We have hit the floor with rates

Maybe I misunderstood your post

I read it as if you will take that $1 pm load rather than deadhead
If that’s not the save. My apologies
If it is the case then my comment stands

 

Taking that load at that rate would be punishment enough IMO

 

I’ll put it this way
Your math does work but if absolutely no one took it for that $1 then you’d get it for $2-3 and now your bottom line increases

We will always have cheaper freight in bad areas but it shouldn’t be less than our operating expenses
Chicago you AC’s more as there are more loads and they compete to get theirs covered
Phoenix. Not so much but less than fuel?

 

100%. Back when I ran the spot market (about 4 years ago now) I was always looking at my running mile and revenue per day. If I got $3.5 a mile from Ohio into California on my flatbed I'd take 1.75 to Denver and then bounce home 500 miles from there and still come out at 2.3+ on the running mile and be averaging over $1,500 a day in revenue for the whole turn. I wouldn't take a cheap load all the way to the East coast though because once I got back to Kansas on East There was good paying freight so it made no sense to still have 1.5-2.0 dollar a mile freight on my truck going through all those high paying areas.

Another time I was over by Nashville,TN and couldn't find anything paying worth a ####, but found a load on the other side of the state in Jackson that I could load today that paid well enough to give me a higher running mile even with the bounce and land me in a good market.

I'm sure that I hauled some "cheap freight" according to the guys on here more than once, but my running mile and revenue per day were always dialed in.

 

I do agree . There is also the time factor as well... in the round trip scenario, it may even just be better to dedhead out of that bad area and pickup a shorter haul on your way back to the good area... which you are already getting paid for... sometimes those short moves in decent areas can pay more then a return rate out of a bad area, if that makes any sense

I forget which thread it was in, but if I remember correctly how it was posted, someone mentioned taking a load from the Midwest to somewhere out to California... negotiating a round trip rate and then dedheading to SLC and picking up a load from there to say Denver (I think it was) . Delivering that in denver then finishing up the dedhead back to the midwest....

The reason being, that this SLC to Denver run paid a lot more then taking a full truckload out of cali back to midwest... I thought it was interesting perspective.

 

That's definitely a great way to look at it... more than one way to be successful in this business... it may be easier for open deck to negotiate a round trip rate, being there is less overall freight and less trucks available compared to vans or reefers...but I'm sure one could still do something similar to that with a van/reefer

 

JB Hunt 360 posted rates are not representing anything. Not even what the bottom is... They are not even close to being serious. They just post those ridiculous rates all the time. Who knows maybe they get a laugh from it, so they are playing this minstrel game. Sure, you can click and book it, but nobody will take that load, out of decency, if nothing else. There is a difference between booking a cheap backhaul and prostituting yourself like that (as it was once defined by @Scooter Jones) ha ha ha.

 

Absolutely agree!

 

I have never ran that lane in my entire life so I wouldn't know what it pays... but at the end of the day , just because no broker is offering it on the boards, doesnt mean it isn't happening...