Rates anyone want to guess the year

Ouch,..
You are doing better today right?

I have no idea how van rates are. All I know is step deck.

I dont get paid for empty miles. Its up to me,.. if the rate on the next load is paying enough to do a long dead head I'll do it. Else I sit around and pray something better comes up. I have and often do take cheap paying loads to get out of where I am. I hate doing it,.. but what other choice do we have besides sitting around for 7 days? I cant make a living like that.

Hurst

 

Van rates overall are nothing to get jazzed about. It's very difficult but not impossible to pull solid rates with a van. I'm averaging a little more than a dollar a mile better than that now on every mile the truck turns. Now the catch is I don't get many miles. I turn about 60,000 per year since leaving that company compared to 110,000 miles per year with them. Gross revenues are about the same. I don't have the best gig in the world. Others make a lot more on the same or even less miles. Or possibly even do averages like mine on a lot more miles. But I bank money now compared to then - going into the red 2009 thru 2011 - never could recover anything back then. If I could change anything I would like to be at about 80,000 miles a year on $2.30+ a mile average to the truck every mile the truck rolled at my percentage.

 

I'd like to eventually go it alone and run my own authority. I look at guys like you and how your making it running less miles by running smarter and more efficient.

I'm currently running crazy miles,.. stay out and run hard from one load to the next. Last year I did 133k miles. This year has been slow with all the down time my truck is doing. Heavy haul doesnt do a lot of miles.

I read the boards,.. I see the loads,.. but my issue is I havent figured out the best lanes to run or when to run them.

Sometimes I make a killing running NJ,, NY, PA and Oh,.. then like magic it dries up or the rates tank and I end up heading back to Chicago and then usually out west for a bit. I try to find the pattern, but I just dont see it.

I've never been a numbers guy. My math sucks. My wife handles 90% of my finances. With out her I would be a lost puppy out here.

Hurst

 

Hurst, you don't need your own authority to pull good numbers. a good percentage, on good paying freight, and a plan, gets it done. Rollin coal is doing good leased to farm2fleet, I'm with Mercer and doing good, other guys are doing good at land star. And while some guys do good with their own authority, most of them end up pulling the same freight, for less net.

We all have a different idea of what "good" is. For me, I aim for 2200 after fuel and settlement deductions "to the house", and I want it done on 2k to 2200 miles. I almost always achieve that with a good bumper on top that more than covers up the weeks I fall short. a guy with a big truck payment may need more, and may need to raise his miles to reach that number.