little truck solutions
- Thread starter ttruck
- Start date
mavmannate
Active Expediter
I am a dispatcher at UPS and whenever I see them on sylectus, I try to grab them. They are extreamly well priced, and extreamly timely. I have never ever had any issues or gotten the run-around, but this is from a dispatchers point of view... Hope this helps.
wow ups, have not heard much from you guys in quite a while. so how bout an update !!
Can you say more about this? What exactly about getting your own authority appeals more than leasing your truck(s) to a carrier? It seems like more and more expediters are doing this as time marches on. I'd be interested in learning more (research for an article I am working on).
Also, if you are looking into your own authority, what relationship, if any, might you have with the company you asked about (Truc Solutions)?
has anyone heard of little truc solutions or had any problems with them if so let us know thanks drive safe out there.
Just a small $1500 problem one time. You may well be advised that they change the Company name from time to time.
I might add for the newbs and inflexable folks out there.......there are two kinds of truckers. The ones that have been hosed, and the ones that are gonna be hosed....no matter however so slightly.
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Col,
How goes it?
How goes it?
have spoke to them several times and to some of there drivers they havenothing but good to say as for them changing there name havent heard, as for getting own auth. im presently working for a large comp. as you did phil, and they are not doing ther job not a message or a call unless i do to even say we are looking this is what you pay them for but to let you sit 6,7 10 days and not even aph call,come on this is what you dofor 25 yrs. and you put a min. of 10 new trks on a week,use what you got deadhead them, i dont like to but i will, to get a good load.
you cant have trks. sitting to cover your coustomer base and expect them to be happy.
buy the way how is landstar these days.
you cant have trks. sitting to cover your coustomer base and expect them to be happy.
buy the way how is landstar these days.
Your pal Franco from the "Windy".
Ahh Franco.....howdy. Still getting your emails. So i'm keeping tabs on you.
A-team. Getting your own authority is complete freedom to do whatever you want whenever you want along with the ability to taylor this business to fully suit your needs. I have my own authority now and if I just feel like running 1 way trips in California then that's all I have to do. I don't have some company calling me on the phone begging me to take a load that I do not want. Also, the one way trips that I do get would not pay me enough to do them if there was another "hand" in ther pot. I can also go out and find my own customers and get loads directly from the source which means I can control what rate I earn and where I deliver. It costs me about 500 dollars a month to run my own company; that's just the trucking side. It used to cost me around 390 a month to be leased on with one of the bigger boys. That was with the cost of the qualcomm, personal injury insurance, and bobtail insurance.
It is only costing me 120 more dollars a month to run my own company and do things my way and I have two business partners contributing to the monthly expenses, so I technically pay even lower than that. I also have a broker side which sucks up about 600 a month because of our broker bond, a company credit card, and a phone system, load brokering software, website, etc. But as far as just the carrier side, we do not pay more than 250 a piece to operate it; so having a partner can be a good thing if you want to soften the burden of going it alone.
I can book my own loads and deal directly with the customer. I do my own position updates and I do nt have to call in for directions of anything for that matter. I can run the entire operation from the drivers seat with a laptop, wifi card, and a nationwide cell phone. I'm not saying that this is for everyone, or that there are not times when I wish i'd have stayed leased on to a larger carrier, but for the time being t works for me. This arrangement would also be more ideal for a team in an older (under 26k) straight truck. It's alright for a van, but you will be spending a lot of start up money to make an extra 10-15 cents per mile. I did this more because I have to have the carrier side to operate my freight brokerage firm and I still take cargo van runs to supplement the company expenses while i'm building up my reputation as a carrier/broker. I hope ths helps.
Yes it helps and I get the freedom part that you talk about at length.
Now I have another question. I followed your link to your On Call Logistics site. Finding your DOT number there, I went to the FMCSA SMS site and learned that you have one power unit in your fleet (excluding vans if you have any).
