Changing Authority

[exfiveo]

My company has dot private (not for hire) authority. We send a reefer truck from Michigan to Tennesee once a month. We haul our product and return empty. With fuel prices as they are we are considering getting common carrier authority to back-haul from TN to MI. We know weeks in advance when the truck would be available. We have been considering options, but are not a trucking company so we may be missing some big obvious things. We do not want to haul for fuel. We have a certain and limited capacity and want to use it, not help drive freight rates down.

I spoke with a small local broker (mentioned positivly on this board), who said that that they couldn't help because they deal primarily with carriers on regular scheduled repeating loads.

My question is:

Should I find a small carrier and let them know that I will have a truck available on such and such a date in TN for MI and use their authority?
-what would be a reasonable rate if we find a load vs. they find a load.
-would we have to get extra insurance or bonds to protect the load or would their authority/insurance cover that?

Should we just get common authority and whatever insurance is required and check the load boards?

Should we get common authority and sign on with and outfit like Landstar and post our availabilty (as limited as it is)? If so, What would Landstar (or equivilant) expect?

Maybe or probably there are other options that we are not aware of?

Thanks for any advice.

[GMAN]

If you use someones authority then you will need to put their signage on the side of your truck. Unless you plan on running quite a bit I don't see an advantage to leasing to a carrier. It would certainly not be advantageous to the carrier. He will need to pay for your insurance if you run under his authority. It would likely not be worth the expense for a single run per month. My suggestion would be to get your own authority and find your own loads. Unless you plan on running more than a single load per month I would probably not be worth it to you. Perhaps you should consider hiring a truck to take your product rather than having the expense of paying for a truck for a single run per month.

[exfiveo]

Thanks for the reply, We used to ship our stuff, well we still do with ltl carriers when the customers just get a pallet or two and it is too far away to take ourselves economicly.

It is still cheaper for us to rent a truck from Paclease for a week and pay a driver to make the trip including five to eight stops and return empty than it is to ship on ltl carriers. The high cost is because we send maybe 16-20 pallets divided among the different different customers. If it was one truckload for one customer then we would let someone else carry it. Because of the product we make, there is a significant customer service value when we deliver our products ourselves. We aren't a trucking company and don't want to become one.

Just looking for options to increase revenue by using that return capacity.

[Chiefwhatdahey]

A good way to fill the truck on the return is to either find a shipper where you final or find a receiver in your area that has shipments from where you deliver, make the call directly to avoid the broker.