STOP RUNNING CHEAP FREIGHT!!

That's only one of my proposals. If all of my proposals were implemented then they weed themselves out. Businesses that rely on a continuous flow of new CDL's from driver mills to burn through to keep rates low to stay competing won’t last. So both the trucking and the airline industry were deregulated under Jimmy Carter in 1980. How did airlines compete pre deregulation? Since they couldn't compete on price since rates were set by the government they competed on service. Back in the "heyday" of commercial air travel you had incredible in flight meals. In fact people would dress up in their Sunday best to get on a flight because it was a luxury experience. That's how they competed. Now they compete on price and it's a race to see how many of us they can pack like sardines into the cabin to cut prices. Of course employees in the industry have seen their compensation declining as well. Now as for your libertarian ideals of a free market that has never existed. Even our current situation isn't anything resembling a fair competitive market. You have major carriers ganging up to drive down rates in order to starve out smaller competitors and the ATA who lobbies on behalf of the major carriers literally writes all of the regulations. Why do you think your little LLC gets your CSA score obliterated by a single ticket while Swift gets to have tons of crashes and still keep a good safety rating? It was specifically designed to do that. The bigger your fleet the more you get away with because it was written by the lobbyists for the major fleets. That's just one example of several that I can give of regulations that favor the major fleets over the smaller operators. Even if you're only profiting $0.01 per mile you're doing great when you have 20,000 trucks averaging 2,000 miles a week but if you only have a few trucks then you're hurting. So whether you have a set rate for everyone across the board or you're running for the rates that JB Hunt is able to maintain their profitability with you still don't have the control over your business to set your own rates. The lowest bidder sets the rates for everyone else. Absent of that everyone would compete on service. At that point more experienced professionals will stand out over just who has the most rookies starving on the road to get the cheapest possible rate.

 

I don't get offended easily but I do push back on what I perceive to be tactics to try to discredit me personally as opposed to countering my arguments.

As for the $2.50 that's an estimate I came up with based on the average fuel price, average MPG's, average maintenance costs, taxes, driver pay figuring $0.50 CPM and average insurance for a modern tractor/trailer combination. I think based on my math it provides a good baseline which is just that, a baseline. With that individual situations will vary so perhaps you might be able to squeek by on less than that or perhaps your expenses might be a bit higher meaning you might require more to stay in business but I'm sure it's probably a 20% deviation from my estimate either way. Again, if I'm wrong then educate me on why I'm wrong.

As for foreigners we're getting the vast bulk of our immigration from developing countries in people who are just grateful to be able to earn more than the $5.00 a day they were making in their home countries. It's also called mass immigration because it's on a massive scale. In fact our southern border represents the single largest land migration in the world ever recorded in human history. Now since we understand supply and demand it becomes obvious that a mass influx of cheap labor puts downward pressure on compensation. Now combine that with subsidies. Look at what these people are getting. If my rent is covered by the government for up to 2 years, I get $4,500 a month on a debit card courtesy of uncle Sam and get a tax free business for up to 10 years and really I'm just grateful to be able to earn more than what I could earn in a 3rd world country then $0.70 CPM paid out to an older used truck me and my relatives saved up for that we can all team on sounds great! Add a few hundred thousand of those trucks to the market and what happens to freight rates?