Panther Expedite pays 100% of your deadhead at a rate based off the national fuel index. It doesnt fluctuate much, and they try to keep your deadhead at 10-20% of your overall loaded miles.
Deadhead
- Thread starter butterfly610
- Start date
That's an elegant way to put it. Instead of thinking about loaded miles and empty miles, think about paid miles and unpaid miles.
Scenario 1: (true story) Agent calls and askes us to "deadhead" from home in Minnesota (near Twin Cities) to Northern Minnesota to pick up a load and deliver it in remote Canada. Closest freight centers from there are Minneapolis or Seattle. Our price: $1.95 for all miles. That includes deadhead (running empty) from home to the pickup, loaded to the delivery and another 1,000+ "deadhead" miles to Seattle.
Result: All miles were paid miles. Revenue-wise, it did not matter how many miles we had freight on the truck. It mattered only how much we were paid for the load.
Scenario 2 (true story): Back when we were with FedEx Custom Critical we received a load offer to deadhead from Chicago to pick up in New Hampshire (about 1,000 miles) and run loaded from there to a California delivery (about 3,000 miles). FedEx specifically calculated the deadhead miles rate and the loaded miles rate and paid us that combined amount. The deadhead rate was significantly lower than the loaded miles rate but overall, the load paid enough to make it worth taking.
Result: All miles were paid miles. We ignored the deadhead and loaded distinction and instead looked at total miles and total pay. Looking at those two numbers only we made the accept/decline decision. While FedEx made a distinction between deadhead and loaded, we considered the offer in terms of the paid miles that began in Chicago and ended in California.
Scenario 3 (hypothetical): You receive a load offer to deadhead few if any miles from your present location to the pick up. The load pays say $2.00 a mile for 1,000 miles but delivers in Billings, Montana where next-load prospects are poor. Your carrier sucks when it comes to getting freight in western states so the best strategy is to deadhead 800 miles to Minneapolis after the delivery.
Result: All miles are paid miles. You consider all miles. One thousand miles to Billings plus 800 to Minneapolis. That gives you $2,000 pay for 1,800 miles, or $1.11 per mile when all miles are viewed as paid miles. Knowing your cost per mile, you can decide if that $2,000 is worth earning or not.
Scenario 4 (hypothetical): You are lay over a weekend in Memphis after delivering there in Friday. You drive 15 miles from your Memphis delivery to West Memphis to get to the truck stops. You drive another 15 miles on Sunday to get groceries and return to the truck stops. On Monday ymorning you wake up in service and available but get skunked. Now upset, you decide to drive 400 miles to get home and wait for freight there.
Result: All 430 miles are unpaid miles; 30s miles in and around Memphis while on layover, 400 miles to get home.
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Phil, back when I was with another carrier I used to run like your scenario 2. Until one day when I got an offer to deadhead a significant distance from a good area to a bad area and pick up a load going to another good area. Pay was excellent. When I got to the pick up I was informed that the load cancelled, and all I got was some fuel money, and had to deadhead back to where I started. Since then I started asking for a specific amount on long deadheads, even if the load would cancel. Their response: 'we can't do that'. My response to that was 'well, then I can't do the load'.
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ya, looking at all miles is the best way to do it, even if your carrier pays dh. add it all up and do the math. even with doing and all miles rate, our dh, year to date is 7.2 %.
Wow, that's great. Your dispatchers are doing a great job keeping the DH low and your all miles rate up.
what he doesn't say is how selective he is on loads....LOL.....whomp
Good point. You illustrate how deadhead miles, paid miles, all miles, loaded miles, etc. are only part of the story.
Like you, we had a similar experience with what we came to regard as a bad-faith shipper. This important customer (dispatch's words) would order a truck and then if it turned out to be not needed, the shipper would take full advantage of FedEx Custom Critical's very low dry run charges and pay the cost. The shipper got a truck if he needed one and paid a small fee if he did not. But the truck suffered a loss because of the low dry run pay then awarded and the expense of deadheading to a good express center.
After two or three rounds of that, we stopped saying yes to that shipper. Then the day came when we were the only truck available and dispatch needed help in covering the load. We said we would be happy to help but only if we were not left at risk of being marooned in a dead area if the load canceled again. We would cover the load if the carrier would take the risk and make the run risk-free to us by guaranteeing that we would be paid full rate for deadhead miles to the pick up and deadhead miles to the nearest good express center if the shipper canceled the load.
The dispatcher said she would have to check with her supervisor. In a few minutes, word came back that dispatch would not agree to our terms. We declined the load to protect ourselves and the shipper went without a truck.
It's funny how quickly that important customer became unimportant when the carrier was asked to take the risk and bear the expense of a canceled load. And it's sad that the carrier was more than willing to let contractors suffer losses again and again as this bad-faith shipper was served at contractor expense.
In general, customers and carriers will take as much for free from drivers as drivers will give. If you are willing to deadhead for free or be abused as described above, people will take full advantage and feel no obligation to give you anything in return.
I add the total miles and how much will it cost me, how much dose it pay. If im out of town what is the likelyhood of getting freight going to a prefered location. How much is my paycheck at the end of the week after expenses. If I dont come out ahead at the end of the ride like making a profit at least ten bucks per hour after expenses, and getting out of a cold location for a decent one, I dont even consider it. I would rather loose an oportunity to work rather than move freight and pay for it.
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Diane and I were with FedEx Custom Critical for eight years and were pleased and proud to be "FedEx Blue" for seven and a half of them. As we saw our revenue decline, company-owned reefer trailers being preferentially dispatched on loads we used to haul, certain policy changes take place, and no acceptable responses made to our inquiries and expressed concerns, it took six months to conclude that leaving the company was in our best interests.
In other words, we were happy with and proud to be associated with FedEx Custom Critical for seven and a half years of the eight we were there. The dispatch decision to not take the risk with a bad-faith shipper was made well within our happy years.
If there ever was a time when the company decided it was better off without us, that time has passed. Just today we received a call from a FedEx Custom Critical recruiter asking if we might be interested in coming back.
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The reply was simple. We are happy at Landstar Express America and have no plans to change carriers.
As I thought more about this later in the day, I realized that the emotional energy has changed. We left FedEx Custom Critical over a year ago. The things we felt strongly about then remain in place today but the feelings have faded. Emotionally, the first thing that would keep us from returning to FedEx today is the Qualcomm unit, not the EOBR part, but the way that carrier uses Qualcomm.
That is interesting because FedEx's use of Qualcomm was not on the list of reasons that lead to our departure. But once we got to Landstar and experienced the peace and quiet of the way they use Qualcomm, it would be difficult to return to a carrier where the Qualcomm never shuts up and where you have to use it to do things that Qualcomm itself should take care of.
It's strange. Something that did not bother me much a year ago has become the primary reason today to not return. My stomach tenses up when I think about having a FedEx Qualcomm unit in our truck again. It would not be pleasant.
Phil, I got to tell you the new clink comes with a long enough cord to hang it out the window.
So you see the problem of having the Fedex clink inside the truck is much more manageable.
So you see the problem of having the Fedex clink inside the truck is much more manageable.