HAD TO LAUGH AT THIS RATE...

[Salma]

It's not a recession as much as it is a market readjustment, however, the short answer is probably when Iran has enough cash to restart their economy.
Our dollar is based on the price of oil which is currently low because Iran is dumping oil on the market to gather up cash quickly. The US economy is based on the popularity, or strength, of their dollar being the defacto standard currency of the world, ergo the difference between USD and CDN.
A prolonged war in the middle east that costs Iran money will prolong the low price of oil, and extend the USD/CDN gap. Some pundits have also predicted the price of oil will drop to $20.00 a barrel. I see it dipped to $38.50 today. That could widen the USD/CDN gap.
OPEC no longer has control over the price of oil, much the same as the UN no longer has control over world peace. Both toothless tigers.
All bets are off if Israel employs the Sampson Option.

@Rob said earlier: ".......it will be slow until mid February when all of the seasonal freight starts to move. By mid March the begging for Ohio, and Midwest trucks should begin."
Do you agree? Is that too soon?

 

[martinetav]

Glad to see you finally jump in Michael
It's easy to say 'Don't take the load' When your paying layovers, it gets expensive to sit around and not move. I think that the brokers who say that are a little to disconnected from the reality of trucking and the importance of trucks in our everyday lives. I mostly find it to be disrespectful. Brokers, there are a lot of hardworking truck drivers out there. They give up a lot. By extention, so do their families. Christmas concerts, ballet rehearsals, soccer/baseball, the visit to the hospital because their child broke his/her/ arm/leg. Missed babies' births, family death... I could go on but I think you might be getting the point. Yes they chose their trade but, that doesn't make it less hard. Giving respect earns respect... Not everyone is made to sit behind a desk and haggle To each his/her trade.

 

[Freight Broker]

How do carriers plan their loads? When you accept an outbound do you first check to see what the availability is for loads coming back? I know that some carriers do and some do not. Personally I'd never send a truck out without having some idea about the odds of getting a return home. And if the odds looked bad I'd quote the outbound high enough to cover at least part of my return. Am I looking at this the wrong way? Why put yourself in a position where your only options are the lessor of two evils.. i.e. a cheap load or no load at all? The carriers who seem to do best are those who run between two points A and B. They have contacts in A that get them to B, and they have contacts in B that get them to A. A to B and B back to A. They don't worry about C,D, E, F etc.. just A to/from B. That's been my observation anyway.

 

[Jennifer R]

If you never sent a truck out without the odds of getting a return home kind of outlook, you would lose customers really fast. Also many loads/customers are quoted on a yearly basis. You have to keep the customer Happy or they become someone else's customer.

 

[loaders]

I would doubt that there is a broker on this site that is disrespectful of drivers or carriers, or fails to understand the importance of transportation to our economy. Appreciating the hard work that they do every day is not going to increase the freight rates. I like to think that my firm is one of the quality brokers that Michael wrote about below. We ask our carrier partners for rates instead of pulling numbers out of the air. We explain all of the particulars about lanes or shipments to the selected carrier so that no one gets caught off guard. We appreciate the work they do for us and we recognize that as professionals, they have factored their costs and expenses into the rates they provide for us. A broker that continually "haggles" with carriers over every shipment is probably lazy, but more likely not knowledgeable enough about the industry to be a worthwhile, long term business partner.

 

[Salma]

How do carriers plan their loads? When you accept an outbound do you first check to see what the availability is for loads coming back? I know that some carriers do and some do not. Personally I'd never send a truck out without having some idea about the odds of getting a return home. And if the odds looked bad I'd quote the outbound high enough to cover at least part of my return. Am I looking at this the wrong way? Why put yourself in a position where your only options are the lessor of two evils.. i.e. a cheap load or no load at all? The carriers who seem to do best are those who run between two points A and B. They have contacts in A that get them to B, and they have contacts in B that get them to A. A to B and B back to A. They don't worry about C,D, E, F etc.. just A to/from B. That's been my observation anyway.

A carrier that is able to do A to/from B, on a regular basis is very lucky. I remember the days not too long ago when I could, for example, book a load heading to OH and not have to worry about the return load because there was a TON of freight coming back. If I posted my truck on load link, my phones would blow up like crazy! It's not like that anymore. No matter where we send our trucks, the return loads are very scarce.

 

[Freight Broker]

Keep them happy alright, but at a profit and not a loss. A small carrier of five or ten trucks can't be expected to serve the entire continent. The carrier would be better off to confine its trucks to one or maybe two lanes and broker off the excess (to other carriers who have expertise in other lanes).

