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Somal Transport/G-Line Transport
- Thread starter noproblembuddy
- Start date
10
Brampton Trucking Companies
Have you ever stopped to ponder why there are so many Brampton trucking companies that have setup shop over the past few years. It is primarily because many Load Brokers are feeding them with cheap freight that reputable carriers won't touch. This practice has imposed serious hardships on the reputable carriers who play by the rules and demand fair rates. Shippers and Brokers alike are both taking advantage of these new entrants in order to combat the recession and lower volumes of freight. You are getting what you pay for and frankly your whining and complaining about these companies is getting really pathetic.
Have you ever stopped to ponder why there are so many Brampton trucking companies that have setup shop over the past few years. It is primarily because many Load Brokers are feeding them with cheap freight that reputable carriers won't touch. This practice has imposed serious hardships on the reputable carriers who play by the rules and demand fair rates. Shippers and Brokers alike are both taking advantage of these new entrants in order to combat the recession and lower volumes of freight. You are getting what you pay for and frankly your whining and complaining about these companies is getting really pathetic.
10
I have been on both ends of this and I understand both, rates need to come up or we are going to see more and more reputable companies going under. Face it though....we need this freight, if we done have it then we all go under. I say just stick to your guns and the bad carriers and brokers with eventually kill themselves off.
10
Something has to be done about the rates particularly in Southern Ontario. Let's face it, there are simply too many trucks out there. The modest "federally-sponsored" recovery witnessed over the last few months will do no good until people just say no to cheap rates. I have witnessed shippers make money on their shipping because they charge customers a certain amount and pocket the difference. The Brampton effect has to be factored in also!!!
10
It's not the brokers!
I'm out in the market every day talking to customers trying to get business and negotiate rates. Let me tell you, my biggest competition in rates isn't other brokers, and it's not the "brampton carriers" as you guys like to call them (which I totally disagree with). I'm seeing the big guys. 300+ truck guys... offering rates to my customers that are just over $1.00 per mile. As a broker, by definition, my price HAS to be higher. There's no way I'm going to be able to quote $1.00 per mile and then find a carrier to do it for $0.85 per mile. The Brampton guys won't even do it for that. Before we start trying to scapegoat the "Brampton carriers" or the "New Canadians" I think the truckers should take a hard look at the big carriers. What's they're influence on the OTA? What's in their best interest? Do you smaller guys even get the time of day from your industry association? What are they doing about the current state of affairs?
I'm out in the market every day talking to customers trying to get business and negotiate rates. Let me tell you, my biggest competition in rates isn't other brokers, and it's not the "brampton carriers" as you guys like to call them (which I totally disagree with). I'm seeing the big guys. 300+ truck guys... offering rates to my customers that are just over $1.00 per mile. As a broker, by definition, my price HAS to be higher. There's no way I'm going to be able to quote $1.00 per mile and then find a carrier to do it for $0.85 per mile. The Brampton guys won't even do it for that. Before we start trying to scapegoat the "Brampton carriers" or the "New Canadians" I think the truckers should take a hard look at the big carriers. What's they're influence on the OTA? What's in their best interest? Do you smaller guys even get the time of day from your industry association? What are they doing about the current state of affairs?
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I agree with you Pablo. I am finding it is the larger carriers who are the first to "drop their pants" when it comes to rates. Understandable to a degree, when the owner of a large fleet drives into his yard in the morning to find 40-50% of his fleet parked against the fence. His first thought is probably - "cut the rates, get these trucks moving"! However short sighted that might be, it will get his equipment rolling. Unfortunately, it causes a ripple effect throughout the industry with the competition following suit. Now you have a situation where some shippers will incorrectly assume that these new rates are the standard and will expect to see their current suppliers match them. As certain as winter follows fall, the economy will pick-up and freight rates will start to rise, perhaps quite quickly if there is a shortage of truck availability due to some transport companies folding. In the meanwhile, lets try to stop this silly finger pointing, especially at "New Canadians". If someone wants to enter this industry, work hard, long hours, struggle to make ends meet in a depressed economy and still get out of bed every morning and do it again, who cares where they came from originally? Like most everyone else out there, I have met and dealt with all sorts of cheats, fraud artists and dead beats, and I have yet to find any nationality or race that has a monopoly of that type of behaviour.
