Truck Load Rates Halt 8 Week Slide 2.0

Hey now: they gotta know what theyre doing- they vote for a living!

 

That's great to hear! Glad you're doing well.

Looks like a lot of the regular participators (including the lurkers) on this thread are doing well, which is awesome.

 

Since I'm under a vow to never share any of my personal or business information again on this forum, because of how it causes so much consternation to certain esteemed members, all I can say is life is good being semi-retired. If you only knew

 

This thread's title indicates discussion about rates. Therefore, I think it is all right to talk about it and share some of it. For instance, once in a while a thread from 10 years ago is excavated and very fascinating info revealed...for instance what they paid back then and what others said about how cheap it was.

Here's my share for those who will dig out this thread in 2031...

Despite the gloomy ending of the last weekend, this week did not start off bad at all.
I was able to secure $10,850 revenue on 4100 miles for the next 10 days starting tomorrow:

Illinois - New Hampshire 1020 miles for $3750
205 miles DH to New York - Wisconsin - 1090 miles for $1800
48 miles DH to Wisconsin - Nebraska - 489 miles for $1600
45 miles DH to Nebraska - New York - 1186 miles for $3700
then I'll find whatever freight taking me home for a few days...even something that pays 1 dol per mile.

I do expect to arrive at home for a short break en route on Saturday before noon and most of Sunday. Probably, it won't be enough for the full 34 hours, so I'll run the second week on recaps.

Bear in mind that this is a pre booked dry van freight obtained from big brokers. However, on all of them, except NY-WI they did call and tried me to go down some....I did go down on IL - NH by $250 and by $150 on WI - NE. Anyways, if big guys can pay that much, I guess that it should be even better on more hustled freight where so called negotiation skills matter more.

My goal is to be at $17K every month or $50K each quarter - this should be enough to secure 100K after operational expenses. Since I am leaving on vacation in March for one good week then I need to make up for it in advance. I think it works better when you have a target, a quota to fulfill. When this is done I'll have about 13K more to go on another 5 weeks. Maybe I'll get there earlier and relax sooner.

BTW:
I decided to reduce Truckstop.com from Pro-version $150/month to their minimal subscription for $39 and also DAT Power $150/month to TruckerEdge Pro $99/month - $10 OOIDA discount = $89 per month.

 

Why did you decide to downgrade your load board subscriptions?

 

I want 300k out of you this year. Anything under 250k is a failure.

 

You're a slave driver.

 

You're killin it Joe. Of course you'll end up having a great year, and working a lot harder than many O/O's including myself. I wish I had started driving 10 years earlier. I just don't have the energy to be on the road longer than 4-5 days. I see knee and hip replacements in my future, and my body isn't liking the road work.

 

Hehe.

One thing you would hear me say quite a bit. “I love trucks, I like trucking, but this “game” is far too stressful to be doing for fun. We do this to make MONEY.”.

I’m a fan of Steve Jobs and what he called the reality distortion field. Essentially if you think it’s impossible then it is. If you truly believe the impossible is possible, then it likely is.

 

I don't want to pay $300 for load boards every month for the whole year. Most of the loads I was getting came from the brokers' proprietary load boards. There you can bid, counter bid again etc. I rarely post my truck. For the time being, I am going to keep the TruckersEdge Pro. It has all I need there, including 15 day averages and number of in and out loads. For multiple lane searches, you can open multiple instances at the same time within the same browser. This is not the first time I am making a switch and I am sure that I'll re-upgrade again in future. The Power has more analytical data but I don't utilize it. I am not that much willing to step outside my lanes and go to their hot zones. Paying $150 for truckstop.com is too much, imo. I'll see if I get rid of it completely.
I can also say that DAT Power feels better and works better than Truckstop.com Pro version.