Posting For Good and Bad Brokers

hi I got dispatching and I got my money in 24 hours great service

 

Good:
Brenny Transportation MC#: 303059
Saint Cloud, MN.

 

"The King of Freight"...Wichita, Ks.

Here's why I think they STINK on ice;

Just returned from a 16 day adventure from New England to New Jersey, North Carolina, St. Louis, Pharr, Tx.,Chicago, Wisconsin... Va., to home arriving Thanksgiving evening back at the house. My boy and I (he's 28, also drives,) decided let's get outa town for a while and go do some neat stuff. We achieved everything we set out to do, from visiting Nashville a whole day Saturday 11-11-17, to stopping at 4 States Trucks in Joplin, Mo., to Gas Monkey Garage, Fired Up garage, and ASM Upholstery in Dallas the following Saturday. That was the mission, to spend quality time together for once, see some cool stuff and of course...try and make a little money. But when dealing with these greedy butt brokers, that's not possible.

We unloaded in Fenton, Mo. and reloaded a Cat grader in Springfield, Mo. and delivered it in Pharr, Tx. (McAllen) Wednesday 11-15-17, and that was a brokered load that paid fairly well and I was content with the whole experience. We arrived and unloaded in Pharr, got a motel 6, a big plate of Mexican food and a couple beers and were a couple of happy campers. The gal I use to do my dispatching called that evening and said that the rates coming up out of that area were putrid (no surprise there,) but there was this one load of 3 forklifts....one loaded right there 2 miles from our motel, the other 2 were up in Houston....all going to the same place in Elk Grove Village, Ill. The load paid $1,350.00 and ended up being 1597 miles in the end, advertised as 1400 miles. I always figure 10-15% more miles than they say anyways.

At first my natural reaction was to tell them to shove it. No way do I haul cheap freight. Then the reality of deadheading 400 or more miles set in, thinking about that scenario. I struggled with that decision to sign that rate con harder than anything I've ever struggled with in the recent past...but ended up giving in for the sake of getting out of the desert and covering costs, rather than spend an entire weekend on the Mexican border watching them jump the fence for 3-4 days.

Ended up being .84/mile. Yes, I know, I could have been stubborn (and I usually am,) and said NO...but when you put the calculator to it, unfortunately it's more advantageous to bite the bullet and take it so it doesn't cost you $500.00 in fuel to get up into civilization to get something better, or that much in motel rooms and meals and end up deadheading on top of that.

So looking back on it, we tried negotiating that load up a few hundred bucks, but The King said that's all they had in it...pfffft. Spread it out over 4 days (fell on the weekend) but we got the stinking load off and I called the King to let them know that they were all set, and that they should consider themselves very, very fortunate to find a couple of imbiciles such as us to move their load so cheaply, and they can be assured we will never do another thing with them as long as we live. The woman on the other end (probably the Queen of Freight,) just chuckled and said they'd sit on freight for 4 months just to get it moved for as little as possible.

That burned my butt to no end. Taking advantage of the guys that do that day in and day out. I looked at it as a learning experience, and it gave me the motivation to figure out a way to eliminate those thieves (brokers of all types,) from my thought process forever ASAP.

I'm home now, and looking back over the past month I'm not enchanted with the whole scene. Fuel is up, everything is up. The rates are lousy in the open deck sector anyways...I read in certain articles how great van freight is right now but that's normal during this time of year. I just wonder if there's just a glut of RGN, stepdecks and specialized equipment out there and the brokers are aware of it and they're just scraping by, or what the deal is? The stuff that was paying "decent" on the load boards for open deck was either way too heavy for me to want, or way too far away to go load. Just strange....prior to this trip I was doing fairly good with it. I don't have the drive to want to go chase brokered loads at these prices, but evidently there's plenty of guys that are doing it.

I am fortunate that I have a pretty steady stream of work for the next few weeks around home now that I set the prices on, and will stay on this until it ends. Then I don't know...maybe park it and wait it out. Sure is a shame to have to do it that way. Not the same business it used to be for sure.

 

You agreed to haul a load for 84 cpm and the broker is the problem? Really dude?

 

Seriously the guy has some customer that legitimately does not care when the product ships. That means he gets to wait until the spot market serves up a truck that will go there for peanuts.

In supply chain generally the faster someone wants something the more it costs. This is the opposite of that.

Trust me when I say that this broker is making a huge mistake working for customers like this. It's almost impossible to make any money on them at all. I've tried the 'if the shipping is cheap enough we'll always do another load' thing with super cheap potato and onion people. Never again.

 

Yeah, I dunno man. I broker a lot of open deck freight, and my costs haven't dropped off. They've been pretty consistently higher than they were at the start of the year. It's been pretty consistently rising all year, and it might be leveling off right now. That said, I wouldn't push a full truckload for 84CPM. I wouldn't work for that customer, either. There's no money to be made on that for either of us. That's just crazy to me.

