That is an interesting choice of words they used....CONTROL. Schneider, J.B. Hunt, U.S. Xpress, Covenant, Landstar, etc., they all seem to broker freight. I would like to see the hard numbers and then draw my own conclusion. It would be good to see the number of loads they haul compared to brokering out. Depending on who you talk to, there are from 3-5 million drivers in this country. The major carriers only make up a very small percentage of those trucks. I read some numbers the other day that stated that there were something like 375,000 carriers in the U.S. I don't recall if those numbers are correct or not. Most would have to be single truck or small fleets, if accurate. If you consider the number of total trucks and large number of carriers, it would stand to reason that the major carriers cannot haul the bulk of freight. They could control a large portion of the loads, but cannot haul most of it on their own trucks. I would like to remember where I read that about the large number of carriers. It does give one a different perspective. :?

 

Oh, we call it bounce when you fall off a load. Its usually not a big deal unless the load has to pick by 1500 and you call at 1400 and say you cant do it.

 

I did a little Googling GMAN and this is what I came up with:


Number Crunching

How big is the trucking industry?

Trucking companies -- both public and private -- and warehouses employ an estimated 9 million Americans.

How many trucks operate in the U.S.?

An estimated 15.5 million trucks operate in the United States, 1.9 million of which are tractor-trailers.

How many truckers are there?

More than 3.3 million truck drivers work in the United States. One in 10 are independent, and the majority are owner-operators. Canada employs more than 250,000 truck drivers.

How many trucking companies operate in the U.S.?

An estimated 360,000 motor carriers operate in the United States. Ninety-six percent operate 28 or fewer trucks; 82 percent operate six or fewer trucks.

How much revenue does the trucking industry produce?

Total revenue estimates are $255.5 billion. For-hire, or common carriers, generate an estimated $97.9 billion, more than air transportation, which generates about $18 billion. Private fleets generate revenue estimated at $121 billion.

What is the average operating ratio for trucking companies?

The average operating ratio is 95.2. This means for every dollar it produces in revenue, the trucking company has a cost of 95.2 cents, netting a profit of 4.8 cents on the dollar.

How much do truck drivers earn?

Drivers earn an average of 30.3 cents per mile. Average yearly income for drivers is $32,000. Owner-operators make slightly more, on average.

How much does the trucking industry pay to operate on U.S. roads?

The trucking industry pays an estimated $21.4 billion annually

Source: TruckInfo.net


This is a year old and here is the link to the source:

http://www.inboundlogistics.com/arti...eature02.shtml

I don't know how true it is. I try not to get to involved with statistics cause they can be manipulated so much. There is a famous quote, I don't remember by whom that says "There are two ways to go through life easily, one is to believe everything and the other is to believe nothing."

I tend to believe nothing as I find that the easiest. Otherwise there would be a whole heap of religious stuff I'd have to start doing which I'd rather not do

 

This number is accurate. I've seen it before and if you look at the annual report on the Mega carriers you'll see it. There is a lot of pork in these companies, but 4.8% of 97 billion is a lot of money.

If they would cut turnover they could get the ratio up.

 

I saw this number recently too and it got me thinking, all this trying to call shippers and get direct loads, probably make more sense to get the loads and broker them out. Only expenses are office expenses; an office isn't going to break down.

Anyway ChBroker, I thought of a couple more.

If the rates are negotiated once a year and I assume that they are all not done at the first of the year, (by the way do you do that yourself? That is do you negotiate yearly rates or is that all done above you?) anyway, what happens when the fuel spikes like it has been doing? How do you guys handle that? Do you still try and keep the same rate or did you go back and ask for more to compensate for the fuel increase?

Also, just out of curiousity, do you know or are you personally aware of HOS (hours of service)? Sometimes it seems like these brokers think that trucks can run 770 miles a day even though you are in the mountains and weighing 78,000lbs. By the way just to repeat this was asked just out of curiousity and not meant like "DON'T YOU KNOW THAT A TRUCK ... etc that is I don't mean that as an attack.

One more actually. The guy I was working with told me that a broker told him that she was done with the one truck O/O. I assume cause breakdowns etc. Yet I have also heard that brokers like working with the one or two truck O/O because they obviously are a bit more diligent. I mean for me I am standing there pulping the freight whereas a driver might not. What is your personal preference or what has been your experience with regard to this? Or do you just not care and a truck is a truck as long as it moves the freight?

I will say a lot of this does not apply to people here because a lot have business models (I think anyway) that are different than the massive models you have, so a lot of this is just my own curiousity. I mean to be honest as I've said I started hauling exclusively for CHR but I try to avoid it if I can as you guys work on volume and I'll starve to death if I try and do that (or burn myself out driving like a cowboy).


Thanks again.

 

Thanks for looking those numbers up, Merrick. They seem to be a bit off on their numbers, unless my calculations are not correct. I think they are missing a few billion dollars.

 

I gotta say Gman I personally don't like using that lol thing but it would have applied here. Missing a few billion, you would think that would be hard to miss

By the way, I assume that for hire carriers are all of us and even the big companies, but what are private fleet companies? I would think for instance that Walmart trucks are private fleet but those trucks aren't revenue producing trucks I don't think. So I'm not sure but according to the above numbers they produce more revenue.

 

Private fleets will often haul something back. That is where the term back-haul got started. They will sometimes throw anything on the truck to lower their operating costs.

 

[quote="merrick4"]Anyway

 

Thanks Gman. I don't understand how they calculate the revenue then on these private fleets or how they could generate more revenue than for for hire fleets but I guess I'll look into that later.

Thanks again.