Freight Rates
- Thread starter Terry
- Start date
Racer X 69
Member
Now why would anyone want to do this?
I can make .42 cpm as a company driver, and all I gotta do is driver the truck. If I'm going to become an owner operator, it is going to have to pay at least twice that, if not three times that amount.
Owning your own truck takes a lot more work than driving as a company driver, so it doesn't make any sense at all to drive for company driver wages.
mudflap
Active Member
Rate Indexes have always been problematic.
1. Rarely does one company's Index closely match another's. So which one are you supposed to believe?
2. Some of them give you a "range" of supposedly current rates, but that range is so large that you'd definately lose money trying to haul it at the low end and nobody would buy your truck at the high end. You're back to guessing...
3. The Index is only as good as the source of the data. TransCore offers a Spot Market Truckload Index, for example. But when you read the fine print you learn that the info came from a "...consortium of brokers, carriers, broker-carriers and shippers who anonymously pool rate data based on actual invoiced spot market transactions." Now how many of those brokers are you going to trust to provide accurate numbers? Or carriers... or shippers? In fact, it's in their best interest to try and keep those numbers as low as possible, isn't it? It's in the carriers best interest to keep the numbers high. What does that do to the final product? hmmm..
4. Any numbers you're looking at today are for freight that's already moved... and billed... again, supposedly. Those numbers may have been for last week.. or last month.. but you have no way of knowing what time frame they represent. In the Spot Market world, rates can and do change overnight, often by a LOT!
5. Numbers shown are usually based upon some sort of average, or mean point. Unfortunately, I've yet to find one (and I've used a lot of them over the years..) that actually tells you if you're looking at an "average" or "mean" number. And there's a big difference between the two...
There's nothing wrong with looking at Rate Indexes to try and get a vague notion of where the numbers might be on any given lane. Just be sure and take it with a grain of salt, ya know?
Better yet, just pick a lane (or triangle) you like, learn it like the back of your hand, and stick with it.
1. Rarely does one company's Index closely match another's. So which one are you supposed to believe?
2. Some of them give you a "range" of supposedly current rates, but that range is so large that you'd definately lose money trying to haul it at the low end and nobody would buy your truck at the high end. You're back to guessing...
3. The Index is only as good as the source of the data. TransCore offers a Spot Market Truckload Index, for example. But when you read the fine print you learn that the info came from a "...consortium of brokers, carriers, broker-carriers and shippers who anonymously pool rate data based on actual invoiced spot market transactions." Now how many of those brokers are you going to trust to provide accurate numbers? Or carriers... or shippers? In fact, it's in their best interest to try and keep those numbers as low as possible, isn't it? It's in the carriers best interest to keep the numbers high. What does that do to the final product? hmmm..
4. Any numbers you're looking at today are for freight that's already moved... and billed... again, supposedly. Those numbers may have been for last week.. or last month.. but you have no way of knowing what time frame they represent. In the Spot Market world, rates can and do change overnight, often by a LOT!
5. Numbers shown are usually based upon some sort of average, or mean point. Unfortunately, I've yet to find one (and I've used a lot of them over the years..) that actually tells you if you're looking at an "average" or "mean" number. And there's a big difference between the two...
There's nothing wrong with looking at Rate Indexes to try and get a vague notion of where the numbers might be on any given lane. Just be sure and take it with a grain of salt, ya know?
Better yet, just pick a lane (or triangle) you like, learn it like the back of your hand, and stick with it.
Racer X 69
Member
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