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. On the other hand, if they can negotiate with one trucking company with twenty available trucks for all twenty loads, in hauling cost and time invested, it's a no-brainer for the broker or shipper.

What's the solution for the single truck owner or small trucking company?
• First, look for the small manufacturers that ship fewer loads over longer periods of time. These shippers usually have a more difficult time locating a larger hauler that will meet their spread-out schedule. If you work primarily with brokers, ask your brokers if they have any shippers who need more personalized service.
• Look for multiple small shipments from brokers from the same geographic area, heading in the same direction, which you can combine into a single load. This will provide you with greater revenue per load as you can charge for actual cubic feet, linear space, or CWT (Hundred-weight) of the items hauled.
• Start by concentrating your initial customer search within a 100-mile radius of home. Create it so you can pick up all shipments which make up a load within a couple of days.
• Think customer service. Most shipments of this type are picked up by a local truck, transferred at a cross dock to the road truck, hauled to destination and delivered to another cross dock, then delivered to the receiver by a local truck. By the time the shipment is delivered, four forklifts and three trucks have handled it. The more a shipment is handled or transferred, the greater the opportunity for damage and loss.
The idea here is to develop a niche that provides shippers with better customer service through less handling, quicker pick-up and delivery, and more personal care of their items being shipped. And all this being provided for shippers who are left in the lurch by most of the large carriers and brokers.

In the next installment, we'll discuss what it requires to be successful at finding the types of loads that pay the best long range dividends.

Timothy D. Brady is
• A 20 + year trucking veteran
• The Trucking Business Expert on Sirius/XM Road Dog Trucking Radio
• Heard in podcasts on http://AmericanRigRadio.com
• Author of best-selling trucking business books and columnist for top trucking industry publications.
Join Brady in the Trucking Business Community at www.truckersu.com for a continuing business learning experience. Be a part of the solution.
Contact him at tbrady@writeuptheroad.com or call (731) 749-8567.