Posting For Good and Bad Brokers

Thank you for the honesty

 

Spyder You really do not know the commission side on produce or seafood side this I can already tell. You really do not know food

 

So how does produce work? I don't haul it. Too much wasted time and potential headache. Don't haul any fresh seafood either. Maybe occasional frozen seafood. I have heard people say the real money is to be buying and selling the produce you're hauling. That probably is some very good money. But also the potential for headache too.

 

It all depends what you haul and what produce broker you work with. Most of my seafood I pull out of the Gulf area and Seattle. $4 and$ 5 miles good rate today. It's no different than anything else have to have good equipment. I've done a little bit of everything moved heavy equipment run flat beds spread axles dry vans. I enjoy working with farmers my reefers have always done well. And I don't care what kind of produce it is your hauling if it's coming across the border, California or Florida I don't care the brokers making some bucks. When I 1st started driving a truck I used to work for a company called Valley Trucking out of lower Texas. That was the good days we used to make a killing

 

Hmm, I can get rates like that on regular one and one refrigerated loads when the produce is moving. Even multistop to different grocery warehouses and cold storages is good then. It's been a struggle to do it so far this spring but I'm pretty sure that won't last. I did some produce last year and didn't care for it. Like people say you either like it or hate it.

 

Produce is an excempt commodity. Meaning no truck brokerage authority needed. There are also produce brokers that buy from the packers and sell to the grocery store or market. Lots of regular truck brokers do produce, but the real money is when the produce broker is also the truck broker. They get the commission on both ends.

As far as trucking rates go there is good money to be made, but just like every other segment you got guys pulling for well under market rates crying about cheap brokers.
I was talking to the guy i buy hay from a few days ago and he mentioned his buyer said truck rates are expected to outrageous this year for watermelons. 5k to Cleveland and Chicago was mentioned. It's good money but you got to be careful, if it takes the pickers extra time to get them out of the field due to rain or mud you are gonna be sitting the waiting and detention time is not going to be paid. If you want to try produce melons is a good place to start simply cause they aren't nearly as sensitive as something like strawberries. Strawberries pay better but you gotta be on top of them temping them and checking quality.

 

Next year this time if your having a hard time starting in the Middle of March to the end of April you can start getting seedling potatoes out of Atkinson Nebraska that goes out to Idaho and Oregon for planting pays about $5.50 a mile.

 

Dude they deserve MORE money on some kinds of produce and Seafood. You don't understand this fully (because honestly it's very hard to understand this fully until a customer tells you that you own a 180k load of beef because it was two days late... and he owes you 275k), but those are high value exempt commodities. The broker is lending the customer hundreds of thousands of dollars in freight receivables that serve as collateral should something go wrong... with a load of seafood.

They honestly have no idea how much money they are making until they've been at it a few years. The first brokerage I ever worked for almost put itself out of business hauling meat... twice.

One of the big things brokers HAVE to charge for is risk. On highly perishable valuable loads the broker is going to have to sue YOU for the money if something goes wrong. Their chances of collecting in full on a 200k load of seafood aren't good. If the customer decides to #### them over it might turn off their lights if they can't stick the claim on you. Your insurance company will not be helping, which means that one claim could theoretically bankrupt a smaller brokerage AND a smaller trucking company.

If you're moving low value commodities you're lying about the margins. If you're moving high value commodities, um yeah my viewpoint on those commodities is that I won't move them for any price... And I've probably made 50% of my career earnings moving low value produce around at sub 10% margins.

 

That area is so far off of my lanes. In 18 years I have never once been thru nor even close to Oregon. Drove thru Nebraska a handful of times many years ago on some trips to SLC. Have never delivered or loaded there. Totally clueless about the freight up there and that's never a good thing where rates are concerned.

 

The northwest is very similar to Florida with a reefer, hit it during produce and plant season and you can get a good load back out. If you go in the off-season plan on a long empty bounce out.