What you brokers expecting with the elog mandate?

If a fleet owner is paying 3500-4500 a month for a new truck, then they are well on their way to bankrupt. You're trading in paid for trucks and paying cash or at most 18-24 months finance. Your own mechanic works well for normal maintenance. Not very often that a truck breaks down in your yard. Unless you're one of those that drive the truck back to the yard with parts dragging on the ground.

 

Yeah Gearjammer is 100% correct for local trucking I suspect. With OTR break downs are a much bigger problem and the driver had better be a heck of a mechanic with tools and spare parts with him at all times. Even then a break down while loaded is going to cause all kinds of problems, sometimes thousands of dollars worth of problems, that aren't even related to the repair bill.

 

And still then it's the expectation of a driver doing mechanic work. And then complaining that you can't find a driver willing to do it. Pretty hard to find a competent mechanic for less than 20-25/hr with bennies. If you run short enough, have your own tow truck and have drivers willing to sit for nothing(or spare trucks/rentals)

 

Yeah the only mechanics willing to drive a truck and work on it are going to be owner operators working on their own equipment right? I've done business with some O/O's over the years with very nice very old equipment. Every last one of them did all the work themselves.

There's just no other way to compensate a guy for that kind of work. If you're a great mechanic why go out on the road at all when you can get 25-50 an hour (here in Louisville you can work for UPS as a diesel mechanic and make a very nice living with very nice benefits) on the open market and be at home in bed every night?

 

Not saying it isn't feasible for some aspects, just not for all applications.

 

It sure as #### doesn't scale does it? And that ladies and gentlemen is the reason why it's not really a thing. Except in local trucking where it's lolstandard. Of course. Because while the free market may not be close to 100% efficient it's substantially more efficient than that. Any business model that is viable at a large size is being tried as soon as someone with the resources to make a try thinks of it.

 

I have already done the math, 30% hit across the board at my outfit. Rates will need to go up, and tighter controls on how long we wait. I have been running automotive airfreight all week, 8 hour + wait times, but it has to go or GM shuts down. I am being paid detention and a great rate, but still have difficulty working this within the confines of the 14 hour INFLEXIBLE clock.

 

Your kind of freight is about to become team freight unfortunately. Those supply chains don't care if it costs a little more, they care about no disruptions. They probably aren't in love with the service level they were getting from solo's to start with.

Ultimately all of this is about money. If it's cheaper for the customer to pay for a two driver truck than it is to adjust how they do business that's what they are going to do. Either they will do more relays or they will use teams. It's always been about speed.

 

I doubt the service they get from their expedited solo's is any worse than teams. When you fail to deliver in that segment you can forget booking the freight again because no-one is giving it to you. For a company that runs mostly expedited freight the solo/team drivers in that system understand that. Random spot trucks from the open market getting into one of those loads are the crap shoot kind of solo's you're thinking of.

 

Doubtful, my radius of travel is normally 100 miles or less. A long haul for me is Detroit to Youngstown OH, and I only do a few of those in a year. Weekly IFTA miles vary from 800 to 2000 miles a week, rarely leaving Michigan. I would say if averaged out, I run 1200-1300 miles a week, IFTA miles, which includes my screwing around. Automotive expedite freight... Going to be interesting. See, not everyone fits in a box. And I am not the only one.