Snackbar is chillin'....at Shaffer

% is the best way to do it.

 

When I was regional, the boss paid %. Made more money with that plan than I ever did. The rates were on the bills, for the drivers to clearly see.

 

Are you being deliberately obtuse and contrarian, or do you really not understand why total compensation and effort required to move a load needs to be figured into driver's compensation?

The answer is really simple. Let's say you are paid .75 per mile, which is reasonable in today's world and I give you a load that picks up today, live load taking 2 hours to get loaded but doesn't deliver until the next day and the haul is only 100 miles. It will take you another 2 hours, at least, to get live unloaded and let's say the timing has a 10 hour break in between, or the appointments are so far apart that a break will be required. Are you willing to give up at least 6 working hours (2 load, 2 unload and 2 drive) plus the other downtime for $75? That would make your average daily pay about $35.

Even absent the break making it a two day trip, is your time only worth $12.50 per hour ($75/6 hours)?

I believe a truck driver is worth somewhere between $300-$500 per work day, at a minimum. So without pay that takes into consideration all the variables needed to do a route the driver gets the short end of the stick. Meanwhile, that same load described above will cost me, as the shipper, about $1,000 to cover. Even if a broker is involved, your carrier will still get about $400 per day (or $8 per mile to the truck) for their involvement while you get $35 a day, total of $75 or about 10% of their line haul; revenue.

In most industries, labor is figured to cost about 35-40% of gross revenue, so there is no reason in the above example with $800 to the truck a driver can't be fairly compensated at least $300 for their part.

 

When I got out of the service I got a job in a factory. I was paid by the hour, It was piece work I was supposed to do 20 pieces an hour. It normally took me 3-4 hours to do the 160 pieces. Once I finished the 160 pieces I left still got paid for 8 hours for at most 4 hours it took me



my q

 

I keep coming back to short miles make more profit because the motor carrier has no incentive to find loads that have 600+ mile days on them. Since their compensation is based on a combination of mileage, or in the case of many contract freight carriers, a flat rate and they face severe penalties for underperformance or late deliveries they have a greater incentive to put an extra day of transit time on the trip rather than schedule it for just in time and hope the driver makes it without issue.

Have you ever given thought to how they are able to have enough time to allow T-calls, where a local will make the final mile delivery? It is because their load plans have plenty of extra time built in for the average driver that is inefficient, the time it takes to find a driver that will accept a load and all the other hundreds of little delays that happen daily in our industry. No responsible motor carrier, especially one with contract freight with hefty late/non-performance penalties, is going to schedule a load to be as tight as your prefer.

It is cheaper for a carrier, like Crete or Shaffer, to have the trucks sit since it costs them very little, instead of taking a chance a driver will have a performance failure that, when repeated over and over, will drive down their on-time average and maybe cost them the bid when the contract renews next season. They have no incentive to keep you moving, they only have incentive to meet their customer's performance expectations.

Sure, private carriers and specialty haulers will push that envelope more often and have more precision in their scheduling, but they are the exception not the rule in freight transportation. It has been my experience when purchasing transportation that the megas are cheap, but their transit or dwell times are horrible compared to smaller fleets. So, if you want 600 mile long days then you need to find a fleet that specializes in tight transit times with little dwell at their terminals or docks instead of a typical mega carrier that is only concerned with avoiding performance failures even if it upsets their few drivers that want to run hard.

 

Let's look at some public numbers. On Crete's MCS-150 filing they declared 607,954,521 miles and 5,399 tractors. This works out to approximately 112,610 miles per tractor annually. Further breakdown of this, either by diving by 365 days or by 52 weeks then 6 days (to account for 34 hour resets), shows an average of only 308.5 miles per day (when using 365 days) or 360 miles per day when using 52 week/6 days per week. They simply do not have the freight to provide 600 mile days consistently, at least not based on the numbers they publicly report. Yes, this is an oversimplified analysis since not all 5,399 tractors are seated and in-service every day and this accounts for their DCS and truckload segments, but it is valid enough to show that the potential for long haul is not the norm at CCC.

Looking at the information from JB Hunt's 10-K statement, since they are a public company and comparable in operations to CCC, they claim in their truckload division to have an average length of haul of 609 miles, but fail to say how many days each run is. Logic would say it is about 1.5 days per haul to get there, so maybe 350 miles per day. Interesting enough, their DCS only has an average length of haul of 181 miles. Their intermodal has the longest average length of haul at 1,692 miles per load but it is unclear if that includes the train segment or just the truck segment.

Even a supposed long haul champion, as mentioned previously in this thread, Holland Enterprises, only has a declared annual mileage of 36,807,709 and tractor count of 321. Using the same math as above, this makes their daily average miles only 314 over 365 day or 367 (52 weeks/6 days), so even there they are facing the same short miles per day that other fleets are facing. Now, there are advantages there because they are much smaller, so much more personal attention can be given to each driver, but the numbers don't lie.

I say all the above to simply state that the mileage is down everywhere. Truckload’s shrinking length of haul

Unfortunately for those that like long miles, I don't see it coming back any time soon. Our distribution network has been optimized for regional and final mile services, not long haul.

 

The only ones who I can think of that consistently do “long haul” would be produce haulers. But to echo you. I am a carrier and I can by far make more money running local/regional hauls. Like 1/3 more per week. Short loads pay a premium and a hustler can really cash in on them.