 

[Jennifer R]

Sounds easy if you say it fast enough!!!

 

[Freight Broker]

A good example of what I'm talking about is Tri-Corp out of Aylmer. All they do is GTA to Dallas, TX. I don't know what their financials look like, but looking at their equipment they sure don't look poverty stricken.

 

[Michael Ludwig]

@martinetav
I get it and it sounds like you treat your drivers much the same way we do, but in fairness, that's not really the broker's problem. I do however agree that brokers should be aware that the decisions they make affect real people. Drivers become attuned to who is tendering which loads, and who is making decisions on their behalf. Eventually drivers start refusing loads offered by brokers who are making poor decisions where drivers are concerned.
Someone earlier mentioned the simple litmus test ... take the total expenses figure from the financial statement of your trucking operation, and divide that by the miles from your IFTA returns for that same period. That's your basic cost per mile. Add a profit margin, and that's how much every mile needs to generate for the entire year to keep you profitable. As long as you average that, you're good to go. Eventually, it becomes more complicated than that ... LOL

@Freight Broker
BINGO !!! If you offered me a lane from A to B, I would either have a very good idea what I could get for a return from B, or I would find out before I committed to a rate. It's really the only responsible thing to do.
As long as C, D, E, & F fall in line, then the same formula applies. As long as I come out ahead of the game at the end of the day, I'm a happy guy.

@Jennifer R
There is always that fly in the ointment isn't there? However, being yearly quoted freight, you should be aware that sometimes there isn't going to be any return freight and account for that in your original pricing. Of course there are always anomalies and sometimes you have to take one for the team so-to-speak, but in other instances, a good relationship with your broker partner just may net you some cost coverage. In many cases carriers think that "cost coverage" is "If I went there for $900.00, I need $900.00 to come back", and that's just not true. In the occasional situations where this would apply you would really only need time for your driver, and fuel for your truck.

@loaders
If that's the way you work, then you are indeed the quality brokerage that we like to work with.
I would also agree that there is not likely a brokerage firm on this site that is disrespectful of drivers or carriers, however, I would bet that there are more than a couple employees of those firms that think carriers and drivers are pretty low on the evolutionary pole.

At the end of the day you and your broker need to be partners ... one cannot exist without the other. Unless we carriers all can afford 6+ figure sales departments, we need brokers, and unless brokers can afford millions of dollars of equipment, they need carriers. Think of the broker this way ... they are the owner/operators of the sales force

 

[martinetav]

Keep them happy alright, but at a profit and not a loss. A small carrier of five or ten trucks can't be expected to serve the entire continent. The carrier would be better off to confine its trucks to one or maybe two lanes and broker off the excess (to other carriers who have expertise in other lanes).

We have 9 trucks and do the spot market mostly. We are to small to have a large contract with lots of loads. We pick up the slack and do loads that the bigger companies have difficulty covering with their drivers. Mostly the loads that they can't get the driver back by the end of the week... Our guys are mostly O/Os and with such a small fleet, not too many discounts. We pretty well know almost to the penny how much it costs. That's about the first thing I learned in Business Administration in school as I was taught that if you can't cost it, don't do it...
There is nothing REGULAR about the business lately. No loads in VA,PA,NC, and OH where we used to do 2 to 3 trucks of ltl PER WEEK... Now we can't even do one... A lot of brokers are treating all loads as RETURNS. So, thank you very much for bringing down the outbound rates... Can't go outbound on a return rate.
Not seeing many of those Americans around either, you know, the guys who are happy to return home at a dollar a mile Canadian. They also have no worries about doing the same with inter provincial loads... Thanks for hiring them Canadian Brokers.
Loader, never was anything I wrote directed at you and your company. I don't even know who you are and which company you represent. I thought that is why we are anonymous on the sight. To be able to express ourselves and reach out for guidance and advice without being judged. I will say though, that you might be surprised at how we are spoken to sometimes and more and more often too. Especially when the company pays commissions to their employees... You may know how things work but do you make sure that the people we are talking to have that knowledge? When we ask for a little more because of the cost of tolls and the person at the other end says 'what tolls!?' that worries me and should worry you because that is part of our costing... anyway... I'm starting to think that even expressing myself here is a big waste of time... disillusionment... first step of change...

