They keep me running, but sales is down. We cancel a lot of our routes. I guess the economy has some to do with it.

 

I spoke to a friend of mine that runs for PAM dedicated and he hasn't had a load since before Christmas. He was on a dedicated run with auto parts. He is told to call and check every day and nothing. :tears:

 

That is pretty tough, dobry4u. I am sorry to hear about your friend. We are all forced to doing some belt tightening.

 

I've gone by a couple of automotive assembly plants lately, and there have been no cars in the employee's parking lots. One was Chrysler, and it looked like a ghost town. Acres of parking, and not one single car parked there. I believe that the annual change-over would be over by now and the new models would be in production. From what I've seen, nothing at all is going on. Most years, the maintenance dept. would be working overtime.

 

Has anyone had any luck pulling oil and gas related loads? These used to be an area of strength and had decent rates.

 

There doesn't seem to be much of anything moving. With oil prices suppresses anything related to oil and gas is not doing much either. I had a truck near Cleveland a few days ago. It was a challenge to find something. I finally deadheaded almost 200 miles to find a load that didn't pay that great. That is usually a good area. Apparently, many of the automotive and steel plants are either not working as much or had their hours dramatically cut. It makes it difficult to find a decent load with so many trucks competing for the same load.

 

Not only that but because so many HAVE cut their hours this means in a lot of cases the shipping/recieving "window" has also been shortened.

Kind of makes it even tougher to unload then get a decent reload the same day.

 

Freight is usually slow this time of year..But right now it's wwaaayy slow.
I only ran about 6000 miles for the month in Jan(out almost 4 weeks)..bout 4000 in Feb(home every weekend)..and now in March 0..so far..Got home Feb 27th..It's now March 4th..waiting on call from
driver mgr now..I believe we're in this slump for the long haul..

 

I see some slight movement toward more freight, very slight. this week. For the last several weeks I don't believe that I have hauled more than 2 loads per week. Either the loads were not there or the rates were so cheap that I couldn't make anything on them. I see no point in hauling a load unless I can make something on it.

 

I worked 3 days this week. I've been squeaking out 4-5 lately (30-40 hours). I've averaged 50 hrs/week the last two years, until October. Even if business doesnt pickup vacations will be starting soon so things should get better for me.