South and East Texas crude hauling market becomes saturated

Just wanted to give a heads up. From what I am seeing, hearing and personally dealing with, the South and East Texas crude market is experiencing some serious pressure on the rates and availability of oil to haul.

Got some buddies over in East Texas. They have been slow for weeks and weeks and they are having to work a 5 on 5 off schedule just to maintain the fleet. In my area here in South Texas I have a few buddies who are being sat frequently or find themselves way underutilized.

As for me, yesterday I was offered this... either move out of state to continue working with the company I'm at (do not ask me who) or sit for 3 weeks while I wait for their next Texas gig to pick up.

There has been a huge surge of companies come into this market in this region (Eagleford). I would say around Fall it just seemed like someone opened the floodgates. The rates are under pressure for sure. One account I am familiar with has seen a rate cut of 50% in 7 months.

Anyway, I think company drivers are more insulated from this issue as the larger fleets can stomach the lower rates by doing the volume and in some cases the large fleets are the ones signing up for lower and lower rates and exacerbating the current environment.

 

I'm an O/O so that is not an option for me. At this time I think I have 3 choices:

1) Wait it out for 3 weeks and see where the new work in TX is at, utilize this time for truck repairs
2) Move permanently to OK (I run a daycab and split shift with my wife so no bouncing around in the sleeper option like most O/O)
3) Go find a new company to work for as an O/O or company driver

I'm also looking into possibly trading my day cab in for a sleeper but that doesn't make sense when you split shift a truck and do local runs.

Also if I had my own 407 trailer I would have more options. So just thinking out loud here, not in a super rush to make a bad decision.

 

Thanks for the encouragement! I like to openly discuss what I am seeing and experiencing in hope that it will help others and bring me clarity. There are some very smart and helpful people on this forum who have saved me from myself more times than I can recall.

I have not decided it on what I plan to do. When you are making great money then with no warning someone tells you your income is zero, things get a little emotional. And I have found in the past when I use logic and reasoning to make decisions things work out and when I use emotions I always lose a lot of money, LOL!