What type of loads/trailers would be the most profitable locally?

Hey, I eat, sleep, and #### this business lol.

I have been learning about the trucking industry since 2018 and finally pulled the trigger and received my CDL this year. I know, I have a long way to go before I am close to the owner an operator, or even owning multiple trucks - but I want to know, how could someone who is researching this type of information to learn for a long-term idea, find out what trailers/loads go for in their local area?

Super theoretical question but:


I am in Cleveland, OH - and I want to basically know if I ran a local fleet, running what (i.e flatbed, dryvan, dump etc) would be the most profitable or even most intelligent run?

Just trying to learn years ahead of time so that when I get my years in this industry, I can gauge where I want to make my next move.

 

All local trucking is way competitive.

 

I agree! I used to run dump in my area and I realized how over saturated that was. Everyone seems to own a dump truck around here lol.

I was thinking pneumatic tanker but there’s two companies around here (if I'm not mistaken) and I think they run OTR at times. I believe one of the two are a regionally ran outfit who’s under a parent company.

It’s incredibly difficult to really tell what’s truly in demand. I would love to find out and see my options, so I can eventually get my experience and knowledge in that specific area of trucking, whatever that may be!

 

Knock on doors and see who wants to put your trucks to work is the real answer. Since you are in the beginning of this thought process it will be very hard to know rates unless you know someone doing it as a business. See if you can find some RFQ's and if they have some number ranges in mind of cetane projects. Maybe if you look for city or county work you can find something with the RFQ's.

If you worked for a dumb truck I am sure you could have gotten he rates on that side. I have no idea on what the rates are in that area but would guess local dry and refer would be a no go. Tanker could maybe work but I would bet it would need to be regional. Good luck you are gonna need it,

 

Thank you for your extensive reply. I did not stay too long at the dump outfit for an abundance of reasons, but I know they paid their drivers probably the lowest of the low that even a company driver with zero experience could probably get a job making at least $4-7 dollars more an hour.

I do indeed know someone who did O/O, which he ran containers from the port. I doubt he owned any trailers, but he was "sick of the regulations" (find this hard to believe would say he wanted to truthfully just smoke weed) and ended up selling his truck(s) to open another non-trucking company.

 

obviously there things like free dat load boards you can watch rates from your area but you don't get too much local work. There ain't much a huge jump in earnings out here as one would believe. But yeah if you can get into something with local contacts etc but places that do that usually want a good size fleet to work with. It can be hard to get in good with companies to do stuff like that.
But check out local business websites and get contact numbers etc.