What technology can help your business that doesn't exist?

When you mention they may sit there until a load is going out, how does this usually happen? Do you seek it or are you contacted?

 

This is fantastic input, thank you

There's a lot of money being poured into keeping rates down for shippers, and in my opinion not enough money being invested to improve the lives of drivers. Tech investors see a "capacity crunch" coming, and an opportunity to sell technology to shippers in order to keep prices down. From what I can tell, it's been working. I'm interesting in finding technology that can help the carrier. From what you're saying, you need more opportunities to be offered good loads. Is bidding on load boards and relying on brokers the main source of this? If so, is that fundamentally working?

 

I didn't realize hack-haul rates are significantly less. Why is this? Are you only dealing with the broker or shipper who sent you out to the receiver? Or do you find yourself loads on load boards?

 

What if people were paying access to see when you were free and sending bids to you? It could be that they noticed you're in a city and on your way back, or ideally it's set up in advance. That seems to me to be a great way to get the best offer, but I could be missing something.

 

Doesn't sound worth it to me either! So sounds like this is a problem. Why do you think back hauls are being offered for such cheap rates? What if more people knew your availability and a high quality back-haul could be offered?

 

Paging @RollinCoal

From what I can tell, freight brokers don't have incentive to help "the small guy" make quality relationships with the shipper. They want to maximize how many loads they move from day-to-day, instead of trying to find high-quality matches between carrier and shipper. This differs from a 3PL who places more focus on the long-term relationship between carrier and shipper. Is that right? What are the downsides of working with a 3PL like C.H. Robinson? Smaller rates?

 

I hear ya. People are taking advantage of cheap labor. They're making a buck today, but at what cost? Quality is going down. Products aren't made like they are used to, and good reliable service seems to be a relic of the past. People who are willing to offer high quality service for quality pay are being replaced by people who offer lower quality at a lower rate.

My opinion is there's still a market for those who offer high quality service. I spoke to an agent at a large 3PL who confirmed there are some shippers willing to pay more for better service. Quality shipper-carrier matching is still on the minds of some. How can technology help make these connections?