Truck Load Rates Halt 8 Week Slide 2.0

We have one of those "boutique banks" not far from me. I'm not sure they're even called a bank, more like a financial institution. No FDIC, just a nice interest rate on money deposited by pot growers. I've never done business there but I understand they have a very liberal loan policy based on whether or not you've used the bank before. They don't advertise, they don't belong to the BBB or the Chamber of Commerce. Very low key, very quiet and they're not accepting any new depositors. They don't even hire people from around here. All their help is from somewhere else.
Just for fun I went in there and tried to open a business chcking account. They told me at the present time they're not accepting any new depositors. Never seen a bank turn away business before.
The pot money has almost dried up and a lot of pot farmers are selling their
land if they can and going into foreclosure if they can't.
Problem is, the pot farms are almost always ecological disaster areas and until the enviromental people give them the go ahead to engage in remediation they can't find buyers for the property.
We look for the little boutique bank to quietly fold their tent and steal away under cover of darkness.

 

Holly crap!
The rates are really in the toilet now. I am not booked on anything today, nor on Monday.
This is the worst since the April 2020.
Some folks were saying for some time that they were going to park their trucks and do Uber cab and be better off. I sort of thought that they were saying that with a dose of irony but after seeing todays DAT, I think they were quite serious. Maybe that's some fun to do Uber for a change...for the heck of it.
Form the point of you of this thread, it is fascinating - we have just elapsed the boom and bust full cycle in the span of three years. The question is how much longer is it going to be like this?

 

No $1 a mile loads Joe?

 

What you mumbling?

 

Yep, it's awful. Even my best kept secrets are starting to lowball me. I've been working about 3 days a week lately. Still making a living but not saving a dime. It takes me til about Wednesday every week lately to get frustrated and head for the house. But, I'm not working for nothing when I'm running. It's been kind of nice to buy one tank of fuel a week.

 

Not blaming brokers or supply and demand.

Problem is drivers hauling cheap rates.
I'm not moving this truck for next to nothing rates, if everybody did that we'd all be in better shape.
Even if there is limited volume that doesn't mean we should go out haul anything for fuel money.
Have some standards.

 

If everyone is not working in solidarity, waiting for the rates improvement, then who gets to hual the first decent load?

Who can afford to wait and for how long? To some, with only one avenue of income, being left with $200-300 a day after fuel is still, if not satisfying, then necessary to prop up their daily livelihood.

 

My general observation of over 6 years as independent on the spot market is such that working on the spot market is flawed by too lengthy periods of drought and too short periods of better rates.
Those better times are quickly attracting newcomers and encouraging the existing carriers to buy more equipment, effectively increasing aggregate capacity but the rate of expansion is exponentially faster compared to its inevitable contraction, which takes too long to make it balanced, and bearable, less painful, less frustrating.

 

These cycles you speak of have always been the norm in this industry, and always will be. The only time I see that changing is when the vast majority of freight is moved autonomously.

 

The cycles happen, that's agreeable but to say that they are the norm we'd need more standardizing attributes that would enable us with better predictability not only as to the timing but also their intensity. We don't have a norm of how low revenues we'd be willing to work for or for those who hung their keys, due to reaching the point of minimum profitability or the point of minimum dignity, how long the state of limbo will last for them either.
Summarizing:
Spot market, Load boards, Brokered freight,
Shouldn't be the ONLY items of revenue on a business plan, when someone goes to a bank applying for a $200 000 loan to buy a brand new semi tractor and $62 000 dry van trailer.