[tootie04]

Originally Posted by SteveBooth

Now now Tootie. We know that your driving someone else's truck for someone else on this forum who's getting the loads. When ya going to give up that info....HUH HUH HUH

When Hell freezes over and pigs FLY!!......We will never tell...... :wink:

[Orange Andy]

Merrick4; It took me 3 hours, but after reading every post in this very informative thread it was good to see your last post of 10/06 had an overtone of "Im fed-up and Im not gonna take it any more"!!!

If you are decided on keeping your dispatch service, they MUST perform for you. Sit them down and insist that you are not interested in going broke, or running for less than 1.45, or whatever number you need for minimum profit. Or better yet, give them an incentive to perform. For example, you are paying them 650 a month now, and I forgot how many loads you took in your first 30 days, but say 9? (lets use that for discussion sake) That is $72/load.

Now devise a scale for them, with incentives

net cpm 1.35 or less=unacceptable
net cpm 1.35 to 1.45= 60.00
net cpm 1.46 to 1.65= 80.00
net cpm 1.66 to 1.75= 95.00
net cpm 1.76 to 2.00- 110.00

You would have to adjust those numbers to suit your own operation, but offer rewards for higher paying work. And if they laugh at a proposal like this, drop them and look elsewhere, as that would indicate to me they are not interested in getting YOU good loads, but rather keeping them for themselves, and giving you the culls, and charging you good money in the process. You would be better to turn on the laptop in your cab and scour the load boards yourself when this dispatch service is slow, or low-paying loads are their only offering. Be patient, often times good things come to those who wait, and run a tight ship. Not being critical of you, I ENVY you, and want to see you go forward.

Dont be weak in any business. Stand your ground the first day in, or it will only get tougher. Im 54 and have not worked for anyone but myself since I was 25.

Best regards.

[RostyC]

Im 54 and have not worked for anyone but myself since I was 25.

That's quite an accomplishment Orange Andy, congratulations. I started on my own at 23 and am 37 now, I hope to make it as long as you.

[DD60]

Originally Posted by Orange Andy

Merrick4; It took me 3 hours, but after reading every post in this very informative thread it was good to see your last post of 10/06 had an overtone of "Im fed-up and Im not gonna take it any more"!!!

If you are decided on keeping your dispatch service, they MUST perform for you. Sit them down and insist that you are not interested in going broke, or running for less than 1.45, or whatever number you need for minimum profit. Or better yet, give them an incentive to perform. For example, you are paying them 650 a month now, and I forgot how many loads you took in your first 30 days, but say 9? (lets use that for discussion sake) That is $72/load.

Now devise a scale for them, with incentives

net cpm 1.35 or less=unacceptable
net cpm 1.35 to 1.45= 60.00
net cpm 1.46 to 1.65= 80.00
net cpm 1.66 to 1.75= 95.00
net cpm 1.76 to 2.00- 110.00

You would have to adjust those numbers to suit your own operation, but offer rewards for higher paying work. And if they laugh at a proposal like this, drop them and look elsewhere, as that would indicate to me they are not interested in getting YOU good loads, but rather keeping them for themselves, and giving you the culls, and charging you good money in the process. You would be better to turn on the laptop in your cab and scour the load boards yourself when this dispatch service is slow, or low-paying loads are their only offering. Be patient, often times good things come to those who wait, and run a tight ship. Not being critical of you, I ENVY you, and want to see you go forward.

Dont be weak in any business. Stand your ground the first day in, or it will only get tougher. Im 54 and have not worked for anyone but myself since I was 25.

Best regards.

