Question for my Owner Operator Brothers

Explain! Were does this greatest opportunity come in?

 

Well I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this but the easy one is CSA. If you have a good score then you hear nothing about it from brokers. If you have issues then you will have already lost loads because of it. Start chatting up brokers and shippers about SMS scores and if they use them to qualify carriers. You will be surprised at how many are. Then you also know that you have a better bargaining position on rates. Know your basics and check them every month when they are updated.

Forget getting all political on CSA and SMS. It is here. You run a business and you need to understand it, protect your score and use it to you advantage. You may hate it and want it changed but that is political and emotional. From a business side you need to leverage it.

Stop listening to the CB News network and basing your business decisions on political views.

Ask yourself this: Why do you think large retailers are spending money on expanding and remodeling right now? Because money is cheap and they can purchase/lease land cheap.

The person that wants to wait for the elections or lower unemployment or to see what happens to fuel prices will end up with a higher cost of money, rents will be up and labor cost will have increased. I’m not growing my business looking 12-months out. I am looking 5 to 10 years out. And I know from history we will see another economic boom before 2020.

 

I say cut Jeff's truck back to 55mph to increase profits.

 

BWAAHAHAHAHAHA! Keep eating that crap there feeding you Bill! If CSA scores are as big a thing as you make it out to be in this post CRST Malone should done be out of business!

 

What you are talking about is the results of hyper inflation. Yes, that would stagnate the economy. But $5/gal fuel does not even come close to putting us into hyper inflation rate. And you are looking at this in a vacuum. First, we need to put this in the discussion of sustained rates.

Many things need to happen for it to sustain these levels. Consumption is the main one. If we are using more fuel it is because there is more demand for products. More demand will come with consumer confidence and right now, employment and increased wages are going to be the driver behind that.

Once we start seeing sub-6% unemployment, wages will increase. And that will be the fire that helps kick our economy into the next cycle of growth. And the people that can’t understand the economy moves in cycles will be never be able to take advantage of the cycles and prosper from them.

And not even going to get into the fuel part because that is just silly.

 

I for one agree with Bill. There is an opportunity in many industries right now. Money IS cheap and if you can and want to grow now would be the time to lay the ground work. If you are a half glass empty person what's the difference, the banks come repo your new equipment but when the zombie apocolypse happens or world ends this December that'll be the least of your worries!!
Seriously though, regardless of your political views, the economy IS getting a little better. More people are finding jobs which means more disposable income which means more freight. I don't see a huge housing boom again for a while but there is alot of pent up demand so I think there will be higher rates and more freight coming soon. I don't think we're gonna see $5 fuel near term - there really aren't any economic justifications for it. We will probably see speculators run the price up some and then it'll come back down. Fuel spikes do hurt the economy - again - less disposable income but I still think the future looks bright.

 

And what makes you think in the next 3-5 years they won't be. Along with CRE and the others.

The more likely scenario is that these companies will "merge" with another carrier.

 

He needs to haul a load first.

 

Except for the fact that $5 fuel is a drain on the economy, I welcome it. I average 8.3mpg and FSC is figured at 5.5mpg. I made a killing in 07 due to FSC.

 

West coast blows right now. I barely got out of Cali (its a flatbed dumping ground) with anything and I heard fuel in Washington went up 19 cpg overnight. Thats tough for the FSC to catch up. I'm staying out in the midwest and east coast until things improve or I get a fat load I cant refuse. What really sucks out there is that the rates dont even compare to east coast rates on a comparable load. My rates only change if the area is dead or not at the moment like Cali. I wont do another load there un less its 4 a mile so I can get out.