Bid per mile?
 

Your combined experience has given me good advise in the past so I'm hoping for it again. I'm dispatching our truck for my husband/driver. We've only been at it a little over a year and up til now most of our loads have been found on line. I have a local company that ships on a seasonal basis. March to June. September to mid December. Destinations are to HomeDepo, Lowes and Walmart. All in the west. It's a round trip run with several stops......load in Utah. Final in Kalispel, MT with several stops along the route and on the return several more stops picking up empty containers to go back to the place of origin. That's an example of similar runs into all the surrounding states to Utah. We would be pulling the shippers trailer. How do I prepare a bid per mile for the shipper? We take care of our own fuel. We are running under our own authority. We take care of all permits. What kind of provisions should I be asking for in the bid if the price of fuel increases? Shipper will take care of all maintenance on the trailers. No brokers involved. This is all new for me.....I'd appreciate a bit of your knowledge and experience.

Thanks,
Cindy

Figure out all you operating costs, and I mean ALL. This includes health insurance, retirement accounts, equipment replacement costs, all those things that the guys running for $1.20 aren't concerning themselves with. Use a fuel price that's comparable to today's, say $2.50/gallon then add in a surcharge based on your truck's fuel economy. This way most of the fuel cost is built into the rate and the customer won't think you're trying to pull one over on them by chargine a ridiculous FSC. Then figure in a nice profit on top and you're set. Remember you're dealing with a direct shipper so most likely the rates they're used to paying are alot better than what you'd see from a broker on those same loads. I'm going to hazard a guess that this is nursery stock of some sort? That stuff for those stores usually pays pretty well. I hauled a brokered load for Lowe's a few weeks ago, 15 stops, 1900 miles, loaded on a Sat finished Wed morning and paid $4900...and the broker didn't mind paying that so they were doing alright on the load. I'm hauling a load for a direct shipper next week. I quoted them $7650 on 2200 miles and they were thrilled with that. That's a little different situation, but my point is that when you're dealing directly with a shipper the numbers tend to get a bit bigger. With that many stops you're going to want to break your bid down by the day rather than the mile because, most likely you won't be able to maximize your miles driven each day as you'll be limited by unload times and store hours. Cover all your costs, make a nice profit but don't gouge, and present it to them. Then be prepared to justify your numbers and negotiate fairly and you'll be fine.

Plant hauling!!!
 

We run these kind of loads out of South Carolina all the time. We use the shippers trailers. 53 foot refers. We usually have 41 carts of plants when we leave. Mutiple drops and they pay us mileage on all miles plus so much per stop. Then this is where it gets fun, when you pick up carts we get so much per cart that we return to the farm. If you start having to break down carts you can get more than 41 back on a trailer. I have hauled back 60 or more and usually get a premium in the busy seasons for more carts. Example is normally you might get 3 to 5 dollars a cart, If the shipper is short of carts they will often offer an incentive to bring back more carts. example is over 60 carts will pay 7 dollars per cart. Make sure you get at least 10 dollars per cart at Wal-Mart as they will not keep your carts as HD and Lowes will do. Therefore at all Wal-Marts they will make you unload all the plants from the carts. This is alot of work make sure you ask for more money. They know it is alot of hassle and Wal-Mart can afford it. Breaking down carts is alot of work also.

I hope this helps, also if they have lift gates on the trailers make sure you tell your drivers to be careful with them, I broke my foot trying to stop a rolling cart the first year I did this. I will also not let anyone close to the gate when I am operating it, these can be very dangerous but with a little caution you will be OK.

JD

If it is nursery stock you should be charging at least $2-2.50/mile plus your drops. I would want at least $60 per stop after the first one.

very good answer

go to the getloaded message board

go to "trucks wanted"

search "nursery loads"

you will have tons of nursery load info

if you do it right it should be a 4-5 k week

http://www.getloaded.com/

I did a couple of nursury loads a couple years back when I was starting out. They were on a 45 footer loose loaded on the floor and double and triple decked on cross planks. I had to tailgate them (usually with a helper from the stop) as I took down the planks (LOTS of heavy 8 foot 2x12s) one by one - what a ball busting job :shock: ! About five stops if I remember. Great if you want to get in shape though 8) .

Thank you
 

You gentlemen are truly good at the advise you've given. Thank you. You pointed out several things I had not thought about and I would have under bid by quite a bit. I am interested in something else.....most of you seem to be from the East and I'm wondering if there is a significant difference in the playing field. East vs. West. Some of the rates you mentioned just floored me. Anybody out there running in the West? Where are the best paying loads. I guess that's the question we all want to know.

I'm out of Southern California. The two loads I mentioned rates on were SoCal to MT and OR to OH. You can generally get good rates from the west headed east but not so much coming back. Rates up and down the Westcoast can be good, but it's hit and miss. If you're in UT you can generally find pretty good rates headed there from most places. It's getting out of UT with anything decent that's tough. Concentrate your search on getting something decent out and you should have a pretty good time.

I used to primarily run the West Coast. You can do fairly well running up and down I-5. You cans sometimes find loads running over to about Denver that pay fairly well. Some areas are just not that good on rates. Going West out of Denver isn't as difficult as heading East. If you live on the West Coast, you will probably do much better staying in the West. I have a friend who runs some trucks out West. He usually doesn't come further East than Salt Lake City. On occasion, he might run over to Texas, but that is because of family. He seems to make a good living.