650.00 a month for a frickin dispatch service? :shock: :shock: There are dispatch services that charge less than 400.00 or 40.00 by the load.How about just asking the same broker ahead of time that you're hauling for and see if they have a load coming out of the area you are delivering to? One way to minimize the headache of finding loads and hiring a dispatch service is to build a good relationship with 4 or 5 reputable brokers and/or shippers and gradually form a running lane. As far as roaming the country goes,trucking is a business,NOT a travel show. :lol: The incentive should be to make a profit and stay within the lanes you prefer running and try not to step outside of those lanes. I usually try to book a load a week ahead of time by asking the same broker Im supposed to pick up for about what they have coming back out in addition to posting my truck on the boards. Most of the loads I have found never made it to the boards. Loadboards and dispatch services should only be used as a last resort or just to get an idea of who is posting what,NOT a sole dependant for finding all your freight. I am signed up with a dispatch service and they only charge by the load. So far I haven't had to use them.

[Joymax_Trans2]

[quote]Steve wrote: Yes, I agree with that. I think there are some people who argue that you can sit in a bad area and your rate will come along, that's just not true. I think it takes experience to know where the hot spots are and not. A broker will give you about 3.2 seconds to say yes and move on to the next available truck. I've tried calling back within 10 minutes and the load is gone. It's very fast paced sometimes.

I tried sitting once in Wyoming near Rock Springs instead of taking the $1.10 and the load never came up. I sat from Thursday afternoon till Monday and was just getting ready to head out when I got a panic call from a customer to haul an aluminum pipe for $2.00 a mile. It weighed less than 200 pounds but was 25' long. They called UPS but didn't realize it was longer than they could take.

I realize most of you have shippers and you don't differentiate between us carriers who work off the load boards and yourself. Myself, Merrick, Pepe, and soon, Doghouse represent the real world of load board carriers. I think I saw Pepe working the drive up window at Taco Bell by the way.

It would be nice to hear the real Private GI Joe stories from the grunts like myself who don't have any shippers or lanes.

I love what I'm going, roaming around the country and don't think I could do the same lane over and over again even though it meant a constant good rate. I've seen some pretty awesome stuff and people in the short time I've been doing this and wouldn't give it up to haul steel to California then onions back to the East Coast non stop.

I'm not complaining here but be sensitive to the fact that most of you have shippers and are not representative of the ones who are posting and asking questions[/color][quote][quote]

Steve,

I only have 2 cotton shippers, the rest of our loads are from the boards or from Brokers that I have developed a relationship with that call us on a regular basis. The cotton shippers do not always have loads for us on a daily or even weekly basis. We do not run the same lanes. One week we might be in the SE then the following week in the MW.

Whereever the truck is and before making a call to a Broker, I see what areas have more freight than trucks in the states that we run, then I concentrate on going to those areas. It takes a little more work to do what I do because we don't run all 48 but my truck is always moving freight at a good rate because I took the extra time.

I'm glad that you are enjoying the US - it's a beautiful country. I'm glad that you are in a situation where you can sit for days. We are not - this is not a hobby for us but our way of making a living for now.

[merrick4]

Tried the Flying J internet, man it's fast. Cingular barely works out here in Wyoming.

Just to clarify things, I do not use an official dispatch service. As mentioned it's a guy who has 11 trucks and has a full time job and has a dispatcher and he supposedly had plenty of freight and was going to load my truck for the $600 a month.

Well turns out that the dispatcher is his brother-in-law and is not as shrewd as he is. A lot hasn't seemed right since I've been out here and slowly I'm figuring things out.

1) It seems to me he hauls mostly for CH Robinson for the simple reason that they pay fast. TQL pays better on the loads but he said they take too long to pay. By the way he didn't just come out and tell me this at first but I kept asking questions on why he is doing certain things. I can wait for my money. Besides that CH Robinson charges 1.5% so it seems to me that for another 1.5% he can just use TQl and factor the invoices but it's his business.

2) I keep ending back up in Florida and not for the greatest rates. Well today he admitted that another reason he uses CH is because they have year round freight in Florida and he needs to have that as his drivers need to get home. I don't need to get home all the time.

So in the end he needs to run his business different than I do mine. Anyway they went and got me a load out of Idaho back to where else, Florida. The money is ok, $4500 on about 2700 miles. but as I said this is winding down. I had my license plate loose and the Idaho State Troopers pulled me over. I guess they are DOT as well so he did a Level II inspection. I passed but he gave me a local violation for the plate.

