Truck Load Rates Halt 8 Week Slide 2.0

Many many moons ago, back when I was a much younger man, full of piss and vinegar and working for peanuts doing retail warehousing- we'd routinely get trucks loaded out like that. I always felt bad for the guys stuck hanging out with us, because the crew I worked with was the absolute lowest of the bottom feeders. That's why I never let anyone in the trailer with me to work the truck. I worked twice as fast as I would with two mouth breathers next to me, getting in my way.

Sucktackular, to be sure, especially since a lot of these trucks were floor loaded. I could get them downloaded, depending on the bottleneck, in about an hour, and I'd have someone scanning our stuff in, and then palletizing the other stuff to send on to the next of our stores on the route. Drivers were always super thankful for that.

At any rate, that's my random anecdote for the morning.

Right now, it's business as usual for me. I'm still getting freight, and I'm still moving it. I'm waiting for the shoe to drop, though as I'm an open deck guy.

 

Herd mentality. Drove down to the village to fill the tank, local supermarket (very small) usually has maybe 2-3 cars at best. Parking lot was full, at least 50 cars jammed in there , maybe more. While pumping gas, watched two guys come out of the store, suitcase of beer in each hand. Gotta get it before it's all gone.

County runs a small public transit micro-bus, did it shut down, nope, still running crowds all over the place. But yet, most everything's shut down, many are not working and told to stay home, yeah right, there's more people out running around now than on a "normal" day, gotta get it before I can't mentality. 1st of the month is coming right up, all the slugs will have their SNAP cards re-loaded again, old home day again, watch them all swarm wally world.

This whole country no-work shutdown thing needs to be rethought before it's really to late....

 

That government breast is nice and juicy.

 

The shelves in our liquor store are about empty.
No left but the rock gut stuff.
There waiting for the next truck.

 

Liquor getting low? Very interesting.

 

How’s it going today y’all? What’s the word out on the streets? What are you seeing?

 

More of the same here. Most of my customers have found themselves on the 'essential' lists, so I'm still keeping things going.

 

Good deal.

We are quoting $5/mi on everything. I had to pay $5/mi on a couple loads I brokered out so guess I’ll charge that myself. Essentially we are charging both ways if you want guaranteed service. In no way am I guaranteed a back haul and in no way am I guaranteed the receiver is open when we get there. This has already happened. One load in particular while in transit a state shut down, so they closed. Ummm ok, pays us to take it back. Well, in that time of transit back the other state shut down. Oh, we’re not sure if we can take it now there either they say!

 

This is what I’m worried about. There are now 12 states that have a shelter in place type of order. Most of what I have been hauling this year is not classified as essential, I’m really starting to get nervous of a load I can’t get unloaded.

Luckily, a customer called earlier that pays round trip, so I’ll have that for the next 2-3 days. They have been hit hard with this pandemic, and have been really slow. Hopefully they pick back up, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.

 

Are you getting that $5 with ease? What they post on DAT is nowhere near that.