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Pablo and Loaders I think both your posts molded together is the perfect snapshot of what we are facing. This "new Canadian" talk is a lot of crap and to be truthful racist. If a carrier has 1300 trucks and even 20% are sitting at any given time (which I believe has been true for all carriers for the last six months) that means he has 260 trucks parked against the fence you can bet he is going to get them moving. The other problem the rest of us face is that carrier with 1300 trucks costs are a lot less than the rest of us so if he runs to the states for a buck a mile and gets 2.30 back he is running for a 1.65 a mile and I will guarrantee you he is making money at that point. If you have 1300 trucks and make $5 a day clear profit you are making $6500 a day and over 2.3 million a year not bad in a struggling economy. If you have 50 trucks making $5 a day that is $250 a day and just over $91,000 a year not a lot should you get hit with the least little hiccup. We just need to struggle through and remember the rate cutters and get them back when we can, it is the nature of any business.
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Yeah..and the funny thing is the outfit that represents these bigger carriers..the OTA and the CTA are quick to rip brokers for the current state of affairs. I too have noticed the larger outfits swarming the larger shippers with cheap trucks. Check out Dave Bradley's column in the last Truck News to see where he (and presumably) his organization places the blame.. surprise surprise... it ain't his membership..
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Pablo, you're wrong. The Brampton boys always drop their pants and to prove it, one of these cats that called in (never heard of him) was ready to take a really low rate that I gave to see what they would say and they must have been so desperate that I didn't give it to them. Hate to say it but if you post a load on Link and keep track of where the calls come from, it's Brampton and, frankly, a lot of them are unqualified carriers when you screen them. Hate to tell you that but try it anytime if you doubt me. There's no scapegoating but there is an overwhelming body of evidence to suggest that not only are a lot of these new companies just not safe, and some are fronts for money laundering and drug smuggling. I invite you to prove me wrong. The big carriers are compliant and do not drop their pants to take a load.
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How do you know for sure a carrier with 1300 trucks has lower costs? They don't. I used to work for a large carrier and the pecking order when it comes to bills is: 1. owner-operators and drivers, 2. fuel bills, 3. everything else. We all burn the same fuel, whether it's CFI, Schneider or some guy on Dixie Road with 4 trucks. Your cost structure depends on how smart you spend. Bigger carriers have a little more leeway when it comes to the whole fuel cardlock thing and there's not a whole hill of beans difference between what one company pays its drivers/owner operators from another, except the smaller ones have to probably pay fuel in 7-10 days or cash only. I know how larger carriers price their truckloads and it's a game because it depends on how good each customer's fuel surcharge program is and what the DOE price of fuel is. If you have a small company and learn the secret to making a good base rate that won't flop when fuel prices drop like a rock then you can make money and maybe have competitiveness with the large guys.
The fact is, it's supply and demand and if a large carrier, US or Canadian has an imbalance of equipment that it needs to correct by offering an attractive rate to get it back where it's needed, then that is what happens. It always has. When there was no freight in NJ, truckloads would go for cheap. Now it's not hard to get loads from NJ and you can balance it out according to what the market will bear vs what you'd like in your round trip total. Schneider pays by loaded or empty miles and a different structure for accessorials. They also have terminals to operate and entire recovery teams to go get trucks when drivers walk away from them to bring back to those terminals. That can't be cheap. Believe me, I know a guy who worked for Schneider who was left up in Calgary for 4 days and threatened to fly home and leave the truck there he was so fed up. Does it still sound like big carriers are running their trucks so cheap that they must use magical pixie dust to accomplish it? Whatever profit you think you are making on a load is instantly blown when a driver acts inefficiently or takes a routing that doesn't make sense. Whatever profit you think you are making corporately can be lost if you don't train your drivers to strategically buy fuel in Ontario before they leave and buy fuel in the states they drive through to lessen the fuel tax they end up owing. Suddenly, you realize it's not entirely about repositioning your equipment and having to take it up the hoop because you weren't saavy enough to command more money when that freight broker asked you to go to Armpit, North Dakota. You realize that your own decision making is what either makes you money or loses you money, not a large carrier.
