I think that it is common sense. If a carrier continues to haul cheap freight they WILL have service failures at some point. The reason being that they cannot afford to do routine maintenance and pay for any breakdowns when they occur. If the carrier is under a load then it will be a service failure. I would need to look closer at the figures when you compare larger carriers and smaller ones. The larger carrier may be able to re-power a load when a truck breaks down whereas the smaller one may not. You would also need to compare the number of trucks each carrier has when you use your figures. If a carrier has 100 of your loads and has 1 service failure then that is only a 1% failure rate. If it is a 5 truck operation then a single failure rate would be a 20% failure rate. A single truck operation who has one of your loads and breaks down could have a 100% failure rate.
You don't have to worry about my service and cheap rates. While I have had to haul below what I want during the last few months, I won't haul a load so cheap that I cannot provide an acceptable level of service or make a profit. That is the difference. If someone constantly hauls cheap freight then they may not be able to provide quality service, regardless of his level of integrity. If he doesn't have the money it doesn't matter how much integrity he has, he simply doesn't have the money to repair his truck and get the job done. A couple of years ago I rented a truck for a week due to one of my trucks breaking down. I did it because I had committed to haul several loads. Neither the shipper or broker could believe that I would rent a truck to fulfill my obligation to them. Had the rates that I had been hauling for not be sufficient, I might not have been in the position to be able to fulfill my obligations. I really didn't make any profit that week due to the extra expense of renting the truck and paying my driver, but I did got the loads hauled. That is the level of service I provide. But I don't move my truck unless I can make a profit on what I haul. Profits are down considerably over last year, for all of us. That means that owners need to be more selective in what they haul. If I were a broker or shipper I would be hesitant to give a load to someone who would haul it cheap. If you are a broker you should be aware of what it costs for a carrier to operate. I had one broker who called me with an over sized load. He had a carrier who told him that he would haul it across the country without having to have escorts. The load was over 12' wide and required escorts in every state but one that the carrier would cross. I would have been afraid to have given it to that carrier due to his lack of experience with this type of freight. Had he had experience he would not have taken the chance of being stopped due to not having escorts. I WON'T take a load that I cannot haul legally. In this case, it was irresponsible for the broker to give this load to a carrier who obviously had no experience hauling this type of freight. It is this type of carrier who will have service failures. I would expect this to be a smaller carrier, but there is no way to know since the broker didn't give me a name.
It is easy to manipulate figures or statistics to show what you want. It would be interesting to take a closer look at your numbers and see a more complete picture.
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