Haha. How could you tell? Actually things have been doing great since I posted this. Hurricane Sandy created some great rates. I was doing these pellet fuel loads that were only a little over 100 miles long for $1,000 a piece. Grossed 5k in just a few days. Now that the storm is over and everything is almost cleaned up those rates are gone but they're not anywhere near bad as they were when I posted this. I think in a couple weeks I'll be able to get away from these loadboards anyway. A friend of mine who owns a small fleet called me saying he needs another truck to pull out of a cardboard factory. He says his guys are grossing 4-5k weekly and the shipper gives all the drivers an Ezpass and covers tolls entirely. He also says they're not spending that much on fuel either being that all the places theyre pulling to are typically low traffic and don't have many hills. Home every night too. Does that sound like a good set up to you guys? I look at it like this. On one hand, if I was doing loads out of this place since the beginning, I would have made WAY more money by now. On the other hand, in the future there will be weeks here and there when I would have made more money just doing my own thing and going on the loadboards and such. But I think in the long run I'll probably make out much better and I'll have a lot less stress without having to worry about the rates of various lanes and not knowing how much money ill make week to week.

That's how it works and that's what I was trying to explain above. It takes time to make contacts and build any business. In the meantime do what you need to survive, but don't undervalue your service. If you need to take some cheap loads to make ends meet, try if you can to take those cheap loads from different brokers that the ones that paid you the good rates.....the idea is to "train" the brokers that paid you well to continue to pay you well.

Don't waste cash because that is the resource you need to sit at home while you turn down low paying loads and remain available on short notice for higher paying hot loads.

Some rules that I live by:

1. Keep costs low in order able to sit at home at wait for your rate. Miles do not equal profit.
1. You don't want to compete on price. You need what you need to make a profit. The caveat here is that you can negotiate your price down a little to show flexibility and good faith and to show that you want to help them out of a bind, but any price lowering should be built into your original bid.
1. Your advantage over the bigger carriers is dependability and availability. Always be able to load next day in the northeast, you will get on brokers' call lists.
1. Think of yourself as a relief pitcher. You don't have to work alot, but when they need you they need you.

Good luck

I might be able to help you out. Where do you run. What kind of trailer