Running short loads

@Dino soar Look, don't sweat what is out of your hands. It really doesn't matter to you what anyone else books loads for so forget that nonsense. I saw a buddy of mine before cancer took him away clear $2,000 a week after fuel on short runs that had him sleeping at home every night + weekends and one of his runs only paid $300 gross on 60 miles and he hardly burned a tank of fuel that whole week to do it. And that was during 2015-16 which was as bad if not worse than now. You do whatever you can scratch out at times to make it.

Now to some people that $2,000 ain't #### but around these parts you'll be just fine pulling in that kind of money until times get better. Hell I had weeks during the same time frame I made half that or worse doing what I did very different from what he did. He always thought my way was crazy, I think nothing of deadheading 500-700 miles right now to good paying freight, I do it all the time, and I gave up on doing things the way he was. Sometimes he did better, sometimes I did. Really it's more about what you want to do than what anyone on social media thinks. If you can make it work that's great. Some people do

 

What Rollin' Coal said here is absolutely true.

Who takes those loads? I do, but not if it's anywhere near 100 miles deadhead. I probably do one of those a week on average to fit in some work when another one day load dragged and took 1.5, or to reposition, or if I'm not prebooked and the boards are dead and I get tired or making calls and just want to get some work done and not sit that day.

I am not making what my truck needs per day some of those days but $600 on 200 is good at $3 a mile and $500 on 100 is certainly good. Your fuel costs drop for the week with one or two of those loads and you get a little time to catch up on office work, get some exercise, whatever. I'm out here to work but I still like to find balance where I don't feel like I'm working all the time.

I would caution you of one other thing if you're going to try to run short loads. Don't run yourself to death just to get home to your own bed every night. I fall in to that trap sometimes and it makes me feel worse having run til midnight just to get home and being tired the next day when you could just pull over earlier and sleep in your truck a couple nights that week. It's hard to schedule home right in the middle of a run. I'm lucky if I manage it one night every 2-3 weeks.

Just a thought.

 

It's all highly situational, I'd suspect. I pay my one local guy $500 for an in town run. We'll stack him up two or sometimes three a day. He cleared two on Monday morning and one on Tuesday. His total loaded miles for three runs was 72, and he brought $1500 in. I know he did at least one more with one or his other customers on Tuesday.

Trick is finding something like that.

 

Ummm, please give me a call if this happens a lot and you need coverage. Happy to drive up!

 

I'd suspect that there are both large and small brokerages that have stuff like this. I'm the only guy in my office with these types of regular arrangements, out of fifteen of us.

 

You can live very comfortable on short runs . 2 yrs ago i was home every night weekends off clearing 2700.00 week with 2200 truck note. I burned 400 in fuel every week . I leased my truck to a shipper with Mega accts P&G Pepsi few others. Unfortunately 1 of there company trucks backed into and destroyed my cab while i was in the warehouse getting Bol . They fixed it but said i was parked in a no zone and terminated my lease. Loved that job for 2yrs now im OTR making less on some days. That was probably best job i had in 28yrs. Local and dedicated