 

Yeah, really dude. Think about it, and don't start telling me about "say no to cheap freight", yada yada yada. Nobody on this planet understands the need to stop that practice more than me. This was a deal where you can either be stubborn and pigheaded and have it cost you money (to deadhead 350-400 miles or more to the next better location in hopes to load something decent,) to get out of that God-forsaken area and eat the cost to do it or bite the bullet and do the deed which I grumbled about it every second and still am. It was THE ONLY choice, period. My gal that does my dispatching has 15 loadboards open in front of her all day long searching for the BEST fit for me...so it's not like we're not paying attention.

But what would you do, tell me...sit there until something "better" came up? That just might not have happened for a week or better, then what did it just cost to do that between motel, food, etc? I take daily showers, so living in the truck in 85+ degree temperatures or more for a week ain't the plan for this guy, and there ain't many choices for truck stops or showers in Pharr, Tx., and I can't eat Tex Mex every day believe me. So the expenses to stay there until something "better" came around wasn't a viable option. I'm not the problem dude.

You want to make me out to be the bad guy? I'll challenge you any day to a shutdown, for as long as it takes to do so, starting today. The best thing that could happen is to paralyze the industry once and for all with a good solid unified shutdown, and I am one that can do it and not have to worry about the bills for a good stretch. But something tells me that won't ever happen with the ones that haul this "cheap freight" day in and day out. The freight isn't "cheap"...it's being charged out quite well you can bet on that.

This epidemic is out of control. Fuel is (let's admit...) almost $3.00/gallon. I give you $3.00, you give me .31 back, I throw the change in my cup holder. I call that simple math, I just spent $3.00. The ripoff insurance industry takes a bite every month. Then these putrid freight rates that are what they were in the '70's...you're telling me there's a "problem"? There certainly is, but it ain't something I condone or created.

Yesterday I did a days work locally in 10 hours. I made more money in that 10 hour, 259 miles yesterday than I did that trip from south Texas to Chicago. $1,350.00 to be exact. The same amount as that putrid load. That's the type of trucking I like, directly for my customer, not through some makeshift home office. I just stated the cold hard facts about that day, that's all. Not like I wanted to or liked to accept those rotten rates, it was a decision based on reality, not stubborness.

So why did I go do that out in the system? Because I had to get out and about to bring back some equipment for my customer back home, and me and my boy wanted to get out of Dodge a little bit. It wasn't to go make bank, we already knew it was going to be an average run financially, it was a mixture of work, pleasure, and quality time spent between father and son. In the end though, you only hoped you had money left for all the effort. But we saw in real time, the drop in rates compared to 3 months ago and it isn't pretty.

I love it when people criticize with no basis to do so. If there's a magic bullet and you have it, please, by all means, share your wisdom....I am all ears my friend. Give me the solution to this scenario. Sitting in a dead spot in the desert with a detachable gooseneck trailer where equipment only comes into to be exported to Mexico, nothing goes out, or hardly anything let's say. What does is sewn up by the locals. You have the choice to sit there for who knows how long spending money and time, (and time is money,) or deadhead on a Friday someplace at 5 mpg (I don't have a Volvo so...,) or take a hit on your dignity and take that crappy rate to get to the next level. Again, not condoning that or suggesting it, I'm just open to suggestions on how to have made that any more efficient based on the fact that I kept moving all weekend, and had a few bucks left over after it.

If you have that answer dude, I'd love to hear it and I'll put it to use if it's sensible. Maybe I've been doing things all wrong for 30+ years....

 

This wasn't a full truckload though, it was 3 small forklifts, 27k lbs. but I hear what you're saying in reality.
I couldn't agree more about it being crazy. And yeah, that type of practice between customer and broker is the reason it's like this for sure.

I try to stay away from brokered freight, but the need sometimes arises when I need to get somewhere or back from one of my private loads. For example I have a machine to bring to Wichita, Ks. in about a week. I quoted the thing quite high in hopes to "NOT" get it actually, and he accepted so now I gotta go, LOL.

 

Hey you went out to have fun with your son. You don't do this every week and you have your own customers around the house so aren't faced with decisions like that every day. Nothing wrong with what you did but that 84 cents a mile should have been like bonus money if you chose to accept it. If you didn't make enough to cover 400 miles of deadhead out when you went in there, then your rate going in was too cheap. I routinely deadhead that far or more a couple of times a week at least. I've lost count of how many times this year I've deadheaded 500-750 miles out of Florida all the way home. Today it'll be a short one only dead heading 330 miles back to TN. I pull a van, reefer, or am bobtailing from some power only scenario and am over 45% deadhead this year. For now rates support that. In the past couple of years they didn't. You did what you had to do. You just didn't get enough money going out there is all, plain and simple.

 

Exactly. I often ruin to Colorado new Mexico west Texas and Arizona. Almost always deadhead back east cause I'm not pulling that insulting cheap stuff.