Why oh why are you drivers taking this cheap freight????

No kidding. Dry van truckload, 45K, 60 miles pickup / deliver intrastate in NJ, toll road, hold overnight, got snapped up for $300 on Thursday.

 

Maybe in your math zero is more then 500 bucks, but I'm not rich enough to pass that kind of money. Accepting freight to Florida I always calculated deadhead to southern Georgia, or even home, Charlotte, and I would not sit in Fla days looking for good loads without any chances to find them. However If I could grab cheap sugar load taking me straight back to my home area, I wouldn't hesitate. If I have choice to go home empty for free, or go for 500 bucks, I would always choose the latter. And fact, that I had enough money on run to FL has nothing to do with that. 500 $ is still more than 0.

 

My take on this is that I'm a business owner. Being business owners means that we have to make sacrifices to support the business. The most logical choice here is to NOT go home if you can't get a load heading home that is profitable. If there's a profitable load going in a different direction, then why take a loss just so you can sit on your couch, watch football, drink beer and pet the dog?

Unless money is not a concern for you.

 

I have never ran to FL....But FL sounds a lot like NM for 'Bedders....Lots of inbound freight to NM...But ##### few outbounds unless you like haulin' scrap to Denver from ABQ or Kirkland....And always over 80K on the rig.......Most of the scrap yards will get you to 82K gross.....

You can do it running the back-roads....at $25/T......

I like NM....But no money.....

Same goes for running to the PAC-NW......The outbounds from SO-CAL pay well....But those Tarped Stick loads at $1/m....Screw that.....Too much work for too little pay.....


I have a lane that pays well...And I stick with it.......No need to change it....

And it pays better during the winter time too....Another reason why I love the White Sheyat......Most of Bottom-Feeders stay below I-40 during the winter......More money for me.....

 

Of course money are important, that's why I work in the first place. However it is not the most important thing.

For last several years I was running from Carolinas to Oregon/Washington State, and from Pacific NW back to East Coast. I was making reasonable good money at those traffic lanes and I liked long runs. However after 10, or 14 days on the road I needed to see my family and that was more important then couple of hundred of dollars of additional profit.

Sure, I could stay on the road for months chasing best paying loads and ends with divorce, broken relation with children etc. I may have little more money, but at what cost?

Maybe I lost few bucks accepting cheap freight to take me home, but I have wonderful family and my marriage is better and hotter then 33 years ago, when we, high school sweethearts, where married. I live in beautiful house, drive nice German car, so what did I loose?

Sometimes taking cheap freight is the best thing trucker can do.

 

I'm still curious how trucking companies stay in business pulling cheap freight. Do they get government subsidies? Are they foreign owned and not subject to federal income taxes? Maybe their just running around just trying to look like a trucking company. Whatever the reason, if the average truck owner can't make it on cheap rates, then their must be more to the story. Common sense tells you somethings not right.

 

It's a trade secret....

 

Trucking is a biz like any other....You have to know your costs before you know what your BEP has to be....Let alone your Profit....

Bottom-Feeders eventually all go out of business....

Look around this forum....
It's littered with "Has-Beens" and "Used-To-Bees"........

How many L/O's found out after a few years that having their O/A wasn't as easy as being an L/O?

How many Company Drivers were O/O's before going back again?

Not that anything is wrong with either being an L/O or a Company driver...
Being 100% independent....Especially in trucking, is not for the squeamish or, the naive.....

 

I think it's mostly due to the mega carriers having so many trucks. They can stand to make $300-400 profit per truck per week, and paying the driver $700, and that = $1,100. Now compare that with the $1,500-$1,700 that an O/O can pay himself and perhaps even put some aside for growing the business?

EDIT: Oh - and yeah, I think they do get gov't subsidies for putting the people through school - thus they really don't care if drivers quit - they just get new drivers, and they get subsidy for every driver they put through school.

If the gov't ended this subsidy, then there would indeed be a HUGE driver shortage. This would cause companies to go out of business, rates would go sky high, and it would really affect the availability of merchandise on the shelves and their price tag. This is something the gov't cannot tolerate, so they are always working to make sure freight is cheap. This new broker bond requirement was designed to give a larger share of the market to the mega brokers - to keep rates down. They compensate for low rates by encouraging immigrants to come here to work for cheaper, operate for cheaper, and then giving the mega carriers more market share by making it too expensive for their smaller mom n pop carriers to do business any longer.

I've said this before, it's all about the government concentrating the power and means of production into the hands of a few - it's called fascism/corporatism and it's what China has. The fewer businesses there are, the easier it is to tax and control.

 

Nobody survives on the 1.00cpm alone... If you only use it to get home you might make it... But you better know your cost... R/t east coast trip pays me 12-13k... If I end up in Yakima,Wa I can take a cheap load home...200miles... 6200 miles 12k...6200 12300.. Still made good money... Not a big difference...

One thing I try to tell newbies is take a short haul into your long haul.... Live in seattle.. take the 600 load to portland n load out of there.... Makes for a good start to the trip