Continuing on the road to "Finding Good Paying Freight," the next challenge is, the fewer trucks you have at your beck and call, the less value you have to large shipping customers or brokers with a large number of loads from a single customer. If they have twenty loads in a single day and you only have a single truck, they would have to negotiate with twenty companies like yours to get the loads covered.

Let’s continue on our course to “Finding Good Paying Freight.” Even though we are in the middle of the lowest freight rate period in decades, this doesn’t mean you can’t find decent, revenue-producing freight.
 

The most-asked question by Owner/Operators and the owners of small trucking companies today is: “How do I find good paying freight?”
 

Trucking is a risky business. The one who knows this better than anyone else is the owner of a small trucking company. Equipment is expensive to acquire and maintain, revenue is elusive, (here one day; gone to a cheaper hauler the next), and the liability risk is astronomical with one’s drivers constantly one vehicle away from a lawsuit eleven hours a day. Added to this, anyone with a CDL and a few thousand dollars can be trucking in just a few weeks, regardless of his knowledge of the business of trucking.

Building success and wealth is a process; it is not based on luck, or being in the right place at the right time. Individuals who become successful and wealthy and remain so do it with a plan, no matter what business they enter. We’ve all seen the person who has the Midas touch—every business he goes into rockets to the stratosphere. If you sat down with such a person and asked what were the most important things he did to make each of those businesses successful, here is what he would answer:

With the difficult time many truckers and small motor carriers are having finding quality, decent-paying loads, it’s time to look at the one area in your operation that you can actually control. The value you provide your customers is a greater determiner of the hauling rate you can charge than any other single action available in your logistic arsenal.

Definition:

val·ue ¹

What is lane density? This is a term you may or may not have heard in the course of doing business as a trucker. But as you’re about to see, it’s very important in determining whether you are profitable or not. This applies to a single truck operation or multiple unit dispatch.

The misconception of load planning for a majority of small motor carriers is, 'the best load is always the highest-paying load out of an area.' However, only considering the highest-paying load without looking at other factors is like purchasing a lottery ticket: winning is possible, but not likely.

We all know that as motor carriers our objective is continually to haul at capacity with reasonable rates creating a reasonable profit. The trick in being able to accomplish this goal is summed up in two words “Customer Service.”

And for Customer Service, we must first define, “Who are our customers?” For the small trucking company, this means anyone who contracts with you to haul freight; including brokers, shippers, 3PLs, etc. For the purpose of this article, when it refers to shippers, just keep that list in mind.

But what is customer service?

Your most important plan is not how you’ll purchase your next tractor or trailer, or house, or investments. It’s your income tax plan. Yet most truckers spend more time planning the next two days off than learning how to get their taxes under control.