Wondering if others are seeing lesser than satisfactory RGN/flatbed rates from load boards?

I'll start by saying...I do NOT live off of load boards. I stay fairly busy away from that arena. However in a case such as this week, I have to get myself from New England to St. Louis to get a wheel loader for a steady client in New Hampshire. I have a personal dispatcher who works very well for me to book loads when I need to get to another point such as this situation.

She started searching 3 days ago, and said she's been laughing and hanging up on most of the posted loads on several load boards from brokers. It's so ridiculous that I almost just decided to deadhead out there 1100 miles to get it and shoot back, but of course as the old saying goes, "something's better than nothing". That puts me in the same category as the guys that undercut, work for nothing, run cheap freight and I understand that more than anybody. I HATE lowball, cheap rate carriers ruining a once-profitable industry.

I reluctantly accepted and agreed to a stupidly cheap load out of Pa. to Ohio to get me 1/2 way out there...now we need to find another one of those to get me the rest of the way. I'm so disgusted with the way this game is played anymore I could vomit, but my rants or opinion will not change a thing so I won't go any further. I know...I'm part of the problem right? Sorry that I'm trying to be somewhat profitable. I apologize in advance for that.

This thread was simply a question coming from a long-time member of the industry to see if the rates are indeed putrid, the demand is low, saturation is in existence, etc? When someone offers me $1.70 a mile with an $80,000.00 trailer and 40 years background in everything from trucking to rigging and heavy equipment repair, I can't help but get infuriated and maddened. Can't change it...just sayin'.

Anybody else seeing low, putrid flatbed and RGN rates out in the spot market? (I don't need to hear about getting my own customers, I got plenty...) I try and add in my own disclaimers BEFORE the peanut gallery dogpiles me about using load boards. I don't like 'em one bit personally..but again, I am looking to just generate some "decent" revenue to get to Point B to head to Point C. But it's looking more and more like it might be coming to an end in using them if it keeps going this direction. The truckers blame the brokers, the brokers blame the shippers, the vicious circle never stops.

I carefully reviewed all this to make sure I wasn't just spewing words...I am trying to open the eyes of some more free thinkers, with some years behind them.

 

I just got home yesterday from a week out, and I had to get two brokered loads to get me from the northeast to East St. Louis, Ill. where I needed to get to fetch a John Deere loader to bring back home.

The first load had me wondering why I even bothered with it, although it was easy, light and quick. But the money was putrid. The next one I needed to get me the rest of the way from Columbus, Oh. to East St. Louis. I was on the phone with a broker friend of mine with her helping me out to find something for the next leg. She even was kind of taken back with the rates being so down, and she was looking at a couple of load boards while we were on the phone together.

By a fluke, and I do mean a FLUKE, I was playing with my phone while sitting in Columbus and was checking my Trucker Path app for something else, when I saw a LOADS button. I clicked on it, threw my info into the fields, and lo & behold I find a machine 45 minutes west of me, not a mile off of I-70 going to within 100 miles of E.S.L. that the broker asked ME what I needed to get...not the other way around. Then on top of that it was a COD load, so I got paid when I put the machine on the ground.

That was great, but it certainly isn't my normal way of obtaining RGN work, LOL. My question still remains, how come there aren't decent paying, or decent people to do business with on the mainstream load boards anymore? Or maybe I'm just not on them frequently enough to develop a few relationships like that, I don't know.

 

You couldn't be more right. The perfect example of that statement is when I was sitting in Columbus, Oh. last Tuesday on the phone with a freight broker friend of mine who was helping me look for a load. She was on the boards with me on the phone. She found 3 loads that might have worked for me so she'd hang up and call on them, but all 3 were covered before she could call me back. I even said to her, "this is living proof of the saturation of this industry."

I ended up getting a load on a whim that worked out well despite all of the disgust of looking at the reality of online reverse auction bidding with these guys.

 

No doubt. We just have to admit that there's really no big shortage of carriers anymore. Just yesterday I was at a fuel stop out in the southern tier of NY state sitting for a minute, when a fairly good looking Western Star low pro pulling a new step deck came across the parking lot at me headed out the driveway. As he approached me and got alongside me, I looked over at the driver and he was wearing a turban that was scraping the headliner....I'm used to seeing that in a Cascadia or a bubblenosed Pete or KW, but never associated a nice owner/operator spec'd setup being piloted like that.

It's a validation of the saturation of the industry.

So as someone else just stated, when you have an abundance of other people doing the same exact thing as you are, what else can you expect? That's a true statement.

 

Without a doubt.
There's several of those heavy haul sites now that specialize in reverse bidding auctions not unlike UShip for guys to bid themselves down into poverty I've see too. Veri Tread being one. But Cat uses them to move their equipment, and they love it because of all of the towing companies that go out and buy a million dollars worth of lowbeds and Landolls that usually sit around waiting for a wreck that they can now stay busy at $50.00/hour with Veri Tread to give their drivers a paycheck now. That didn't help this business at all. To add to that, I saw 3 accidents recently involving these towing outfits that had a machine fall off the trailer on a curve. You get what you pay for as the old saying goes.