All trucks were pulled over today in Wyoming and they wanted to see my logs. I told him I use a computer program and would be more than happy to print it for him. He declined and let me go. I like this Drivers Daily Log program. I didn't even have the last 7 days printed when the Idaho trooper wanted my log but I told him I'd print them and he was fine with that. He commented that he liked them as they are easy to read (and easy to fix :wink: )

One problem I see is I only have a few months out here and close to 1000 hours on my reefer. I have heard that the average should be 2500 per year but as I haul produce I don't know how that's done. Any ideas No_Worries?

I calculated today I have earned $38,900 for my loads since I started on July 21st I believe it was. I didn't think it was that much as I was home for a bit. Plus another $500 or so for detention and unloading maybe a bit more.

I need to finish calculating the fuel but I believe I have spent about $14,000 or so on fuel. I will finish catogorizing the rest of the expenses then put it out here. I know insurance for the year was $14,199.47. Those are the two major expenses anyway.

[Orange Andy]

Thx for the update Merrick. Glad to hear things are ok. And I think you are only going to get better rates, more knowledge, and make even more money. You are approaching 3 months in business. Lets say.......

45,000 gross income or 180k annual
15,000 fuel, or 60k annual
14,000 insurance annual
7,200 fee for dispatch/loads
Leaves about 99K for depreciation, taxes, maint, licensing, and your wage.

Bottom line of 55k seems well within reach, and it would not take much improvement to bring that number up to 70K, imho.

Best regards

[no_worries]

Glad to hear things are going ok for you. As far as reefer hours go, it will vary widely. If you're hauling almost exclusively reefer loads you'll really rack up the hours, especially with produce since you can't run start/stop. That 2500 number would be fairly typical for a fleet trailer which makes up the bulk of what's available on the used market. Most of those fleets are hauling a mix of reefer and dry freight so they don't pile up the hours. We were using running anywhere from 40-60% reefer and probably 1/3 of that we could run start/stop, so the hours didn't accumulate terribly fast. Over the last 150,000+ miles we've put 2800 hours on this unit. The long and the short of it is, if you're hauling produce the reefer hours are what they are. There's nothing you can do about it except understand what each of those hours costs you and make sure you're charging accordingly. Keep up the good work.

[Sonny Pruitt]

If you have reefer breakdown insurance
Check to see if there is a specific number of hours
they require to have the unit inspected/service.
Some require inspection every 1000 hours to keep coverage
which is a pain

[merrick4]

well I cut the cord today. I don't need to be paying $600 a month to run for a $1.30 I can do that myself. Why this guy did this I have no idea. Sometimes you can't rationalize the unrational. I believe in working together and pooling resources which was supposedly what we were going to do but all he did was hand me on a platter to that unscrupulous CH Robinson broker.

Oh well. So I got my first load already and I'll tell you the danger of running cheap. I called on several loads and I can't believe what they wanted to pay so I declined. But then I spoke to another CH Robinson broker who offered me $1000 to run 700 miles from Kansas City to Grand Rapids, MI. All I could do was get him up to $1050 and I divided that by 700 and got $1.50 and said yes. So the danger of running cheap is when they pay you just above cheap it looks good. I got mad at myself after. They got me so use to running for $1.30 I thought I was doing great getting something without a 3 in it.

I will say one thing though, the other people had me deadheading a million miles to end up ruining the rate and end up with $1.30. At least I only have to deadhead like 15 miles for this one so less wear on the equipment.

Anyway just cut my expensed by $150 a week so that's a plus.

BTW a letter came to my house from Amex, they are changing the terms of the rebate agreement. From now on "automobile gas" (they can't tell the difference between auto and truck nor diesel) will not get the rebate of 5% for individual purchases of over 75 gallons or the equal dollar value. How they know the dollar value I don't know but I'll just shut the pump off around 60 gallons and turn it back on. Hope that works or I'll have to find another card. I've been doing real well on the rebates.