How does a fleet of one, convince any customer to put freight on your truck? Why would shippers use you instead of larger carriers? A larger carrier can send a rescue truck in to save the load if the original truck breaks down. Do not larger carriers have deeper pockets and more credibility that provide shippers with a greater level of security than one-truck carriers do?
I have some ideas but would rather hear the answer from someone (and others) in a position to answer it. (Humor me, please; learning here.)
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Well, I can list more units as I have a couple of more units I can put on there. It's really not necessary if you are just brokering freight because most of the time it is going to go onto someone elses truck. It jut makes it a little bit easier to get your foot in the door with shippers if you are both a carrier and a broker. I may however "in the future" break up the two entities for legal reasons. Like I said about the amount of power units listes it really doesn't have to be accurate unless you are talking about the "unified carrier registration form" which needs to be filed for all trucks over 10k GVWR.
Another problem is the age of your MC number. Brokers and Carrier MC numbers are like fine wine. The longer you've been in business the more likely you are to get loads from partner carriers and shippers. There are a lot of fly by night broker and carrier operations that come in and generate a great deal of revenue, rip a bunch of people off, and then file bankruptcy and do it all over again.
Fedex, NLM, and quite a bit of other carriers will not allow a new company to haul their freight until you have at least 6 months behind your MC number. As you can see from the SAFER WEB Company Snapshot page we've only been a carrier for 5 months now and a broker for almost 4 months. We're still facing some hurdles. You have to hire broker sales agents to find business for you and to work under the brokerage for a percentage, but experienced broker agents only want to work with experienced brokers, and new broker agents do not know what they are doing.
The fact of the matter is that a lot of smaller shippers prefer to work with brokers and directly with guys who own a single truck. They know that guys who own their own trucks temd to be more professional and will get the load delivered in one piece. Take swift for example, sure the shipper gets a better deal, but the swift driver might put the truck in the ditch because he has no experience.
Larger companies prefer larger carriers and brokers because they have a lot of freight and need to work with companies who have EDI technology and other things that the smaller guys do not have. Larger shippers often times employ in house brokers and traffic managers to take care of their customer while smaller companies employ brokers to manage their traffic for them because they need to focus on other aspects of their business development.
Landstar (the company you are on with) has a very excellent safety rating and a lot of independent contractors leased on to them providing exclusive use to the agents and that is how you get good paying accounts. Shippers only have two major concerns when it comes to their freight, is it going to make it there in one piece, and is it going to make it there on time. I'd love to be a Landstar agent but you have to have an established book of business before you can become an agent for Landstar.
Mike99
Veteran Expediter
Very good post. I have a question. This is true on a cargo van fleet to?From what boards you get your loads? We have the NLM site but with out success. When I finally have a van close to the load somebody underbid us...I tried with Sylectus to but they not let me in because I work with one of their partners (TK,Lrt). Any suggestions? Thank you
NikkiA
Active Expediter
We have been signed on with little truck for a while now. Me and my husband have nothing but great things to say about this company. We have never had an issue with them dispatch is awesome and we get great loads from them. Pay is better than the couple other companies we run for always paid on time. If your thinking of signing on with them I say go for it you won't regret it.
Sent from my PC36100 using EO Forums
Sent from my PC36100 using EO Forums
I did not have a Fleet of one truck, however, even with multiple trucks we didn't always have a truck close to take care of a rescue. Finding a rescue truck is the easy part......the alliance has just short of 10,000 trucks available nationwide at any given time. Kinda large potatoes compared to Panther, Fedup etc. The hard part of a rescue is causing your Contractor to understand their part of the contract after they had "agreed" to "deliver" a load for a certain amount of revenue. IF say, the rescue cost as much as the original revenue.......then......we both make nothing. Most didn't understand that. Why would a shipper use a small Carrier? Because we GITRDONE!!
Your point about 10,000 trucks vs. a large carrier's fleet of 1,000 or so is well taken. However, large carriers gitrdone too. All of them boast on-time stats approaching 100 percent. What other reasons are there for a shipper to use a small carrier instead of a large one?