Three Brilliant Ideas
 

1. The federal government should start a program to buy all the vacant auto dealerships and convert them in to truck parking areas.

2. Somebody should invent eload. An auction site to connect shippers directly to carriers. The shipper could post their loads, be it 1 or 1,000, for carriers to bid on directly. Get the brokers out of it entirely, make the process completely transparent.

3. This site needs to petition Big Diesel and Steve Booth to rejoin us. Kevin just isn't that entertaining & people just seem to ignore me when I try to stir up sh*t.

4. Volvo should sell Mack Trucks to a U.S. based consortium of investors and Mack Truck employees who could then restore the Mack brand to it's once legendary stature, especially in the dump truck & heavy haul markets.

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someone should convince Cat to keep making truck engines

They are. Just under International's name.

they are mutts, I want a pure-bred

I should win the powerball tonight so I can call dispatch monday morn and tell him "Hey Phill....Sue and I are bringing the truck back, where would you and Dawn like to eat tonight?":rofl:

They don't need to, go get yourself a B model Cat, crank it up to 900 hp and go have some fun.

Better list the tranny and rears to use with them kind of ponies...:thumbsup::clap::smokin:

IM ALL FOR IT :thumbsup: :clap:

What would stop a carrier like Landstar or Schneider from coming in, bidding on all the loads, and rebrokering them out?

Or Swift, or Werner, or J B Hunt, or Stevens Transport, or Covenant, or U S Express, or....

or C.H. Robberson

Nothing, just like nothing would stop you from doing the same.

It would just make the process transparent. You would know who won the bid and you could tell how much they were skimming when they tried to broker it out.

And by the time you figured out all that information, the load will already be gone. Hell, most times I'm booking a load, I barely have time to confirm the mileage. Transparency is a ruse to keep motor carriers from having to worry about knowing what they are willing to haul a load for. It will do nothing to increase rates.

1. C'mon, I know your mind works faster than that.

2. Transparency is a virtue (at least to those of us lacking sufficient powers of deviousness) in business, government and interpersonal relationships.

3. It may not increase rates, it may even decrease them. It would bring about greater economic efficiency, something that should be desired by all the free-market types. Let the low cost producer prevail!

There are many of these already. They all manage to get the carriers to bid lower and lower for the freight.
It's just like when they have "live" RFQ's. The bid rate starts high,by the time it's over the rate is in the toliet.
The only thing transparent about any of these is the cost that you will do it for.

Why on earth would you want to bring about artificial economic efficiency?

ok, educate me please.
I found this one online. FreightRFQ.com
Can you give me a general overview of how the process works. I might sign up for this one just to see what it's all about, but I'd like to have a little information before I do.

That is just one of hundreds of "load boards" Same thing different name.Pay a fee or percentage to participate.
Online RFQ's are by invite only to qualified carriers.(in some cases open to brokers) They may have 100's of lanes and 1000's of loads per month/quarter. You have a time period to review everything and the "rate war" lasts one day. You see where your standing is as the bid progresses. Bids go by price and commitment. Very hard for a single or few trucks to compete in it.
Some RFQ's allow a percentage of a lane or percentage of the total to be brokered. Remember a common carrier has the right to use substituted service. Thats why most state that the bid is under contract authority.
In closed systems a shipper may "offer" loads to multiple carriers or tender a load to a certain carrier. Again the carrier has to be qualified to be in the system. No DOT rating,no qualification.
For a shipper to use a carrier direct loading ("e-load") is very time consuming and not pratical at all. Fielding multiple calls,wide range of rates,availibilty,qualification,ect is not worth the time involved.

But wait! We were told by several people here that it only takes a whopping 10 minutes worth of work for a broker to book a load! What's with all this "multiple calls,wide range of rates,availibilty,qualification" gobbledygook?:rofl:

We handle one customer as a 3PL and the reason they changed to that is they were tired of wasting time on fielding all the calls from people who didn't have a clue as to rates. So now we get all the pleasure. Amazing that the larger carriers are all within a few cents/mile and the single trucks range as much as 2.00/mile difference.
Why as a shipper you would want to deal with it is beyond me. Unless your volume is so low that it doesn't happen often.

That's interesting, about the large carriers being so close in price. This is the part of the business that seems to be the hardest to learn for me right now. How to price freight to potential customers. When I was in construction I was usually close in price to the other bidders, because I knew the going rates for my business.

I have a family member who works for a company that ships freight on flatbeds and she wants me to contact her about putting together a price. I have not made contact as of yet because of my lack of knowledge regarding pricing freight. I never like to be the cheapest guy in town and surely don't want to cheapest guy in town because of my own ignorance of pricing freight. So that's what I'm trying to figure out lately.

Any suggestions as far as educating myself in this area?

Some of the loadboards have a section for what rate freight is shipping is or to a specific area. There is an additional fee. One thing that I have noticed is that the rates they publish is less than I have gotten to the same areas. The rates they post are there because someone took the time to submit them. If others who may be getting higher rates don't bother to submit their rates then they are not included in the mix. Those should only be used as a guideline. Keep in mind that if everyone is reporting rates of at least $1.50/mile and one or two submit $1/mile rates then it can really skew the averages. One way to see what rates are doing is to talk to other shippers.

The rates off of a loadboard is no indication whatsoever of the actual shipper rates. Rates from direct-ship,u-ship are the same. The shipper is acting as a "broker" and seeking the lowest cost. Majority of shippers pay a fair rate for the area/lanes they service. You come in with way high(or way low) price and your info just goes in the trash. If you're lucky they will tell you that you're way out of range.
Eliminate seasonal fluctuations and what ultimately determines the rate is the truck/freight balance. Again getting that number off of some load board is in-accurate.(unless all you want to deal with is brokered freight)
There is no "magic" formula to rates. Thinking that you can "set"the rate is wishfull thinking. You have no more chance of that then setting the price you will pay at wal-mart.
Lot's of calls to shippers in an area and you can weed out the bs and get an average. Just ask what rate they want to pay. You'll find that most are very close in price.