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By Jessica Staggs – Copy Editor
All those who drive, age 16 to 60, complain about the price of gasoline, especially as we head into the summer months. How would you feel if your job involved driving hundreds of miles every day? Those driving tractor-trailers to transport goods are beginning to put more money into their jobs than what they are actually paid.
According to foxnews.com, these truckers attempted to force President Bush to open the nation’s oil reserves. This attempt, though unorganized as well as unsuccessful, was unique in methods to protest of high cost of diesel fuel. The tractor-trailers traveling south on the New Jersey Turnpike were moving at a mere 20 mph to congest and frustrate traffic. Three drivers were ticketed near Chicago after driving side by side at slow speeds and “impeding traffic.” Near Tampa, more than 50 trucks were parked as the drivers demanded more money for fuel expenses.
The strikes, while somewhat of an inconvenience, had little impact because of the lack of coordination among groups, as well as lack of participation. Many truckers, while opposed to the high prices, didn’t join the protests, saying they doubted a mass demonstration would be effective due to lack of central coordination by trucking companies. The price of diesel fuel, as well as regular gasoline, has risen in the last few months due to higher crude oil prices, which seem to be steady above $100 per barrel, and can be expected only to rise as summer approaches.
2 Comments
April 2, 2008 at 8:29 am
I’m getting quite a bit of email asking me what I think about the current shutdown by owner operators throughout the U.S. As a former freight broker, trucking company owner, owning a national trucking newspaper and working as a freight consultant responsible for increasing freight sales, I have had the opportunity to talk with everybody across the spectrum of the freight business throughout the past 35 years.
My advice always migrates back to controlling your own destiny, and not relying on other companies for your core business. Everyone needs to rely on others in a pinch to find freight, trucks, etc., but the whole philosophy of how many new carriers do business, in many cases, is wrong.
I don’t want to sound like a “Monday morning quarterback”, one who gives advice after the fact, but if you don’t have your own accounts, then you are destined to fail.
When I speak with people who are considering getting in the business, I always go back to “prospect the accounts” and the rest will follow. Instead, many Owner Operators get operating authority, and start working the load boards really hard. After about three years, most are burnt out, broke, and their trucks are a bucket of bolts. They have little to none of their own accounts, so they subject themselves to whatever someone else throws their way.
Freight Brokers and other third parties should only be used in a pinch, or as a last resort. Most brokers accept this role as a ‘fill in” for carriers. Brokers want carriers to have their own accounts where they make the bulk of their profit margin, and don’t want carriers to depend on them as a primary source of profit generation.
In other words, freight brokers are not the enemy. In fact, after de-regulation in 1980, if it wasn’t for freight brokers, selling trucking services to shippers, the rail and intermodal industries would have most of the freight by now. The railroads are watering at the mouth as you read this, hoping for a long shutdown, ready to pick up the pieces, and assist shippers during the crisis. One man’s crisis is another’s opportunity, cut and dry, no drama, no happy movie endings.
There are many things you can do to get back on the right track, and in the end, that’s what matters. I actually had a carrier with authority and insurance who thought it was illegal to do business directly with factories, and you HAD to go through a broker. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
If you have authority and insurance, and are a contract carrier, you can sign a short agreement with ANY manufacturer to haul their freight; your agreement is your contract. As a “for hire” common carrier, any shipper can do business with you, without a contract, but you must publish a tariff.
Taking you through the whole gamut of where to start, or how to turn things around, will make this about a 30 page article, so I’ll try to keep this short.
ANYBODY can get freight, you don’t have to be a salesperson, and it’s not that hard. If you can carry a box of donuts, with your business card taped to the top, to a shipping dock, to find out who really makes the freight decisions, or bring a pizza to a shipping office during lunch, you’re going to hit on something, just don’t whine about fuel or truck costs, it’s boring to them, and you’re competitors aren’t doing it. Bad feeds on bad, and some people will complain in the best of times too, so don’t let others make you cynical, this is your livelihood!
Wouldn’t it be nice, to sit up in bed Monday morning, and say “well, I’ve got 2 steady loads from this customer, and three steady loads from that customer, and all I have to do is fill in a few blanks” , it’s a lot easier than to wake up from a horrid nightmare with no plan, hoping the freight boards will be kind to you this week, after the rates are chopped down to nothing.
Freight matching services basically force you to “wholesale” your services, your business, and should only be used in furtherance of supporting a profitable and sound business plan. They’re counting on you, NOT having a plan, so you pay them fees for the next 30 years.
The “triangle” plan is the one that most owner operators have success with, and the one I recommend. It involves picking 3 metropolitan areas, based on supply and demand (we’ll need to talk about that), and working those 3 areas as hard as possible.
Once a regular run can be established, then it’s time to heavily market every shipper in between those three points. Between the truckloads and large LTL moving between those areas, there’s more money to be made then you can shake a stick at. You’re never going to get a foothold by running everywhere for everybody and being anonymous.
One Owner Operator I know, that runs hotshots from Tennessee to Maine to Virginia and anywhere in between, picks up loads in Tennessee going to Maine for $1,800.00, the load takes up about half of the truck.
His goal is to get to Maine with $3,000.00 to $4,000.00 worth of freight on the truck. The day before he leaves, he starts calling everybody he knows between Tennessee and Maine…”I’ve got a truck on the way to the northeast, I can deliver any freight you have by tomorrow, and save you a bundle”. Is that so hard to do, help people save time and money? The shipper saves money, the freight is normally delivered the next day, unlike standard LTL service, where freight travels from terminal to terminal and takes 5 days to deliver, everybody’s happy and he’s making money.
The moment the truck is full and ready to make deliveries, he starts working on the next freight movement, just working the relationships he has established in his triangle. This requires preparation and investing a little of your time, but if you follow the basic plan, as many owner operators have done, and who have gone from owner operators, to small fleet owners in just a few years, you should be there too. Half the industry is QUIET, AND MAKING MONEY, while the other half suffers…back to what I said earlier…one man’s crisis is another’s opportunity. If everybody was going broke, there would nobody in the business.
There are many steps to making this transition, business stationery, possible freight bill factoring or setting up a credit service, making connections, paying commissions to people who can find you business. In other words, running your business, and not letting your business run you. These are the things you need to do to truly become an independent owner operator and eventually a small fleet owner.
NOW COME ON!… you can do this, start putting deals together, be a mover and a shaker in a sea of negativity, and you will immediately stand out. You’re doing all the work anyway, so why not stop playing “defense” and go on “offense”?
Everybody needs a pep talk now and then. It’s easy to get beat up when bills weigh heavy and you are the sole provider. But remember, your brain is nothing more than a piece of real estate, fill it with unproductive things, and there’s no room to let the good in. You know you are the MAN (OR WOMAN), and once you get rolling, nobody can stop you. “I WILL PUT DEALS TOGETHER; MY EYES ARE WIDE OPEN TO NEW OPPORTUNITY”. I know, all this sounds a little corny, but the business end of the trucking industry has always been 80% mental. Freight Brokers have a phone, a pen and a pad of paper when they start, little more. Attitude baby, ATTITUDE!
My passion is to see people make it in this business, and over the years, I have had the pleasure of taking a trip down memory lane, and laughing with fleet owners, formerly owner operators who have said to me…”remember when I had one truck”. Anything is possible.
April 7, 2008 at 2:14 am
My father is a veteran truck driver. He is very frustrated with many aspects of his occupation, including fuel prices. Though he was completely unsupportive of a strike, he points out that if indeed one occurred, the nation would come to a standstill. I agree. They are amazingly under-appreciated.