Shocking Landstar Truth exposed

Excuse the title - It's all about clicks these days.

Had an interesting day of exchange with an agent employee and an ex-LS agent.

 

This is a guy I've done tens of thousands of revenue through. Good agent. On one project, he travelled 1500 miles and set up camp at the shipper end in his RV to facilitate the process. Great guy.

Gone. And I can't blame him.

 

Same day - a (513) area code keeps pestering me about a load - the first time, he texts on a Monday, and I'm a bit snarky, and he's not getting it - he texts again on Friday, and I decide to call him. Here's the load posted.

 

I call him and talk about the load a little, figure out he's a bit bored at this stage, and ask him if he wants to learn some bits and pieces if he has time.

He's super friendly - has access to the LS board so he can see I have a FLTE, and offers to find some freight for me. I like that. he's trying. I'm sure these kids just get yelled at all day long from drivers over here.

Find out he's in the Philippines. He's on night shift, because the time zone is roughly 12 hours apart - he works all night where he is when it's day time running here.

Ask him what he's paid.

$10/hr USD. That equates to 22,000 pesos for a 40 hr week. Average income in the Philippines is about 15,000 pesos. So he's quite happy.

I give him the quick rundown on the agent income - it's 7% of 90% of the linehaul figure. On a load like this - I'm trying to let him know that the agent is making about 7 hours of his time , if he covers the load - in one 15 minute phonecall. He's quite happy doing what he is. I give him the "Don't stop here, don't be content, strive for better" speech, but - he probably doesn't have a lot of options beyond this one.

Says - "I don't know what happened with market, we used to cover these at $2,000 last year". I gave him the explanation why, in return for his candor. (If that's the right word) - his candid explanation of his situation without fear of reprisal.

Anymore - the LS board is over-run with these agents. Kid tells me he just gets sent lists from other brokers everyday, and works at getting anything covered that he can. I get it. But - well . . .

Kinda sad. On a lot of fronts.

 

So - to finish off this investigative reporting journalism piece, brought to you by an international leading expert in exploited labor practices amongst the developed world . . . .


I haven't looked into the minimum labor rates or legalities of the 3-4 states that have these mega agencies routed through - OH, TX, CA - or how they can legally outsource this job, or why LS itself looks the other way in the interest of shareholder profits -

I can probably expect my lease will be cancelled for stating the obvious. Look forward to my next appearance on the Alex Jones show, or Joe Rogan's podcast.

From the "You need to 'learn the curve' at orientation - to "You need to develop relationships with agents at LS" - yeah, that's true. I wouldn't expect that every muppet survives here if they're thinking they're hand will be held - but it annoys me to see the progression in the last 8 years where LS is happy with their business model.

They always back the agents - and that's fine. But to back agents outsourcing the operation to Second/Third world countries at the agent/LS profit ?

I dunno.

I'll report - You decide. Fair and balanced. And all that. Plus the bag of chips.

 

Facetiously I would hope - you're aware of the 'pajama agent' ?