[merrick4]

Made to final and waiting to get unloaded. They pushed the delivery date up and this load turned into an expedited one. And to make matters worse they (TQL) started with the "where are you" phone calls. Mr. very polite and humble Merrick flipped on the kid and that ended the phone calls. I rush myself I don't need to be rushed by anyone else.

Also what started as $1.30 out of Florida turned into $1.15 actual hub miles as I avoided the Florida Turnpike. Kind of upset when I saw that but I calculated the rate going into to Florida and this one coming out and it averaged out to $1.54 a mile. And that is every single mile on the truck including taking it to Miami for service and back to home in Broward. Plus I am in a good area (Indiana).

Anyway I have a problem that I need help with. I just got a call from a shipper in Miami that I have been calling. They returned my call and want to deal with me. We didn't discuss rates didn't but they have been using CH Robinson and also sending out daycabs to over the road runs and paying for meals and hotels for the drivers.

So my problem is I don't know what rate to set. They said they would continue to call CH and then call me to see if I can do better. Also I had a very nice talk with the guy and he stated he wants me to keep calling him to check on loads. It is dry freight. Their business is growing fast too. It is exactly what I was looking for, a company tied to South America. They import what they sell and finish it here and then send it out.

What I would like to do is set a rate and then add a fuel surcharge that would just adjust with the fuel. Also I would like to make it a rate that would stay continuous throughout the year so it might be a bit higher during the down time but would stay they same when produce kicks in and they need to start paying more. I would like continuous freight down there.

But really I don't know which route to go as I'm so new at this. I don't want to make a stupid mistake and screw it up. Any ideas how I should go with this?

I know this is awkard asking this type of question, but what the hell I got off my rear and found a shipper but am not sure how to proceed. I have this friend I was working with but he isn't answering a lot of my questions. There are many questions I ask that he doesn't answer for some reason. People are funny sometimes and I think he will be a big help to me if and when I make it on my own. Right now he has made it so there is no incentive to help another make it. Human nature.

One other thing, I have called on dry loads and sometimes they say no reefer so I'm hoping that won't be a problem either.

That picture Mike3 put of the containers was something else. This whole movement of freight is quie somthing. I mean looking at all of this besides looking just at the load we carry the big picture of things is amazing. And it will probably are only at the beginning still of globalization. I always use to say that one day the Africans will be wearing Nike too. Half the world is still living in unbelievable poverty, what happens when they all have discretionary income?

That might not happen actually now that I think of it. After all the world needs poor people, without poor people there would be no rich people. Just like there would not be no police if there weren't robbers.

Of course there are levels of poverty. I heard the other day some guy saying there is no poverty in America and if there is then if you are going to be poor then you best be in America where the poor have cellphones and everything else.

Actually I had to evict tenants out of my rental last year and these people couldn't (or wouldn't) pay their rent but they had enough for DirectTv.

Ok that's enough, I'll shut up now.

[merrick4]

By the way, when I was picking up in Florida this Jamaican guy comes up and asks me to back a truck up to the dock. From what I understood (he had a very heavy Jamaican accent) he was the owner of the truck but couldn't back it in. It was one of those long nose Petes and his driver couldn't back it in either as he drives a Volvo.

Well I never was in one of those. The dash looked like it could of been the dash of a 747. I have no idea what all those things are for and as I backed in to the hole I see now why people need to open the door to back in. You can't see a thing.

I guess you get used to things but those things are something.

[BigDiesel]

When a shipper asks about my rates, I always turn the conversation around and ask them what they have budgeted for shipping their product. Nine times out of ten I will get an answer out of them. But prior to my trucking career I had a sales career for 18 years and know how to negotiate.

There are valuable sayings we had in the sales negotiation biz that I still adhere to, one is that you can never go up in price, you can always come down. The other is : He who speaks first, loses.

[GMAN]

Originally Posted by merrick4

By the way, when I was picking up in Florida this Jamaican guy comes up and asks me to back a truck up to the dock. From what I understood (he had a very heavy Jamaican accent) he was the owner of the truck but couldn't back it in. It was one of those long nose Petes and his driver couldn't back it in either as he drives a Volvo.

Well I never was in one of those. The dash looked like it could of been the dash of a 747. I have no idea what all those things are for and as I backed in to the hole I see now why people need to open the door to back in. You can't see a thing.

I guess you get used to things but those things are something.

I used to own a Pete and loved it at the time, but have gotten used to not having to see around the stack. About a year or so ago, my niece and her husband had a load that needed to be delivered and didn't have a driver. She asked me to take it for them and I had forgotten how it is to try and see around those stacks. She had a KW but had the stacks on the side of the truck. It was quite an experience after being away from that type of thing for a while. With those long noses, you need to be especially careful while backing. Things seem to disappear under the hood. You need to remember what you passed to avoid an accident.