 

[Jennifer R]

We have 9 trucks and do the spot market mostly. We are to small to have a large contract with lots of loads. We pick up the slack and do loads that the bigger companies have difficulty covering with their drivers. Mostly the loads that they can't get the driver back by the end of the week... Our guys are mostly O/Os and with such a small fleet, not too many discounts. We pretty well know almost to the penny how much it costs. That's about the first thing I learned in Business Administration in school as I was taught that if you can't cost it, don't do it...
There is nothing REGULAR about the business lately. No loads in VA,PA,NC, and OH where we used to do 2 to 3 trucks of ltl PER WEEK... Now we can't even do one... A lot of brokers are treating all loads as RETURNS. So, thank you very much for bringing down the outbound rates... Can't go outbound on a return rate.
Not seeing many of those Americans around either, you know, the guys who are happy to return home at a dollar a mile Canadian. They also have no worries about doing the same with inter provincial loads... Thanks for hiring them Canadian Brokers.
Loader, never was anything I wrote directed at you and your company. I don't even know who you are and which company you represent. I thought that is why we are anonymous on the sight. To be able to express ourselves and reach out for guidance and advice without being judged. I will say though, that you might be surprised at how we are spoken to sometimes and more and more often too. Especially when the company pays commissions to their employees... You may know how things work but do you make sure that the people we are talking to have that knowledge? When we ask for a little more because of the cost of tolls and the person at the other end says 'what tolls!?' that worries me and should worry you because that is part of our costing... anyway... I'm starting to think that even expressing myself here is a big waste of time... disillusionment... first step of change...

Amen to that. A good Broker as far as I am concerned should not have to call around to carriers for any rates, if they are good at what they do and know the market they should already know what rates to offer their customers and their carriers. That is my opinion.

 

[MikeJr]

You mean by talking to suppliers, customers and by absorbing all the information you can from print sources, online with some caution and by knowing the basics some of the outskirt can be extrapolated, right?

Note that part of that does include speaking to suppliers. Converse to the broker calling carriers and 'rate shopping' - If a carrier called me today who always does ON-IL and IL-ON for us and said "... Mike, I'm thinking of servicing NJ, can you please take a few minutes and give me an idea what the market is like for 1-6 skids, 1/2 load, TL in both directions..." depending on the relationship with the carrier I absolutely would take the time to help them grasp this potential new service area. I wouldn't expect them to 'know the market'.

Keep well,
Mike

 

[loaders]

Martinetav, the description of your company matches that of more than half of the carriers we use daily. Small/midsize transport companies are our preferred choice to partner with. You usually offer the flexibility and response that we require as opposed to larger, process driven firms. In fact, it would not surprise me at all if our two companies are already doing business together. It would also surprise me if any of our dispatch people treated you or any other carrier we deal with nothing but respect and courtesy. If you feel that a rate we, or any broker is offering, is just a bit light, then yes, ask for a few more dollars. If we have it, we will give it.
Jennifer, I have to disagree with you. If the lane is a regular movement for any broker, then yes, they have a rate that has been set, and covered over and over again. However, if they receive a request from a customer for a new lane, then they should always call a few carriers to establish what the rate is. Carriers own and operate trucks. They know and pay each and every cost associated with doing so. As a broker, I can appreciate and have perhaps a basic understanding of what those costs are, but at the end of the day, the rate a professional carrier gives me should have all of those costs factored in.

 

[Freight Broker]

We all, carriers and brokers, have one thing in common: if we're not known for something then we're not known for anything at all. So its important to differentiate ourselves from the 20 thousand plus other brokers and carriers, and that's how we get better rates. For example when I think of Toronto to Dallas, TX I immediately think of Tri Corp. When I need skid lot LTL to/from Ontario Polaris jumps out at me. These companies have done a good job of defining themselves in the marketplace. They don't try to be all things to all people. As small businesses most of us can do the very same. Maybe you can be the carrier of choice for scallops out of Philly.. or stone out of the quarries in Indiana.. or maybe your operation is team service to the West coast. The important thing is to have something beyond "I can do it all".

 

[sawgrass]

When I call on some posted freight and I'm asked "what my rate is" I in turn ask "what is your bid to utilize my equipment". It works!

 

[theman]

The best way to make money in any business is to find a need that isn't been served well or at all, and filling that role. Ultimately you can only go so far by following the markets or the status quo.

 

[rickwill]

I have found if you get a lane with multiple loads running and it's paying quite well it never lasts. The more brokers and carriers that get involved the lower the rate seems to go. Why keep it high and let everybody profit when you can slash it and ruin it for everybody.
The only good I've ever seen out of these deals is the rate cutters damage the freight, poor service etc, etc, but they still use them because of the almighty dollar.