WTF?

I definitely could, but my customer knows how easy they are to cover. She'd feel slighted if I had a service failure on one... So I make sure that the people who haul these are extremely solid so that I can defend myself if things go sideways.

Being greedy is fine, you just have to be long term greedy. Maintaining the relationship with the customer comes first before profit on an individual load. Yes there are other customers I could work with, but I actually think my customer is the best for my business model out there (or very close to it... I definitely don't want to go looking for a new primary customer).

A smarmy guy would claim that he was paying the extra money out of the kindness of his heart. I'm not and I wouldn't. I just know that when a customer gives you more money than you need to get a job done it had better get done.

EDIT: It's a paradox that in business you can actually turn a bigger profit by spending more money. I expect to pay the guy I hire in May 65k by the end of December... And I'm looking forward to it. He's a good friend of mine from the call center days and I know his skillset. I'm going to have to beat the smarm out of him before he'll be able to get really good (he comes from call centers... they kind of force it down your throat) but I'm confident he'll adjust and probably be much happier for it.

He's going to get a much better entry deal than I got. That's because I don't plan on losing him at the 2 year mark. I need a partner so that I can take a ####ing vacation already. He's got a wife and kid and making 50k in collections isn't doing it for him. Match made in heaven.

Right now I can't really leave my apartment because despite it being VERY slow and my having 90% of my time as down time I still have to monitor a bunch of stuff. I can leave for an hour or two, but I can't just up and leave town. Really restricts how much fun I can have in the off season. I'm actually going to take a trip sometime in February or March, but it's going to be to go visit my customers. Should take about a week and I'll probably find a way to get to Disney World for a day or something. The rest of the trip will be driving around the country visiting people. I'm looking forward to it.

 

There's another type of high margin situation that isn't really as good as it looks... And that's the customer that wants to trade bad freight for good freight. Every guy in this thread who owns a trucking company and has direct freight knows what I'm about to say.

Customers want consistent costs on their freight. They want all loads to all cost the same $/mile. This of course is in no danger of being reality. Never will be. If you have a load going to Long Island and a load going to IN one of those is going to cost literally double the other on a per mile basis. For good reason.

So the customer says to the broker "I'll give you 2x NYC's for 4200 and 3x Indy's for 4200". As the broker you know you're going to pay 5200 on the NYC's and you're going to pay 3000 on the Indy's. At the end of the whole process you've made 1600 bucks for doing 5 loads.

This is actually a super common situation, and I have it going with several customers. I'll routinely make a lot less money on some loads than others. That's why I made that ####### remark about loads going to WI being overpriced by the customer. They KNOW it's overpriced. They use the overpriced loads (that management doesn't know about) to pay for the underpriced loads (that management doesn't know about) because the person you are dealing with gets paid for keeping transportation costs at a certain level, the same level that their customers are paying them for transportation.

EDIT: Heck right now with my main customer I'm making 200 dollars on loads I'm getting 3100 for and I'm making 500 dollars on loads I'm getting 1500 for. I'm getting 3-4 of the former for every one of the latter. I'm fine with all of it and I'd take as much as I could get of either. It's a balance either way.

 

your not paying attention.

 

I don't see any 2.00 a mile freight out of S Florida today but the rates definitely have popped a bit. Looks like S FL-NC (800 miles) is posted at 1400. I doubt that guy will budge much because that's frankly a fantastic rate... Of course inbound rates are down lol.

 

Everyone's idea of a fantastic rate is different eh? It's a decent rate for the area. I read a report from DAT posted on social media that reefer from south Florida up to Jacksonville is over a $2 mile reefer lane now and headed back to south FL from Jacksonville is average of $2.37.

 

I don't see any of those loads on the board today within 200 miles of Immokalee. FL does seem to be starting early this year which suits me just fine. I'm hearing melons are going to start in mid March down south. Not sure how accurate that is as the farmers are pretty routinely 2 weeks off (almost always late) when they tell me when things are going to start. I guess we'll see?

 

Probably so and yeah that's why I was always suspect on DAT lane averages but they swear by their info and that is what they are claiming.

 

DAT has never been in any danger of being accurate from what I've seen. I've used all their rating tools at one point or another. It's not that I think they are intentionally skewing the data I just think their sources of information are limited. For instance I know for a fact that CR England reports rates to them... And I have no idea what % of their overall data set that is. If it's large they are really only reporting on how business is going for one large operator who has a very different cost structure on both the brokerage and trucking sides of the business.

I'm 100% certain that TQL, Coyote, CHR, and XPO definitely DO NOT report to DAT. Those companies treat their data like dragons treat treasure. CHR is the only one that will give carriers references for instance.

EDIT: I mean yeah it's possible that CR got some customer to pay them 2.37 a mile from Miami-Jacksonville on a decent volume of trucks. If any of you think they shared those with the market I've got a used bridge to sell you.