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I can't understand for the life of me why you are doing all this complaining on this site you seem to have the whole thing figured out, you must be the most successful trucking company around.
10
Low Rates
I think most of your comments are valid, although I beleive the large carriers are essentially responsible for keeping the rates low and I beleive they have been hit the hardest by this economic downturn. Especially the Southern Ontario based firms dealing with the automotive industry.
If small to medium sized carriers do not find a way to work together with reputable freight brokers the large carriers will blossom as they take away our market share.
Presently , the larger carriers are covertly using political action groups to get regulations passed benefiting their modus operandi.
Look at what has hapenned recently:
1) The increase of use of large doubles or train Routier as we call them here in Quebec. As a driver for the past 18 years, I do not care what you say these things are scary and a great potential for carnage in the event (God Forbid )anything mechanical goes wrong. Or in the event of the minutest driver error. A single trailer under bad weather conditions is nerve wracking. The second effect is that a drivers job is now lost for the benefit of greed!
2) The passing of speed regulatory devices.
a) A large carrier will have several fleets running a regional pattern if he is organized. He can afford to lock down his equipement in the affected areas, and adopt to local conditions elsewhere.
In our case we have 5 units running strictly US -Canada , whereby we run 100 miles of 3300 a week in Quebec and are forced to run under the speed limit in several Southern states.
3) Large carriers can afford their own sales force on both sides of the border, they have access to the $2.00 and above freight inbound to Canada
4) The larger carriers forge alliances with other large carriers from different regions , which allows them to bid very low in one direction to bring in lucrative freight from the other direction! This is why you will see them run @ $1.00.
5) Larger outfits tend to use OWNER OPERATORS thus compounding their advantage during economic downturns. Times are tough so they elongate the holdbakck, thus shifting the burden of financial carrying cost to the contractor. Where is the Owner op to go there is no work elsewhere!
Of course there are environmental concerns that the larger carriers use to their advantage. The use of doubles does affect their carbon footprint, and the lower speed limit does help fuel mileage , which again affect the carbon output.
My reply to this is let the governments ( Provincial and federal) get their acts together and reduce the carbon footprint in another simple way and I do not understand why this is not more expounded by Carriers: Reduce traffic congestion in large urban centers.
We should comission a study on how much of a carbon footprint is produced daily by trucks stuck in traffic going through the greater Toronto and Montreal areas beacuse there are no bypasses completed that are economicly viable. Timing is not a solution to this problem, with stringent hours of service rules the driver cannot always get to either side of the greater areas he needs to be at before his delivery appointment. Add to this the obvious lack of overnight parking be it public or private only exascerbates the issue.
I do not beleive our problems are caused by new immigrantrs entering the fray. It is very hard for all existing Carriers with years of savy to stay afloat. A new entrant into this industry at this time is certainly doomed for failure.
I think most of your comments are valid, although I beleive the large carriers are essentially responsible for keeping the rates low and I beleive they have been hit the hardest by this economic downturn. Especially the Southern Ontario based firms dealing with the automotive industry.
If small to medium sized carriers do not find a way to work together with reputable freight brokers the large carriers will blossom as they take away our market share.
Presently , the larger carriers are covertly using political action groups to get regulations passed benefiting their modus operandi.
