Picking my own freight baby! My journey to & of being on Schneider choice, the Adventure & Numbers!

Transwest absolutely is the worst. When I was still a company driver, we had to take the truck there for service several times and we never got it back on time. Allfleet in Denver also kept us sitting around. Rush Peterbilt in Denver is another nightmare. Drop your truck off and MAYBE they'll be REALLY NICE and call you in a week to say someone even looked at it. I've been incredibly lucky in finding a local, independent shop in Denver. A guy who'll actually work on weekends. I'll avoid the dealership shops as best I can, though the new Peterbilt in Hays, KS on I-70 has been good to me the couple of times I've had issues on the road.

 

Freightwipper I was wondering how you are doing over there at SNI with the slow down in freight.

I am currently leased to Landstar and I am very frustrated with the terrible freight rates. The bigger problem is that most of their loads are brokered loads so the broker gets their cut before Landstar takes their 35%. LS doesn't have that many customers that they pull dedicated for. Many of the loads that I have hauled over the last 9 months that I have been with them are Schneider loads. I know from those loads that Schneider has good rates. I recently took a load of appliances that paid $1200 for 506 miles. The BOL said that the original load paid $1500. By the time I get my cut I made $825, almost half of what the load originally paid. Anyways, enough about my rant.

I live in Arlington TX and I see a ton of Schneider truck on I20 and I35 in Texas. I also see that P&G built a new warehouse south of Dallas and the only trailers on their lot are orange. Dedicated customers are better than brokered loads any day. I am considering making the switch to orange. I have a new Volvo 780 and a big truck payment. I can no longer afford the 10K gross revenue that I am currently making. I have to be home 1st, 3rd, 5th weekends of the month and that cuts into my run time.
I like short run because it has a higher profit margin and I like running in and around Texas. I just want to know that I can make more than $12K gross running this area. (that's $7800 to the truck on 7k miles) I am a person who runs my butt off and is usually first in line at the receiver first thing in the morning. (I learned that doing fcfs flatbedding). I really love d&h, especially if I can do several in a day. I have been doing mostly short run Texas stuff until it all dried up.
Any advice that you can give me on Schneider would be appreciated.
Peace and Prosperity

 

You can figure that Schneider brokerage is taking the same cut off of the top before Schneider takes their 35%, so that's probably a wash there. From there I guess the question is of convenience/which system is easier to manage

 

@Shadowsknight. I would stay put. Check out the Landstar thread its some good info there. You don't make any since here.

 

Contact this guy @KE5WDP . He may be willing to give you some texas knowledge. Believe he runs it exclusively.

 

Wipper doesn't run Texas although that never stops him from having an opinion on it. Yes you can do pretty good staying regional. But there are also a lot of crap rates down here too. Once you know the customer base its a good market.