Post Gordon ~ Thoughts, Commentary & Reflections

Marketing the Single Truck Operator...

I'm going to play devil's advocate a little bit here...

Seemed clear to me that the Prairie run was about perfect for an O/O. Multiple trips/week, shipper has proven record of good pay. That shipper has other lanes, too. What I'm talking about here is lining up an account and work that account. The comment Yard Boss made about this was because our Indiana shipper always paid timely, despite their schizophrenic nature and because they had the ability to give us lots of work, it worked out. Prairie run paid $1200 plus fuel. 850-900 miles out and back.

Seems really tight with steer tires running $500... but that's trucking. You can see what a difference the outbound loads I found off Truckstop.com made $$-wise. We could (and did) run it empty, too. The outbound loads had brokers, of course. The Prairie run itself did not. We dealt direct.

He's been managing that same yard for freight from that same shipper for 15 years!! Dedicated, expedited trucking. Got something moving 24/7. 20 trucks. I frequently see the Evansville run driver on my KY run, saw him today in town on his way back.

They never loved us. They needed us and relied on us. When a mold broke and parts had to be made in KY, we had all the brass on the dock, top Japanese, top accountant, top manager. They were tense as Hell, and not friendly. Bug-eyed. When I left, one of our interfaces ran up to the truck with a piece of paper, "This is my Boss's phone number. Call him when you get there, if you have any problem down there, etc."

Yard Boss laughed how after that they repeatedly asked for me. But I was taken--committed to Prairie run. Yard Boss thought like a carrier. Knew that he could take a 'not the best' rate and still make out for driver and company where the freight was regular and paid on time.

Our company made zero effort to line up an outbound load. The pickup was in Prairie du Chien and brought back to Indiana. I found, stumbled into, good accounts one even less than a mile from our yard that were shipping along my route that had never been contacted. Never.

Now that's stupid. Really stupid.

Another good option is like Wayne and the O/Os who pull for us. He has 4 years pulling our loads, we keep him busy; he saves company from having to buy a truck and he can cover ground company drivers can't.

Truckers don't think enough about marketing. Too busy driving.

 

Chicken/Egg Issue...

Right now the economy for truckers is chugging along like it hasn't for many a moon. Fuel prices are dropping and will stay low for a while. Just for a while. Trucks are in demand. You kinda hafta have a truck to get loads, get your feet wet and look for either two shippers at opposite ends of the lane you want or some similar triangle.

You kinda hafta have a market to serve before you acquire a truck. Okay, Wayne has our company for 4 years. Cool. He has a good, proven deal. The best Landstar loads are not on the load board. Takes a while for a BCO (Landstar name for O/O who signed up with Landstar and run Landstar loads) to get to know the different Landstar brokers and vice versa.

Met an O/O in Yuma (actually took him across the border to Algodones and introduced him to some good dentists) who ran regularly from Yuma to San Francisco, then--I forget--think it was then to San Bernardino or Victorville part of the load back. Not sure, but he had a very profitable triangle worked out but it required stamina. These were Landstar loads and would never hit load board.

I came to the conclusion that most O/Os are passing right by companies that really need them and would build them a future. But, no. Doing the ships in the night thing for brokered freight.

Could I approach the Prairie run shipper/receiver say, 6 months down the road?? Dunno. Have to have a truck, of course, or the ability to acquire a truck. Dunno. You know, the nice thing about just a company driver is the low cost of entry once you have built up a track record with a CDL, a couple years of experience without serious blemishes.

Pair of gloves, pair of boots, something to hold your lunch, fifth wheel pin puller and voila! Add one steering wheel to hold and there you go. On the other hand. Buy a truck and you've moved up into a whole different level of commitment. You've got the risk. Oh, yeah.

 

30 Years O/O Pulling for Monsanto

There are all sorts of examples of how folks got into trucking in a profitable way and carried on from there. An O/O I met has 7 trucks, drives one himself and pulls mostly exclusively for Monsanto. Guy's a farmer, too, but waste seed loads, soy beans or corn is huge. Actually affects trucking rates on the lane. They move truckload after truckload from the Monsanto plants where unsold seed has been brought back, ship it out to warehouses for storage.

Corn gets burned up in boilers, for example. So from dealers to plant and from plant to warehouse and from warehouse to... ??? Wherever. All 7 of his trucks aren't always moving. He can afford to not run his trucks because of success in the past. Owns them. I couldn't even find out who to talk to at Monsanto, always had to deal with a broker and it changed.

Broker 'A' would have a load and so would Broker 'B'. Same plant. Same product. Some brokers get some loads, other brokers get others. I might see a seed load go off the board. "Oh, I think you're load is gone," I might say. "Oh, no," came the reply. "This is my load. I'm not competing with any other broker for this. This is mine." Okay, fine. Email me a ratecon... (rate confirmation).

I doubt Wayne or any of our drivers--Hell, I doubt Terminal Boss--knows what the company gets for our various runs, KY, St. Louis, Louisville, etc. Yard Boss knew. He negotiated directly with our Indiana customer for loads. Illinois (mother ship) stayed out of it except to yay or nay the underlying deals. At the Haz outfit we were supposed to get 25% of load.

But who knows if they told the truth??

Oh, the trucking game's clear as mud!!

 

Postcards, Postcards...

Bright One is chugging along, Blu and Wayne. Wayne knows his next load is coming from the same outfit that sent him out last time and he usually goes St. Louis, sometimes KY or like recently to Chicago heading into a snow storm. Outbound we have like 10 different destinations and no one else's going to get that work. We have it. Company will roll out more trucks from Indy if needed.

We have the elasticity to do this work on a day's notice which is all we get. A day's notice. 'Here's your loads for tomorrow...' Okay, fine. We just do it. Pretty impressive to do that.

