes. You will start off with lots, but keep track of who is best to deal with for your business, use them the most. Don't rely on any one for loads back and forth. Typically they will screw you. Even the good ones will. You don't talk about the return load. You talk about the first load, none of that "round trip" crap. Often the return falls apart and you are the loser. Don't get yourself hosed.

 

It is a dog eat dog business. Knowing markets is probably the single most important part of doing it all.

Your truck should at least be in the 5.5 to 6.0 range most of the time. Unless you do a lot of idling or you like to cruise at 85 mph.
I have a 2016 389 (also a brick) and that's about what I get with 500 cummins and doing reefer work mostly 78-80,000. If I break 6 that's a good day. I don't measure every tank though, I play the fuel game more often than I'd like with this unit.

 

Come to Indiana. For the next week at least the money will be pretty silly.

 

There are some good apps that will help with your fuel choices and they show pre ifta. I think nastc only has 2 classes a month of I remember correctly, so get enrolled now might take a couple weeks to get in.

 

Did you have work lined up before you went into the business and it fell through. Or did you buy a truck and trailer then look for loads? It will be very important to find your work now, b/c it will become tougher in 4 months when refer freight is 1.65 per mile on load boards.