Newbie question about trucking industry

You got all correct, but one.
Insurance company's don't care who you have for a driver as long as you have say like 5+ trucks.
I run into this every year, if you pay the insurance company's enough money, they will not bother you at all.

 

Would that be the most profitable option?. Easy and hassle free, sure, but if you are going broke in the process, easy and hassle free are no longer priorities or even options.

There is a reason that thousands of car dealers still hire salespersons and don't advertise their lowest possible selling price. It's a decades old practice and while a few new car companies/dealer (Tesla comes to mind) have done away with the traditional car sales model, sales negotiation clearly still works or the others would have followed suit and saved themselves a fortune on sales team commission and salaries.

 

I can't think of cars as anything *other* than a commodity to be bought and sold.

I have model X for sale, you want model X to buy. I want to get as much for the car as possible and you want to get it as cheaply as you can. If profit is a priority, it would be stupid of me to tell you upfront my lowest possible selling price just as it would be stupid for you to tell me your highest possible purchase.

What we are left with is a negotiation for the exchange of a commodity. I think it is the same for cars or cantaloupes or candlesticks.

 

I have often thought of this or something similar, but alas it is above my technical ability.

One thing I would like to see, even though it would eliminate brokers and (again) it's way above my ability. I would like to see a load board of and by owner operators. Where if you do business direct with a customer and they ask you to haul a load and you can not haul it, you can refer the load to a peer. This way a small company can still offer great service (even when they can not haul the load). Perhaps the other carrier would pay you a finders fee or something.

We kind of have that now with many larger carriers having a brokerage of their own, but it's flawed.

On the car lots with the prices on them, it has been discussed by financial people on the radio and I think I heard you pay a premium to not have to negotiate. So negotiations do help the driver if they know what they are doing.

 

I wish more people realized this. They are playing the selfish short game.

All the regulations out there, all the restrictions, all the pay is based on the total amount of freight being moved. Everyone that cheats on logs today, cheats themselves and everyone else tomorrow.

Every single rate and restriction is based off of the (faulty) math.

 

Ha. My logbooks are always legal ................. When I filled them out at the end of the week

 

Hey, as long as they actually were legit, and DOT didn't ask for them in the mean time, I think that is borderline OK. lol

But when X% of drivers are somehow moving X amount of freight, now all drivers are going to be judged by that.

Think of it as steroids in (pick your sport). The guys that don't get caught make the guys who are not cheating look bad, and win the big contracts - literally stealing that money from the other guys. The new standards for performance have been set by those breaking the rules.