Quote:
Originally Posted by mndriver
Curious if you are still doing this or if someone's cut your rate yet...
|
Still doing it and have been for 3 years now. I am in pretty tight with the customers on both ends. It is food grade and they have trouble with some of the junk trailers other carriers bring in. They refuse to load about 75% of the trailers. They won't load a plywood lined trailer, trailer with any odor, trailer with any dirt.
I haul the finished good to a warehouse near Joliet Il and bring back ingredients which come in from New Zealand on containers.
I pick up the finished goods 30 miles from my house. The company where I pickup at is owned by the company in New Zealand where the ingredients come from.
Service is everything, they don't have to worry about my trailer conforming to their standards. I am only 30 minutes away if they need something in a hurry. If they need ingredients and don't have the finished good to send over I deadhead over and they pay me the same as loaded. They do that so I don't contaminate my trailer with some other product. They don't have to worry if I will be there or not. I have the pass code to get in the gate at the warehouse and I am sleeping backed into the door when they come to work in the morning.
I unload and load on the home end at 8:00am and usually back home by 10:30am. I stay home until around 3:00pm and head over to Joliet and get there about 9:00pm and back into the door. They come to work at 7:00am and usually have me unloaded and loaded by 9:30am and I am back home by 4:00pm
I raised them $25 each way on the first of the year because they wanted me to raise the value of my cargo insurance. The extra insurance raised my premium $200 a year.