Everything shipped out arrives by truck, too. Mostly majors, ABF, Gordon/Heartland, etc. Is there a need there for some small carrier? Dunno. For the Prairie run outfit's customer, the inbound (like Prairie run) freight was quite diverse. Lots of different companies, large and small. Would a postcard sent every 2 weeks help a small Mon-and-Pop carrier get in the door??

Betcha. Betcha it would.

Because the customer's always sweating getting this from there. Saw them air freight 5 dog food-sized bags, for example. Didn't arrive any faster than might have on a truck. That is, if the truck was ready and available to go.

Overheard exasperated shipper/receiver on phone say, "Oh, hell, no problem. After all, it's only money, right?? So what if it costs a thousand bucks, right?? Not my money. Sure. I'll get it there."

Hey!! That's a load you want. Captain Zoom (I'm baaaack! thread) just delivered 5 pallets for a Gordon customer. What did the driver get?

Same as always.

 

Same as Always

Same as always. Think about that. At least Wayne gets an extra $100 here or there for a job well done. The Gordon part of Heartland/GTI is 2,000 trucks and does lots of JIT (Just In Time). Their contracts with customers probably run 3 years. Dunno. Would like to know, though...

Prairie-run outfit used to have a contract with customer, dispensed with that. Negotiations for equipment and loads have been ad hoc for some time. Might lose an Ohio run and gain Evansville, for example... always some uncertainty about what's next. Their business changes, then yours does, too.

The Haz outfit has a niche and at times can't keep up; at other times gets slow, even goes to brokered loads to keep drivers moving. Or had. Didn't have to when I was there. Never slowed up.

Can Bright One keep chugging along at 55 mph?? Dunno. And keep enough loads to keep 1 truck moving? Well, it'll go with the flow of freight and his ability to sniff out good loads. Would he be better to specialize in one lane, specialize on that? Probably does to some extent. Dunno. Or if he found an account that would keep him rolling, would he gear up for the consistency??

Well, sure. Maybe. He at least should be on the look out. Be sending postcards to all the companies he's pulled freight out of or to over the last years. Probably shouldn't pick up or deliver a load without going in to introduce himself... Tim with Landstar had--not sure if he still does--a very profitable triangle because he had a broker with the work. And that worked.

We're probably back to the 10,000-Hour Rule again. You get started somewhere as O/O and build up a book of brokers and direct customers... I suppose. Dunno. One night a long-time O/O gal was telling me her insurance told her she had so many, many brokers and companies that had requested a setup package (verifies insurance, authority and other due diligence before able to pull load for them) due to her activity over the years.

She was rightly proud of that.

Always went in and introduced herself...

 

Blu hasn't told the story here of how he got to RWI... illustrates the 10,000-Hour Rule (I think) and how the building blocks get put together. He was with England. England!! Met a couple drivers at a shipper, a local and a long haul driver and both seemed to be having fun.

Put that tidbit into his mental rolodex. Later moved from England to Gordon. From Gordon to... RWI!! He reached back to the job he had before Gordon to investigate his best next step from Gordon.

Went to a shop where drivers seemed to have fun.

And so it continues... he's doing it again. Maybe.

Crucial part was separating his financing from where he got loads so he could take the truck with him if he chose to leave. No 'walk-away lease' where you walk-away from your equity with nothing.

 

Very cool story, Denali, one of the consequences (possibly) of W. Edward Deming's JIT (Just in Time) manufacturing. Or that's my hunch. There are just too, too many critical points in making things that a 10-cent plastic part that's not there when it needs be sinks the ship.

But by getting the overall process right, minimizing component inventory all along and throughout the system the snafus are far, far offset by gains in efficiency. Perhaps, perhaps. The craziness, the on-going daily craziness in these operations is palpable. People either just give up trying to makes sense of it or turn mean, trying just to keep their own piece of the puzzle straight and to Hell with everyone else's.

I think you are right to consider a lease or something similar, by the way. Too many doors gonna be closed--unless the Gordon door magically opens back up for you. That would be best. If I were in your shoes, though, I might be playing freight broker somewhere because that's the piece most O/Os lack...

You could do that with an eye to developing a lane. Then, it might be hard to let go making 15% or more for just some phone calls rather than wade back into the fray yourself. Brokers rely on truck drivers like us!!

Just woke up from an odd dream where a big branch has fallen off or come off a tree, knocked my right side mirror off and damaged side of truck and I'm out on the street and around the truck taking pictures with the iPad and wondering who's going to believe that this branch hit me and not vice versa. Truck's out from the curb next to broken lines where it should be... then magically shifts to a couple guys on top of a truck next to me. Go figure.

Earlier I commented how once you separate from company driver and buy a truck you have all this risk--that's true up to a point. What offsets risk is net worth. Here's what I mean: when I had rentals, always had $10K or so free and clear handy. Meant that if a tenant decided to destroy the place, I didn't have to sweat the cost to replace a toilet or do whatever to put the unit back into making money and paying mortgage.

Back then my bank would work with me. So because I had the cash and the lead in my proverbial, didn't even have to use my cash if made sense not to.

It's also where the 10,000-Hour Rule comes in, too, though. There's the joke about how to make a million in trucking--start with 2 million. Go down from there... Trucking's expensive as hobbies go. We have one O/O who the company has financed, apparently repeatedly, has one truck sitting on the yard, broken, and drives another he got that the company had retired.

A little bird told me that he owes the company so much $$ that he's got more job security than any of us...

 

Blair's thread is good, by the way http://www.thetruckersreport.com/tr...268615-journey-begins-purchased-truck-15.html

The oil field closings thread is very, very sobering http://www.thetruckersreport.com/tr...king-forum/270193-oilfield-laying-off-19.html