What has happened to ethics in the truck indus..or were there ever any ethics at all?

I'm extremely disapointed by some of the replies and am looking to distance myself from you guys ASAP. Not only that , effective immediately I will lower my rates to make sure we're all on a level playing field , after all that is how all brokers have always operated. Not only will I lower my rates , I'm going to call on the last loads I have done and am going to demand they send revised orders with less money on them to help out the broker.
Thx for the eye opening post

 

OP is talking about two very different things .. contract freight and spot market freight... If your shipper has agreed to pay you say $4 per mile all year long and then you take YOUR company trucks and go haul other broker freight for $5 and have to in turn tell your shipper you can't meet the deal, guess you won't have that shipper for very long will you. Run it at $4 on your trucks even when other brokers are offering $5 on the spot market. When the spot market dies and you are still getting $4 then if you want farm it out for less. Maybe the contract demands you move more loads than your own available trucks? Maybe you will have to pony up and pay $5 and lose for a while, but win when the rest of the market slows. In the end all the shipper wants is to know his loads are covered for X amount of money - and it is up to you to just get it done.

 

Let me explain something to you, I only have a few brokers that I'll do something for below market value but there also the brokers that pay detention time without even asking for it or the ones that when they get a very good paying load they call me first, I'm talking the kind of brokers that I move loads for without ever even asking a price because I know they won't ever do me wrong.

This winter I moved a few loads for a broker at E.W. Wylie the loads paid $2.40-$2.85/mile with freight the way it is today he had the nerve to offer me a 1,200 mile load for $2,000 really??? He said well give me a price you're one of our top carriers....I said your looking at $3,400 he said I was crazy that I must be getting ready to retire.

Brokers just don't get it don't call us when you're in a bind and forget about us the whole rest of the year it goes both ways!!!

 

I'm only running 7 axles now. I'm just going by some of the spot market rates I have seen on the ld. boards.

 

Does anyone remember the good ol days when trucking had ethics and everybody sang kumbahyah? Tell us some stories.

 

I don't think we've got to that day yet. I hauled my first brokered freight in 1976. Every broker sounded like a broken record for dry freight, .50 per mile. Had a few that never paid, some that paid great, then paid less and slower, then not at all, then the next week open at the same place, same people, with a different name.

 

if rates are that good.

why was there another carrier closing up shop this past week.

 

Whenever money is concerned, ethics typically are the first thing thrown out the window.

It may be pleasant to think of humans as different from other animals, but they aren't that different.

Were it not for laws regulating human behavior the strong would eat the weak, and it's just about all the legal system can do to keep that in check... or not, depending on how you look at it.

 

The long time market is soft I did $6,300 in December and $5,400 in January followed by $11,000 in feb, my fixed cost runs over $3,000 a month so if the truck did that gross how much you think drivers made? Or how much profit was made? Now I will be the first to say if I had a driver in my truck it would have made more money but rates were bad real bad I remember just sit at the house all week one time because everything I called on paid $1.25-$1.55 there are no profits to be made at them rates!

 

Big 10 4 there. It's been like this forever. Markets move, rates change. Shippers/brokers have the advantage....then they don't. Play the game or move along.