Look at what has hapenned recently:
1) The increase of use of large doubles or train Routier as we call them here in Quebec. As a driver for the past 18 years, I do not care what you say these things are scary and a great potential for carnage in the event (God Forbid )anything mechanical goes wrong. Or in the event of the minutest driver error. A single trailer under bad weather conditions is nerve wracking. The second effect is that a drivers job is now lost for the benefit of greed!
2) The passing of speed regulatory devices.
a) A large carrier will have several fleets running a regional pattern if he is organized. He can afford to lock down his equipement in the affected areas, and adopt to local conditions elsewhere.
In our case we have 5 units running strictly US -Canada , whereby we run 100 miles of 3300 a week in Quebec and are forced to run under the speed limit in several Southern states.
3) Large carriers can afford their own sales force on both sides of the border, they have access to the $2.00 and above freight inbound to Canada
4) The larger carriers forge alliances with other large carriers from different regions , which allows them to bid very low in one direction to bring in lucrative freight from the other direction! This is why you will see them run @ $1.00.
5) Larger outfits tend to use OWNER OPERATORS thus compounding their advantage during economic downturns. Times are tough so they elongate the holdbakck, thus shifting the burden of financial carrying cost to the contractor. Where is the Owner op to go there is no work elsewhere!
Of course there are environmental concerns that the larger carriers use to their advantage. The use of doubles does affect their carbon footprint, and the lower speed limit does help fuel mileage , which again affect the carbon output.
My reply to this is let the governments ( Provincial and federal) get their acts together and reduce the carbon footprint in another simple way and I do not understand why this is not more expounded by Carriers: Reduce traffic congestion in large urban centers.
We should comission a study on how much of a carbon footprint is produced daily by trucks stuck in traffic going through the greater Toronto and Montreal areas beacuse there are no bypasses completed that are economicly viable. Timing is not a solution to this problem, with stringent hours of service rules the driver cannot always get to either side of the greater areas he needs to be at before his delivery appointment. Add to this the obvious lack of overnight parking be it public or private only exascerbates the issue.
I do not beleive our problems are caused by new immigrantrs entering the fray. It is very hard for all existing Carriers with years of savy to stay afloat. A new entrant into this industry at this time is certainly doomed for failure.
2
It's true that larger carriers do have what appear to be lower costs only because of the sheer volume of miles. I fully believe their costs to be no different on short or long haul runs unless they have extremely cost-effective in-house truck and trailer maintenance and preferential fuel costs. Ultimately, we all have to pay to use the same roads, bridges and get permits. What makes or breaks it is how good your sales force is and how competitive you choose to be. If you operate reefers and do haz, you have a license to print money (close to it anyway) and can value your services accordingly. If you're a flatbed carrier, it may come down to whether or not you decide to bury your tarping fee in your rate or make the customer notice you charge extra for tarping. All those things will either make your rate attractive or draw attention to something you would rather not need to justify when you'd sooner be getting an order and dispatching your equipment. The problem really comes down to smaller carriers not having salespeople and living on DAT or Link as their only source of freight. That has to stop if companies want to survive. Old fashioned selling and be smart about your expenses without being non-compliant.
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Large carriers have a few advantages that smaller entities do not have based strictly on their stronger buying power. You mentioned some, such as an in-house maintenance facility and prefered fuel purchasing agreements. In addition, equipment prices are definitely better when the order is for 50 or 60 versus 1 or 2 pieces. As well, most truck and trailer manufacturers will respond to warranty and parts replacement requests more favourably if the fleet has larger numbers. But really what it boils down to, is that in most cases, larger carriers (if they are well managed and well financed) can weather the storm longer and continue to operate at lower rates longer, than a small company. When you think about it, these cyclical downturns are a good opportunity for all of us to re-examine our operating systems and procedures to ensure that we are spending wisely and looking for ways to reduce overhead without sacrificing service or safety.
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