Truck Load Rates Halt 8 Week Slide 2.0

I've been retired now for 10 months, and starting last Wednesday brokers have been calling me for loads for the first time since then. Something is changing out there.

 

Nothing is different, just a tighter market. Those brokers are hearing more no's and getting further down their lists trying to cover loads too cheap. I would consider this a good thing.

There is a point where any carrier will say no, they can't run for any less and that's all I see happening. Many with debt will continue to go under and then we'll start going the other way in the market again (as in up).

 

I haven't looked on the board for couple of weeks as my truck is down but looking today, the volume is trash.

 

Two brokering examples from this week that stood out to me were a Washington to Iowa and a NC to IN… had to post on DAT to email so our phones wouldn’t get swamped. Had over 60 emails in 30 mins for each load.

Things are way out of balance. No way rates are decent when people are desperate for freight.

 

Aren't a lot of your email only inquiries double brokers? I'm curious about how much. Seems like they are getting desperate too.

 

Depends where the load originates from. It is more rampant then in the past but I’d guess to say at least 80% were real carriers. It’s really just the change from getting no calls to single digit amount of calls to 60 emails in a short time. That difference is staggering. Right now you can get an easy feel for a market just by how inundated you do or don’t get with carriers jockeying for the load.

None of this makes me happy though. I’d rather the market be much better for my own trucks.

 

Is that reefer or van? Reefer volumes are down a lot around me but you can still book good loads. There's just not enough of them and they are gone fast. Plus if you're booking anything the day of you're going to be rolling cheap. Forget going to Florida which has always been good to me for most of the year round even before the pandemic. Apparently people are happy to go there with a reefer for $3 a mile. It's just not near enough to justify the deadhead required to get out.

 

How far out do u usually have to deadhead to get out of there ? If u take a load from the Midwest lets say, do u try to book it as a round trip rate and just deadhead back out to the midwest? You dont have to answer this if you feel its giving to much information. Im just curious as I have never worked the fl market for this particular reason and curious how other owner ops attack it .

 

It's not secret info lots of people do the same. Most times I go back to the Atlanta area. 300, 400 maybe 500 or 600 miles. Some people go over into Alabama or up into Savanah, GA. Sometimes I just go back home to TN but its better if I can grab something from Atlanta back to the northbound. But there are loads occasionally out of FL and even south GA that are decent. It just depends. I never really looked at it as a terrible place to go until recently.

 

I figure the loaded miles, then add whatever the miles would be to Atlanta from the final. If it makes sense, it's a go. Never plan on being able to load out of FL.