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

SADLY & UNFORTUNATELY, human beings can be WORSE than animals.

 

Seems pay is going up across the board.

 

depends on where you live.

a previous company i once worked for. still has the same crappy pay. and can't keep PAYCHECKS cashed. the company before that. closed the doors.

 

Yeah, that sucks.... it really hurts when someone else is cleaning up at the table and you keep getting dealt stuff like an unsuited 2, 8....

All you can do is sit there, hoping to catch a break.

 

Ok, when I see you with something posted I'll just ignore it, no problem.....

 

I had a guy/driver beg me for two months to do dedicated lanes for one of my biggest customers. I even got him a decent rate which he agreed to. It's reefer freight Paying 825 on 140 miles. Remember this guy wanted this and wanted to run daily. I got a call from him today saying that he now needs 1200 to do these loads. Really. After his fuel he will be making 400 a day and 2000 a week doing these loads. But he is going to screw me over because every once in a while he can make a little extra and put me in jeopardy with my customer with no regards to my family. But it's us brokers that get the bad names. Well its disloyal carriers like this guy that makes us concerned about who we book.

 

I did a few dedicated lanes when I had all my trucks, one route was a 60 mile run live load in the morning hour there live unload and come back for load number two it paid $1,000 a day M-F at first I paid the driver $1,000 a week spent $800 a week in fuel was a win win than things went south few months later they started sending him to other places I didn't say anything at first because somedays he would only do one 60 mile run but than they said they wanted to get him to start pulling there trailers also and needed to add them to my insurance for the trailers.....no problem few weeks later they called and said well we need to negotiate a new rate said now that I'm pulling there trailers I didn't have to buy tires or maintenance on them and was now only taking him half a day because they had trailers on both ends so it was just drop and hook.
I told them the run should pay $450 each and was giving them free runs in between well they found someone to do it for $500 a day and pulled out. That new company that started doing it the driver said he was paid $100 a day no matter if he ran one load or five, that same driver is still doing it today..

Than I tried doing one thru a broker load paid $850 on 200 miles at first loads going back paid $600 we would pick up run it drop reload and head back to offload the next morning worked good for two weeks than BAM....road block they wanted us there 7am ever day that would cut out the back hauls so I came up with a plan B and used two trucks. Monday truck A would load drop and pick up a back haul truck B would switch trailers and deliver the load for A but truck B could only do local runs after two more weeks it just didn't work and told them we could no longer do it...

Moral of the story dedicated runs never have worked for me and should pay way better than spot market rates!!

 

I still hold singalongs in the bathroom stall at TA, nobody sings with me though..

 

His original quote sounds too low.

Like people are always telling me though; THAT'S THE FREE MARKET! WELCOME TO AMERICA!

 

Here's the scenario I see, Johnny Trucker likes you. He agrees to be loyal and covers your freight every week now while the going is good for your "fair rate". You think Johnny is a stand up guy. Some unspecified time from now, capacity loosens up for some unspecified reason. You're a good guy and Johnny Trucker keeps hauling loads for you at the same rates for a time. Then one day YOU, Mr Ethical Broker Man get a call from your shippers. They tell you Super Truckers Express just came in and underbid your rates by 25% and if you want to keep the business you will have to match their rate.

So, are you, Mr Ethical Broker Man going to continue to load Johnny every week and take a loss on the loads or are you going to tell him "sorry man, Big Flatbed Load, Inc. lowered my rates". I can only pay you fair minus 25% now. I think we both know what the answer to the question is and thereby I've answered your question as to where all the ethics went in trucking. The smart guys are like squirrels stacking up them nuts just in case we have another year like 2008-09.