[merrick4]

Thanks BigD. I bet that salesman experience helped and I do tend to talk too much but I will work on that. I have been calling people back that aren't returning my calls right away which I NEVER in a million years would have done. So I will get the salesman thing, though it is true as someone said, this isn't really sales in the way that I am trying to sell someone something what they don't need. They need a truck and I need freight.

There was a quote I read one time from I think it was from a someone running for President that man doesn't read the writing on the wall until his back is up against it. I forget who it was right now. So I have no choice but to learn the sales thing if I want to progress.

Gman, I wonder is there at least some benefit to side stacks besides aesthics? You figure that if it blocks sight there must have been some value to it or they wouldn't have keep making it.

[CHRBROKER32]

Originally Posted by merrick4

How does this calling on shippers work? I was talking with this broker and he was telling me about the transportation sales position at CH Robinson and how they are to call shippers and see if they have need of carriers. I guess we can do the same really.

I mean if I am in Lakeland, FL can I just call these juice shippers and see if they have loads? Maybe not in those words but just wondering? I mean isn't that all brokers do? Anyone care to enlighten me on this?

And while you are at it, I wish someone would explain what those fence looking things on land next to the highway are in Wyoming? Look like pallets standing on their side. Seemed like they were throughout the whole state. They can't be fences as they are only so long.

I work for CH Robinson and that is exacly what we do. We cold call and try to go visit them. We have 6800 employees calling customers tring to get freight everyday. The thing that makes is easy for us to get in with a customer is we are muli-modal. We can handle all of their truckload, LTL, IMDL, Small parcel, international, air, and the list goes on. But yeah if I were you I would try to find some customers to haul directly for and use brokers just to get your truck to your next customer load. That's what most companies use us for.

[merrick4]

There was something I mean to write that I forgot til now. When I picked up this load, me being me, I got to talking with the guy at the window and literally within 5 minutes of being there I had the name and the phone number of the guy in charge of getting the trucks.

I was proud of myself but then enroute I realized the shipper wasn't the one getting the trucks (for this load anyway). Kroger was the customer. I don't think I can call Kroger and offer my services. And actually I was thinking of calling Publix as it sounds better, to me anyway, when I say, "do you work with local carriers?".

I know Gman and Loadit and others say don't compete with the big fish, but as this CH Robinson guy points out, they offer capicity and price.

I hear what everyone is saying about good service but we are in the Walmart age when it seems all that matters is price. (Funny how people use to make fun of Kmart and the blue light special when I was a kid, seems those days are gone.)

I've been thinking too, funny these big companies like Swift and Werner etc. don't offer other services like warehousing. It's always better to have multiple streams of income. I know LoadIt use to talk about having the warehouse and wish he would talk about that more as I always found that interesting and use to actually search out his posts just for that reason.

Today, I got to talking (I know what a surprise, I swear I should have been a journalist. If I could just get paid for asking questions) anyway this lumper service at Atlas Cold Storage was just bought out by RoadLink which I guess is a trucking company. I never heard of them and I tried to look them up but this internet is slow as hell here. Multiple streams of income.

And apparently this Atlas Cold storage is soley dedicated to Kroger. That quite frankly amazes me. A business whose sole business is to service one other business. Honestly that would make me nervous as all your eggs are in one basket. And then this lumper service is contracted by Atlas I guess. Lots of hands in the pie.

[rank]

Merrick,
Unless he really wants a firm rate from you i would just keep calling him when you're in the area. That way you have some flexibility.

If he is right in your back yard, then that's different and your rate might be competitive.

[merrick4]

Yeah he's pretty much right in my backyard. One thing I am worried about, what is the weight difference between a reefer and dryvan? This stuff he's handling is heavy.

I really would like to get setup in my area. You know towards the end of the conversation he asked if I was Latin. This speaking Spanish has been great. Who knew?

[merrick4]

Ok I got my next load. You know it's funny that CH broker guy pointed out the obvoius that rates coming from the Midwest and those going to Florida are the best and really me knowing nothing even figured that out already so I guess it's really not rocket science.

But I got to the Mid West and never know where to go from here. They had loads posted all over the country and to be honest even though I wish I could do it like Steve and roam around the country which is what I tried to do as a company driver, that's not smart for what I'm looking to do. I think I will try and stick with one area of the country. As they say it's better to be a big fish in a small pond then a small fish in a big pond.

So I was getting plenty of calls. But I ended up taking one from Indiana to Jacksonville. The only problem is it doesn't deliver to Tuesday and I told them no at first. I had one to Denver and one set up to get right out but it was a lot of time too, they said because of the weather. Also that one was a reefer load and this one is dry.

With deadhead this is just about $2 a mile. There isn't going to be a snowstorm in Jacksoville so no delays there and then I figure that I can spend Monday securing a load for Tuesday when I empty.

Not sure if this was the right thing though as I will be sitting for two days,but then again no chance of sitting due to weather.

Anyone know why sometimes dry loads say no reefers? Is it the weight? One broker told me one time it had to do with the pallets fitting in and that didn't make sense.