Intermodal Dray Advice

[Convoy]

I'm considering the idea of contracting with an intermodal dray company. They are offering to pay 65% of their dray rate and assessorials to the truck. According to the numbers that they are quoting their average round trip rate to a customer is $675. They claim that with someone who is willing to work hard and either do two short trips or one longer one in a day that they can put enough business on the truck to average $600 a day.

While this seems reasonable, I have not worked with a dray company before and I don't know how this compares to the market. Does anyone else know how this pay structure compares to other dray operations or how realistic their figures are?

[Back on the Road]

Convoy,

For what it is worth, I have spoken to two Intermodal carriers, both whom informed me that the average pay to there O/O's per week after fuel deduction is between 1700-2800. (One payed percentage and the other by the mile) Now, your 600 dollar a day you quote, is that before or after fuel costs ?

I am also looking into the same thing but doing my research and number crunching as I am not set to do this for approx six more months.

Joe

[mike3fan]

yes $600 a day is possible,but expect a 14-15 hour days and expect to be considered the scum of the earth by everyone else.I worked for Bridge Terminal Transport for 4 years before moving to tanks. I enjoyed it but I also had a pretty sweet deal going until the container buisness tanked 2 1/2 years ago. I made in the mid $140's there.

[Convoy]

Joe,

Thanks for the reply.

The $600 a day is before fuel. According to their numbers they are able to average $675 per delivery. They figure that a truck can average 1-2 deliveries per day. At the truck rate of 65% this would be either $438 or $877 depending on the number of deliveries. They are then taking an average of these two numbers to come up with $657 per day to the truck. The owner is then responsible for fuel and any other operating expenses. They are quoting an average of 1000-1200 miles per week.

It seems like this would be about the same range that you are being quoted after fuel. I'm trying to do a little more research as well. It seems to be fairly reasonable as long as the numbers are accurate and the business is there to stay busy.

[Convoy]

Mike3fan,

Was Bridge also paying on a percentage basis or did they have a different pay structure? I'd like to know how the 65% figure compares to other intermodal companies.

[mike3fan]

Mike3fan,

Was Bridge also paying on a percentage basis or did they have a different pay structure? I'd like to know how the 65% figure compares to other intermodal companies.

yes I believe it was 65%

[rgordon212]

I too worked Intermodal for 4 years and made a good deal of money at Schneider untill they pushed all of us owner operators out to the OTR jobs after they got enough company drivers to do the work.... as for dray carriers, i tried to work with one that paid 71% and after running all over Chicago trying to get a chassis from one place and a box from another and sitting in lines for hours and hours I decided the 4-6 hours I had left to work I was never able to make any money..... other than that I would say just to stay away from containers because now that Schneider, Swift, Werner, and JB are all doing rail, the freight is going to go down the ****ter.

I was pulling turbine blades this summer and made a great deal of money, and now that winter has rolled around, I went back to Schneider on there "IC Choice" program and am doing quite well now too. I average about $4000-$5000 week and run under 3000 miles