To those that work for low rates...

You hiring......?

 

Are you talking about dispatching for a company off site or are you talking about looking at the load boards on behalf of a one or a few truck operator. My sarcastic comment was more towards the latter, fighting for load board freight on behalf of an owner operator. I wouldn’t exactly call that outsourcing.

 

Ok seeing as you are at least paying lip service to being respectful i will try to do the same in return. The thing is you assume many drivers operate at a loss or at just above the rates to stay on the road. While i will NOT dispute you on that as there is a large portion of truth there. I have met many many many MANY drivers who rush into this and hit a wall. However, you also assume people cant make money hauling $1.80 loads much less GOOD money.

Lets use my own truck as an example here and keep in mind im going to round up a bit here and there for ease of discussion.

Now my truck is a 2017 and my cost of operation per month breaks down roughly as follows

Truck payment $1600
Trailer payment $1700
Insurance $1250

I drove 160k miles last year and averaged 6.5 for the year meaning 24,620 gallons of fuel. Devided by the 40 weeks i worked is 615 gallons a week at an average rate of $7 (higher then i paid but i always go $2 over pump price incase of spikes)

So fuel was $4300 a week or 17200 a month.
I do an oil change every month $600
And i average 1 tire a month as a rock truck
$450
Then my assorted yearly fees come out to $287 a week average (lawyer, accountant, ifta, unemployment taxes ect)

Or about $23100 a month to operate. This means using my 160k miles as a basis my base CPM is roughly 1.75 a mile to break even. I usually say $2.5 in my notebook to give me extra "oh ####" funds and anything over $2.5 goes to me upto $0.60 after which everything else goes into a maintaince fund.

So we have established that 1.75 is my base rate for a rock truck. However if i remove my payments from that equation and drop my insurance to what most others pay which is around $12k a year or $1000 a week you get the following. $1.46 a mile suddenly that $1.80 a mile load pays almost as good as a mega.

You add in things like lower tire ware rates vs my rock truck, doing a lot of your own wrenching and saving a lot of money and the occasional $3-4-5 a mile load and fuel surcharges and suddenly that $1.80 a mile load that would make my life uncomfortable is suddenly a really really good average.

And this is why so many happily take those $1.80 loads. They use them as a way to make a profit between the $3+ loads and make decent money. Keep in mind until recently a good used truck was not that expensive at as low as $50k and used vans for $12k-20k so someone buying one outright was the norm rather then exception. And anyone who owns a truck learns to do a LOT of maintaince themselves which also saves a ton of money.

 

Your original post talked about low rates and how people don’t know their costs. What benefit will you provide a one truck guy if you’re just digging through load board freight that by your own admission is mostly lower rates? And then you’re going to charge on top of that and that’s going to take a marginal operator even lower. The one truck independents that are successful do most things on their own. They have their own best interest in mind. You’d end up with an independent that’s between someone like me who is leased on and someone who is a successful independent. They’d hire you because it’s easy, it’s less work for them. They wouldn’t really know what it’s costing them, they would know what you charge but they have now idea if you’re really fighting for the best rate or if you’re throwing a load on their truck so that you get your percentage. So really, you’d be contributing to the problem that you spent a lot of time typing about in your first post.

 

Yes. Perception.

 

Well put. Well said.

 

I could see how operators would or could take offense to your post, but the truth is it’s pretty #### spot on. Most all of us that aren’t like you describe just stack money up in the good times and do ok in the bad times. What you describe is very accurate in todays market. Only when those folks are pushed out will things become good again. Been happening for probably going on 100 yrs or at least 80.

edit: Any of the guys saying they started with nothing and are still here, that’s not what he’s saying. He’s more saying about knowing your cost and not letting the dream of truck ownership blind you. Lots of us started with nothing and that’s something to be proud of.