OOIDA petitions Elaine Chao/Jim Mullen.

Shippers and receivers need to be made aware of these margins! They’d soon realize for the excessive amounts they’re giving to the brokers on just a few loads, they could afford to salary a handler to manage their loads in house. If the system were more organized, brokers would never even be needed, much less let them pocket more per load then you get for doing all the work and taking all the risks.

It might just be me, But I’ve always had a problem with “fast talkers” as well and people who make money simply by moving paper around off the backs of others. Realtor etc, just rub me the wrong way! You don’t need to pay someone $25,000 to sell your house in this day and age anymore than you need to allow a broker to take more of the cut then you’re getting simply to move some paper around from their couch while sitting in their bathrobe at home!

 

So let’s say you’re a shipper that moves a decent amount of loads every week. You’ve been using a broker because you don’t want to deal with hundreds of drivers to move your product and it’s convenient to you. Through all of this “transparency” you find out he’s been moving your $4k loads all year long for an average of $3k. When it comes time to renegotiate are you going to say “Let’s stay at $4k but you need to pay the truckers more” or will you the shipper start your negotiations closer to the $3k mark to save yourself some money? You as a profit minded businessman will start your negotiations a lot lower, cutting the profit the broker makes, while the rate to the trucks will remain about the same. The loads move for what they love for. Knowing what the shippers pay won’t magically make the rate to the truck go up simply for the fact that someone will haul it for less than someone else is willing to haul it for.

When I was running flatbed most of the mills had a carrier list for the regional and maxi trucks and the long haul truckload stuff was brokered out. Plum Creek used to list their truckload loads on the load boards themselves but got tired of dealing with guys not showing up, etc. So eventually they started emailing the maxi loads to the direct carriers and every truckload load would go on one list and was emailed to CH Robinson. And it was out of their hair. Sometimes the big shippers also want convenience when it comes to moving their product.

 

Why would I give a #### if you hauled a load I was willing to pay 2k to have moved for 800 dollars from the broker? That's your problem not mine.

 

LoL. Thats the first yash and stash joke ive heard in 30 yrs. My grandmother is from poland.

 

Many drivers keep making claims, unsubstantiated claims, that the brokers are keeping too much money. Where is their evidence? These types of owners remind me of the company drivers that spend so much time at the terminal instead of running, and they make claims about certain office people that dont know who they are. These threads have beaten this horse to death. The owners that know what they are doing either adjusted the business model, or parked. The clueless ones with no capital are begging for government intervention or protesting like idiots. How about a government regulation that limits how many people or what types of people can buy a truck and get their own authority?

 

Another thing worth mentioning here.....my wife went to the grocery store to buy ground beef. These prices were astronomical. Is this price gouging because of coronavirus? Who's buying the mest at these prices? Farmers are having to euthanize livestock, pour milk down the drain, etc due to overcapacity. Do you seem them selling it for less just to move it? In theory, you would think that prices would go down when they have too much, but they are losing money too. It's the money game.

 

Zoink! Is that the price for 1lb packages. Haven’t bought ground beef for months before this whole thing broke out. That’s the price for a decent fillet mignon about a year ago.

 

Those look to be roughly 2.5/lb packages so about $6.99/lb.