Why do most LTLs not hire owner-operators?

Happened to Holland several months ago. We had way more freight than drivers. Just because we have a labor shortage, doesn't justify having freight clogging up our yard and using up our limited trailer inventory. On top of that, we were pissing off our accounts that expect us to overnight/two-day ship their stuff. Granted, we are opportunistic and only contract stuff out when there is overflow, Once we hire more drivers or the freight comes back down, we drop the O/Os.

Couple of drivers (both city and road) got all uppety about it. Management told them they are more than welcomed to grab a linehaul run if they had the hours. That pretty much shut everyone up.

So anyway, back to the OPs question. Some of us DO pick up O/Os. But most of their work is seasonal, circumstantial, or they cover routes to our affiliated networks that our company linehaul can't cover. Example is USF Reddaway. They cover places like Alaska and Texas. We don't have any nearby hubs close enough to support those distant states with linehaul, so everything gets send there via O/Os.

 

Reddaway has NO terminals in Alaska or Texas.
They should interline with YRC but have been known to do otherwise .

 

Just to clarify, I specifically stated that we "cover those areas" Holland or Reddaway has a broad enough network to get things moved to distant places. Including stuff that is out of our network and requires third party final mile movement. But this goes back to my point that those regions are too far for our linehaul to support. We have to use OTR to move the freight to those areas so they can be interlined.

Reddaway/Holland uses 3rd party carriers to move things from one region to the other all the time. Here is an image of their service map

The blue is Reddaway and the orange is Holland, while the green is New Penn

 

That was always a kick in the groin to get cut for “lack of freight” only to wake up the next morning to a text from the yard jockey with a photo of PT drivers coming in the yard from the hub that I would have run to.