Sooo late getting back into this. Some very, very good points realized here.
Here's the basic carrier issue ... I am not competing with Jim for drivers, nor is Jim competing with me. Jim and I are both competing with manufacturing, and manufacturing pays by the hour. The relevant driver pool is drained. There's none left, so we have to look for other sources of labour. Retired professionals, secretarial pools, manufacturing lines all fit that bill. How do we get them to come drive a truck? You can't say to them you are making $21.50 an hour now, but I am going to pay you 52 cents a mile. It just doesn't equate in the minds of most fledgling drivers. They can't correlate the two.
However, if you can say "You're making $21.50 an hour now, and I'm going to pay you $23.50 an hour." you have piqued their interest. The fact that today you will start your workday in Simcoe, and tomorrow you will start in New jersey, and the day after in Montreal, is something the potential driver will have to work through on his or her own. At least the issue of comparative pay is off the table.
A brief word about "fixed" costs to the customer; some one earlier mentioned something about buying goods shipping included. Essentially the Amazon model. Two questions come to mind;
1) What do you think the chances are that Amazon includes a shipping cost in their selling price?
2) More importantly, what do you think the chances are that Amazon loses money on their shipping budget?
If your answers are 1) Yes, and 2) Zero, then you get a gold star
Every manufacturer who sells shipping included, sells by the very same model. The simple truth is if they don't they are no longer manufacturing anything because they are out of business.
So, the argument is not that shippers might pay too much, cost accountants have already accrued for that (or should have), but should the shippers be afforded the opportunity to make money on their shipping budget?
Fixed costs are one thing, but give a CFO the opportunity to profit and you have a whole new ball game. Now you, carrier or broker, have something to sell.
And an issue I would like to take up with someone ... it was mentioned earlier by a broker that they (brokers) try very hard to negotiate fair rates with their customers. The inference was that they do so at the expense of their carriers. That offends me. Are carriers not your customer too?
Well, that's my soapbox speech for the day