Rate cons

Anyone getting the feeling that small business is being pressured out of business? Meaning some how someway every year gooberments find new ways to squeeze out the little guy and make him a mindless drone for big corps.

 

That’s only true if you get poor mileage. Our surcharge has been high 60’s per mile and my fuel cost has been running between 60 and 62 cents per mile.

 

Easy guys! Fsc is negotiated when the shipper and you negotiate your contract. For the leased on, it is passed on to the driver for contract loads typically or however your wonky lease agreements reads. Not everybody’s fsc is the same. And as stated before, not typical for spot market as you just workout a flat price. Y’all keep mixing all this stuff up and I’m going to have to start a tickey tock thing for O/O to pass out some word. Shoot, I heard those folks make some coin. Maybe, if I get enough views that money will become my fsc.

 

I personally never mention common costs that my competition also has when I negotiate. Just a waste of breath. I focus on equipment and services that others skimp on, or fail to provide when I am pushing for more money. Brokers, buyers, and shippers know the price of fuel. They don’t want to pay more. So if you want them to, you got to upsell them something. Just like spending more money on options on a new car.

Doesn’t always work, since sometimes it’s all about lowest price, but sometimes the piece of mind is worth the loss of income to the broker. If the broker can spend more time worrying about their weekend off vs. a problematic carrier.-Win

 

That assumes that its government action doing the squeeze, its usually influence from the big corps to make THEIR bottom lines go up, rather than making smaller operators bottom lines go down. Theyre linked but be cautios of who you blame for things and how. Its not personal or neccessarily malicious, you just dont have access to influence policy for you positively BECAUSE youre not a big player

 

Its been happening for years. Check out the book "the war on small business" by carol Roth... Its a deep look into how the pandemic destoryed small business and how the government was already on that path long before covid..

 

Good point.In the last 2 years the big guys got bigger and many small business fell from competition, Covid regulations, and selective forced shutdowns. Y’all remember when the feds gave fedex, YRC, and others the free money. I don’t think billy joe flatbed got millions, when he was struggling. Poor Billy joe flatbed was thankful to get the freebies from pilot during the appreciation month!

 

But does the 100% fuel surcharge you get covers your actual fuel cost? if it covers then high fuel cost should not be an issue to you.

The rate per mile that you get should pay for your fixed cost and some more(profit)

 

The Company that you are leased to, does it run spot market or does it have contract freight?

 

Before Uncle Joey B entered office, my fuel cost per mile was about .35 cpm. Now it's around .75 cpm.

I'm leased on to LS, which is largely spot quoted freight, and I run platform.

At $3/mile on the board - my cut is 73% - $2.19/mile to me.

Now - to cover the extra .40 cpm in fuel - that board rate needs to be $3.55/mile.

If I can't negotiate that up, then my choice is not to take it - or make less money doing it.