low rates, No profit

[Chamberpains]

I'm not down playing how important and how brilliantly wise Rawze's way of looking at trucking is. Its the real main reason I'm seriously not freaking out and scarfing up every load i can get on the deck and running till I face plant in a couple months with junk beat up neglected equipment. Those days are done. Rawze opened my eye's to the enormous amounts of money in slowing down, taking the stress off the equipment and keeping it in great working order. And that alone will get me to through these hard times with out killing myself with shear stress and work over load. I can't thank the man enough for sharing that piece of business knowledge.

But besides high fuel milage and low maintenance bills, Rawze working with a mega carrier all the time allows him 2 key things that make his business much more stable than the vast majority of O/O situations, especially in times like these. The biggest 1 is the shear freight volume coupled with the distance the loads travel. That allows his operation to pick up paying freight any where at any time and make money on the distance the load travels. Where as a pile of us are looking for any kind of work and then finding there is none at the other end. Or not having any work at all for days and weeks. Thats too much down time that allows the overhead bills (insurance,
reg., equipment payments, home bills, etc...) to eat in to things.

Then the the 2nd part of Rawze's gig helps him keep things at an even predictable level is he gets paid every single mile that his truck moves. This isn't a huge game changer to everyone else at normal times because the loaded mile rate usually covers this easily. But the vast majority don't have that and those deadhead miles just chew the hell out of these already crap rates. Especially when they equate to the exact or more distance you pulled the paying load.

So yes, im making more money per loaded mile at $1.40 than Rawze but when its only 1000 miles for the week and a 1/3 to 1/2 of those miles were unpaid deadhead miles. Then multiply that into 2 solid months and counting . With no end in sight because of shitty weak panicky governors and a media hell bent on scaring people in to being attached to the TV so they can make huge sums of advertising $$$..... ya, trucking and the economy is in a hard spot right now.

I'm glad I listened and learned all the lessons from Rawze and the members of this site plus kept my equipment out of the money stealing shops while the grass was green at a $1.80+ and loads were plenty and deadhead was less than 1/10 of paid miles. I have a cushion that I can ride for months. Couple that with Rawze style of O/O'ing. I think I can survive for a solid year in these conditions before I have to make huge changes. With all the downtime this allows me to intelligently pick my loads and my next business moves. Because I'm not panicking, stressing and to busy blindly turning miles.

I'll say it again. Thank you Rawze you changed the world for me. And I seriously can't thank you enough.