Dead head demise

Ain’t it great being independent? No busy-body managers tracking your hours, no bureaucrats driving you nuts with administrivia … and nobody looking after your backhauls.

Oh yeah, backhauls. The saying goes that when you leave the yard in Montreal your final destination is, in fact, Montreal. That truck has to come back home, after all. If you want to put bread on the table, it has to come back loaded.

That means no matter where you go, you have to up your marketing energy and minimize those non-revenue-producing hauls–a tough task when you’re also the guy holding the steering wheel.

Independent operator Merlin Jay of Mermaid, P.E.I., knows a thing or two about staying loaded. He’s a one-man shop who hauls potatoes and seldom strays from the eastern seaboard. Jay’s too busy driving to market his business and plan elaborate backhauls. He relies on old fashioned networking, seeing every dock manager, dispatcher, and driver as a potential source of work.

“I had to open a few doors the first few times out,” he says. “I’d ask people where I was loading or I’d ask receivers if they knew anyone [with a load]. That usually produced a name or two, and if I’ve done right by them, I never expect to be steered wrong.”

The last thing Jay wants is to be desperate for a load. That usually means a call to a load broker. “When the brokers know you’re desperate, the rates go down,” he says. And when he thinks the broker’s desperate, Merlin Jay’s price goes up. “It sort of evens the score,” he says.

Usually, it works. “Have you ever had a load broker ask what you’d need to move the load? They’re fishing,” Jay says. “And I always tell them how much I want to do the load, and it’s never cheap. I don’t always get it, but I never move for less than I need. You’d be surprised how often the phone rings late in the afternoon.

“Sometimes I have to wait ’til a little later in the day to load, but I get my money.”
Jay says his rates are always based on his cost, plus a profit, and they’re based on the distance to destination plus a healthy estimate of how far he’ll need to go for a backhaul. He’s been offered as little as $500 for a load from Boston to Moncton. The rates are so low in that corridor, he won’t even waste time looking for a backhaul.

Meanwhile, Angeline Vranckx is a BCO (business capacity owner) with Jackson-ville, Fla.-based Landstar Ranger but she works from her home in St. Williams, Ont., a couple of hours west of Toronto. She and her husband Dale not only operate trucks of their own, they broker loads for other truckers. To do so the Vranckxs work the online load boards, specifically the Landstar board, efr8.com.

The Internet is rich with such sites. Some specialize in certain types of freight and trucks, others go for sheer volume, providing real-time information on untendered loads in a variety of ways–the Internet, truck stop load monitors, kiosks, telephone, overnight fax, modem-enabled interactive software, or satellite-fed desktop terminals.

Charlie Myers is vice-president of GetLoaded.com and he describes his company as an “infomediary.” With GetLoaded.com, shippers and brokers can list their loads for free (Myers says he sometimes sees as many as 50,000 loads posted in a single day). Truckers pay $35 a month for unlimited access to information about them–the load type, origin, destination, and the name and phone number of the posting party (usually a broker). Then it’s up to the truckers and the brokers to negotiate terms.

While some operations charge per transaction and others, like GetLoaded.com, collect a flat monthly subscription fee, cost isn’t the only consideration when choosing a service. It’s not even the most important. What distinguishes the better load boards is the freshness of the data. When a load is booked, it’s up to the posting party to notify the service. Some do it promptly. Others don’t. Ask the freight-matching company how often postings are purged.
You also have to mind the cabotage and immigration rules. The boards may be filled with loads moving point-to-point in the United States, a haul that’s illegal in most cases for Canadian truckers.

Freight-matching services typically don’t get involved in collections. Some, for a fee, will do credit checks on brokers or shippers. The good ones will investigate documented no-pay complaints and even try to mediate. Many will drop a load-posting customer who accumulates too many verified no-pay complaints. But collection is still your responsibility, so it’s smart to find out all you can about a broker or shipper before loading its freight.

According to Paul Kilmer, operations manager of ATS Logistics out of St. Cloud, Minn., folks like Vranckx and Jay, as long as they’re reliable, should have no trouble developing long-term relationships with trustworthy load brokers. And if they do approach a broker they haven’t done business with before, there’s no reason to worry, providing the broker is reputable.

“Look at it this way,” he says. “As brokers, we’re more worried about how reliable our truckers are going to be. These are truckers I don’t know, I’ve never seen any of them. And they represent us to our customers. In some cases, we’ve known them for about a half an hour.

“We’re talking about instant relationship-building,” he says. “We want references, and we check ’em.”

Another piece of advice that comes from this experience: You never know when opportunity might come knocking, so it’s wise to always wear your sales rep hat. You never know who is watching.

ATS Logistics’ Kilmer says that when his company reps need someone to haul a load, they’ll ask customers for recommendations. So chat up your service at the loading docks, turn personal contacts into business contacts, and since you never know who you might be talking to, keep the attitude in check.Load broker Paul Kilmer says if you have a shipment of doors that needs moving from Northern Saskatchewan to Vancouver, he can get you a truck and trailer on the road within hours. “We have people everywhere,” he vows.

And Charlie Myers of GetLoaded.com estimates–basing his numbers on his and other web sites–that about 250,000 load searches happen daily.

The guys agree: If you’re looking for something to carry, you can find a reliable broker with paying loads, providing you know how and where to look. They offer these tips:

1 Never misrepresent yourself. “Somebody will agree to take a load himself and then hire a subcontractor,” Kilmer says. “My customer will say, ‘You said ABC Trucking would deliver my load, but an XYZ guy showed up with it.’ That sours the relationship apple really fast.” If you must subcontract a load, let the broker know beforehand. In writing.

2 Ask for references–and expect to provide references.

3Expect to move quickly. Kilmer again: “The whole business can go from not knowing anything about each other to having a relationship with thousands of dollars at stake. In about a half an hour.”

4Get a contract whenever possible. If you agree to haul without getting the details on paper, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

5Don’t overbook. Unfortunately, there are no guarantees that the load will be there when you arrive at the pickup site. But truckers who book “backups” in the same location are playing the same unethical game. You’ll earn little more than a bad reputation–and trouble lining up loads in the long run.