WTF?

That's 100% true in normal markets. The kinds of freight that run for cheap rates are usually not time definite and they basically just sit around waiting for someone with a special situation (I need to get home for a family emergency) to move it. The kinds of brokers who do this kind of thing tend to be very low quality because the hourly you can turn from these kinds of loads is very low. I've seen many a new broker fail because he or she got hooked on the idea that their job was to service the first customer they ever landed... Even though they ship mulch. They got fired for lack of production because they wasted their time trying to cover that garbage freight.

In 'loose' markets like FL/CO/MA it's not indicative of load quality. Not every load in FL has problems, but they are all cheap. Also many brokers make a lot of money finding low information customers and selling them FL outbound for 'very attractive rates under 2 dollars a mile!' These guys tend to be sales oriented grinders who have a lot of smaller customers. Not my hustle so I can't comment on it really. I'm not a fan of any of the high margin successful broker types that don't mostly do heavy haul. Just know that those guys do more work to get one load than I do to get 15... So I don't envy their margins at all.

 

Yeah if you're based more than a 1500 miles from FL you're probably better off deadheading to GA. Also the farther north you are the more sense it makes to deadhead to the nearest normal paying load. If you're ok with doing 3 loads the ideal is to get a load from FL-GA for nothing a mile and then take a load from GA-> home for reasonable money.

But let's be real... Nobody is paying you good money to go to WI. WI is waaaay too good lol.

 

Nobody would be competing with the truckers union either. That's the problem with it. I get where you're coming from, and it really wouldn't hurt me in the slightest because my rates float on top of yours... But I've experienced what a united group of people with control over logistics can do and it 'aint pretty. I'm not even ok with taking a chance on creating another port of LA situation. I hope Trump starts a trade war with China just to cause them some suffering. The sheer number of people who suffer every time they decide that they want to make even more than 168k a year they already bring in (plus a pension and perfect benefits of course!) is nuts.

 

I am not talking about a union. More of a political force. Some of these regulations are insane.

 

Couldn't agree enough. I'd scrap HOS rules entirely. Being liable criminally and civilly for at fault accidents is enough to motivate people to not be idiots. And the idiots aren't deterred by HOS rules anyway.

I've always been confused as to why truck stops don't have more healthy food. It seems like it would sell pretty well. I'm actually legitimately surprised that Whole Foods hasn't figured out that there are a bunch of people who can afford their food going into these places every day and being offered a corn dog. They even already have refrigerated deliveries going into them with produce for the restaurants. SMH.

EDIT: Actually I'm surprised most of the trucking world is so dingy given the amount of money we're all pushing around. It's a travesty. For what you guys are spending on food and accommodations you should be getting a lot more. I guess truck stops have the advantage of being local monopolies so there isn't much competition.

 

honestly I'm not pushing for anyone to stand with me. We all have our own row to hoe. what I'm sayin is a guys gotta have his principles. It's like stealin a candy bar...once you do it the first time it's a slippery slope all the way down til I buy a white Volvo, switch my kicks to flip flops, and hit up Amazon for a really sweet track suit. Y'all do what your business model says to do. Both my business model and my stubbornness both say not to run that garbage no matter what the justification. Sophistry belongs in politics. I have no use for it in the way I make a living.

 

I'm tryin to put myself on the other side of the phone I really am brother you seem like a thoughtful cat but in one post you talk about crackin out loads for a buck a mile and in the next you're flabbin on about how much money you're pushin around. The fellers dingying up them truck stops are the fellers haulin your garbage loads. Cause=effect. Direct correlation. You're welcome, by the way. For solving that mind blowing riddle.

 

Lol it's a buck a mile on Florida outbound in the off season. I pay the market rate, whatever that might be. I was talking about how much money it costs to live on the road.

I pay the market because I, like everyone else here, am in it for the money. I am not doing this #### for fun.. I'm doing it because it's the best job I can get by a wide margin. Spending more than I have to spend to get what I need is kind of silly and I doubt any of you guys are out doing it either.

95%+ of my freight pays whatever outbound full blown produce season looks like. Or it's slightly overpriced flatbed partials out of PA lol.

EDIT: You're wrong about me being the cause. I pay what I can get a truck to do it for. Technically I had to find a good truck willing to haul for my rate for the load to happen. I didn't cause that, the geography of Florida did. Thankfully the trucking market is pretty efficient, so going into Florida takes that into account. The guys hauling my loads into FL make enough money going in that they can take crap going out and still average 1.80-2.10 a mile depending on what they haul back. If you aren't making a living at those rates as an O/O you need to figure out where the leak in your business plan is... Because it's serious.

And yes I make a great living lol. I worked super hard to get here and I'm not even a little bit ashamed of it. I figured out what I was good at in life and I found a job that allowed me to use all of those skills on a daily basis. Unsurprisingly it's gone really well.

And making good money isn't new to me. Before I went to college (for absolutely no reason it turned out) and became a freight broker I was a poker player. If black friday hadn't happened I might still be grinding out my living playing online poker. Really happy that all fell apart in retrospect... This is much more stable. I also don't have to worry about going on a massive downswing and going busto. Always nice to only be out expenses when things aren't going well.

 

What I'm trying to get across here is that nothing is free money. Every lane out there has a rate and that rate is based on stuff that exists in the real world.

For example most of my customers have a small group of VERY friendly local trucking companies who hang out all day waiting for my customers to assign them loads. Or they own their own trucks and have company drivers who are on salary. When they get these loads they generally pay 150% of what I get from the customer. They pay that much for two reasons: 1) the truck is willing to go wherever and put up with whatever the customer wants and 2) it's a round trip rate and the truck is expected back at the farm ASAP to be ready for the next emergency load. They use these trucks so that they can be certain that they are never going to lose an entire load to spoilage because of a truck falling out on something last minute.

Those guys aren't getting a better deal than the trucks I use, but it's a different deal with different expectations. The trust level is much different, the payment terms are much different (most of them get a check at the customers farm when they return from hauling the load. I have to wait 30-60 days lol. It's a life those truckers chose for themselves and seems to suit them just fine.

Sometimes a market needs a lot more loads delivered into it than it needs taken out. The way the trucking market reacts to that situation is to put the vast majority of the money for a round trip to that place onto the inbound side. When you arrive you don't get to say 'what I got coming here is none of your business... there's no such thing as a back haul!' when you got paid 3+ a mile to bring a load into the area. That money wasn't free and you aren't being clever. This is an open market industry that is fiercely competitive which means that it is definitely possible to do 5-10% better than the average person just working the load boards or 25-50% better working special situations like the above. Doing either of those things will make you RICH. There are trade offs for everything in this life... The trade off for not being willing to haul 'cheap freight' is not being able to turn a profit going into any loose market. There are a lot of loose markets and a lot of good loads going into them.

There is context to every rate in this business. Every part of the business is part of that context. You do not want to be fighting reality or you severely reduce your options. And reducing your options is just another way of saying you'll make less money by the end of the year... Which is another way of saying that when the going gets rough you'll go out of business before the people without this particular flaw.

EDIT: Also it's nowhere near uncommon for these local truckers to sit and wait 24-48 hours waiting for a load that's urgent to come up. They mostly seem to be older guys who live in the area and are fine hanging out at the house until they are needed. It's like being an on call trucker basically. It's also the most obvious good old boys network of all time. Lots of cousin's, uncles, and best friends from high school. Which would be why this kind of gig isn't something people are asking about on internet forums. And why none of you can use the information I just posted to make any money lol.

There are better offers out there than the market rate, but it takes a lot of work or a little luck to even know about them. There's a real cost to putting in the effort to know what's going on and have big edges.