Quote:
Originally Posted by GMAN
If I haul something it is done on it's own merit with a fair rate.
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Interesting perspective, GMAN. For the biggest part of my career, I drove for a private carrier. The only back hauls we did were products coming back into our own warehouse, because we had no authority to carry freight for hire. We made our money on the products in the trucks, and we ran our trucks to ensure that our freight would arrive undamaged, and our customers would be happy with the service. We ran them just to cover costs, and made no profit on the trucking end of the business per se, although we did profit from happy customers and low claims. (Whenever people ordered extra stuff via common carrier, it almost always arrived trashed. Especially anything with glass in it.)
In that context, I hated backhauls, because it meant more work for the same salary, and commensurately less time at home. It was often a shuffling problem too, because I'd have to either double back, or shove several stops out of the way to load a backhaul before I had gotten all my stops off. (Some pillow place on the way to Altoona comes to mind, with stops in Altoona and Summerhill and Bedford and sometimes Cumberland still left.)
In the end, we did few backhauls because there were no more American manufacturers. The last one we dealt with closed in July of 2006. Then we shut down our trucking operation the following February, which might or might not have been related, but probably was in some way. (We speculated on the last day that the warehouse would be next, when they figure out how to ship stuff straight from China to the customer's doorstep.)
The rate cutting bastards who took my job run auto parts, carpet, any crazy thing they can get into a truck coming back somewhere close to the home terminal. It's OK if you want to shake your fists at those guys. I'll join you. I'll even moon them. I'm just saying not all backhauls are created equal.