RJS - bad news!!

Back when I hauled produce, it was the same thing... wait forever to get loaded, drive like a mad man to get to receiver on time just to wait for hours for them to deem me worthy of unloading. I don't think I ever got unloaded for free, even if I did it myself, I ended up paying a dock fee or something.

 

All of that is fine as long as the customer is paying a fair rate to deal with it. The problem is that the industry is used to wasted truck time costing x when this year it costs 4x... And they have no idea because they didn't pay for x it just got packed on as an extra charge in the line haul.

Combine that with the fact that prices have nearly doubled since last year (and produce is a low margin business so this is REALLY going to hurt) and you have customers who are miles and miles from the market rate for the service they want to buy. This is probably the moment when the way produce has been hauled since the dawn of trucking really starts to give. I don't want to be anywhere in the vicinity of that.

 

As a reinforcement for @boredsocial : I book loads based on revenue per day to the truck. If it takes a half day or all day to load or unload I expect that to be reflected in the gross rate. I do not see a way to get the same average revenue per day or week with a refer as I get with a dry box.

The large shippers and receivers (grocery stores, Costco, WallMart, Amazon.....) have not yet figured this out. So I do not hail their freight. No hard feelings it's just business.

 

Yeah that’s the writing on the wall I’m reading too. Started having to cut lanes that were way too risky last year. Then prices went up 50% in the down season lol.

EDIT: One of my customers proposed solution to ELD created late trucks was to take at least 10 hours loading every truck so they would know that the truck had fresh hours. LOL OK sure. This is going to be a horrible year in produce. People are going to be desperate and desperate people do stupid things.

 

I'm the opposite. I have a nearly brand new van trailer that sits collecting cobwebs for many weeks and usually months at a time never hauling anything. I think the last time I did a van load was in October last year. I seldom see any van freight that pays near enough to justify hooking to it.

It's maddening the stupidly low rates people run them on. I used to stay busy with a lot of last minute automotive freight on it that paid equal to or even much better than the good reefer freight I haul but that all seems to have dried up over the past 2 to 3 years. Hardly seems worth having it sit around but every time I say that I get on a kick with it where it pulls in an easy $20,000 or $30,000 quickly and I think to myself, ####, if I didn't have it that wouldn't have happened. And no a majority of what I haul in it will not be loaded in a reefer so that is a moot point before someone says it.

I'm able to get what I want with a reefer a lot more easily than the van. It's so much easier for me to hit higher revenue goals with it more quickly. Today was amusing because one particular broker I work with has dry van loads and reefer temp control loads out of a facility shipping the same product. Its the exact same product but some customers want it in a reefer at 65* in the summer. In the winter it is required on reefer for protect from freeze but could normally be done in a dry van during warmer months.

Anyway there were 2 loads from there both going about 500 miles into NC both from the same broker. One was dry van (or reefer) no temp control. The other was reefer temp control. The van load was offered @ $1,200. The reefer one was offered at $1,500. Both were ridiculously cheap for the current dead hole they were going to. I don't know who hauls a 500 mile van load for $1,200 (lots of you apparently can't get enough of it) except for a cheap relocation move but I checked DAT 15 day average and that was $50 better than the lane had averaged the past 15 days.

On the reefer rate I knew they were off and sure enough when I checked the reefer average their offer was $700 below the 15 day average on that lane. Nice of them to lowball me like that huh, and I thought we were friends too? lol... Which $2,200 would have been a rate more in,line with what I expected. That is why I prefer a reefer over a van. Two,loads from the same destination delivering not far from each other the reefer load on average paid $1,000 more that particular lane than a similar van load.

Not all van versus reefer lanes are so dramatic as that. And I do still enjoy (somewhat) pushing aggressively on those van rates when I know they can and will pay much more than reefers. It won't be too much longer and that should be the case again. It is nice though to get away from all those fun loving, where everyone is happy and highly motivated efficient grocery places.

 

I think you are very correct on the differences in freight characteristics between lanes/regions.

Up here in the PNW flat and step rates per mile outbound are only 5 to 10 percent higher than van. Not enough to cover the added costs of the trailer, costs of tarping, and potential wait times for load and unload.

The good paying refer loads going out I see are chemicals..... And the return loads that pay well are specked as "no refers".

What I see on your example of the $1200 500 mile load: it's 1 day to snag the load and run it. Half a day to unload + half a day to dead head out to appropriate freight?. So that load needs to pay 2 days worth...... As I've told brokers in the past "This aint half price Wed! Hard pass"