new too the business, how to find good freight

Good luck took me a year to make money....

 

Be careful about thinking about brokers that way.

1) It will make it easier for you to mentally justify bad behavior. Bad behavior that will end up posted on IT, DAT, and/or TIA. These bad marks + a new MC are pretty much fatal. Having to do your first year again with a new MC will cost you a lot just in insurance.

2) They will be able to tell you don't like/trust them at all and they will make decisions accordingly. I have pretty strict carrier selection guidelines.. that I constantly violate when I get a good feeling about someone. With this kind of attitude I won't get that good feeling and I won't use you. You may think you're slick, but that slickness will create it's own kind of vibe... A vibe I've felt plenty of times before and associate with #### trucks.

None of this is to say that there aren't plenty of crap brokers out there who will do you wrong. It's just that you shouldn't be doing business with these sorts of characters more than once, and you should be doing a LOT of business with brokers you actually like. As a % of your loads the actual numbers of '#### this guy' loads should be pretty low. If you feel like all brokers are scumbags who are out to get you you're doing something wrong.

I've definitely seen this exact phenomenon on the brokerage side as well. There are lots of brokers who pretty much only look for the cheapest possible truck and think all trucking companies are the scum of the earth. They feel this way because the only people who will work with them suck. It's a sickness.

 

That 4.9 mpg is going to kill you I think. A new truck today like the company truck I'm driving now get 7.8 mpg. The national fuel charge is based on something like 6.5 mpg. That mean if fuel goes up you losing even more money because you can't even keep up.

A $2.25 a gallon and 5 mpg that's $0.45 cents per mile for fuel. $2.25 at 7.8 is $0.28 cents per mile. Drive 120,000 miles a year at $0.45 that's $54,000 for fuel or $0.28 for 120,000 miles is $33,600. That's a lot of profits going out the exhaust. That's how people can move freight cheaper then you and still make money.

 

As sad earlier fuel mileage is killing your profits.Be careful about buying in to broker bashing as some like to do ,I really doubt a lot even pull broker freight .when I ran for brokers I found some really good ones ,but the major brokers it's hard to get those good paying loads ( TQL,land star,CH )and so on so I would only use if I needed to get to a certain area.)Gokiddogo gave good advice keep track of brokers and loads from them work with ones giving good loads build a relationship. Everything is sales can you sale your services,maybe you hate brokers but you decided to go in business where your lively hood is on them they the broker are your customers .Its not easy negotiating brokers they are almost always better at negotiating than you simply because that's what they do all day everyday with shippers and then again with carriers.know what you need to make money

 

$4900 in 4 days isn't bad depending on how many miles you did. Rates now are decent so if you think the rates are cheap now wait until they fall back down again.

 

I'm not a big fan of trading soley based on fuel mileage. Make sure you aren't stepping over a dollar to pickup a dime. Figure out the difference in mpg between what you have and what you're looking at buying. Then see what the additional difference in price is to trade. If it's gonna take 3+ years to break even, it really doesn't make any sense.