I put a post in the general relating to accepting empty moves. As far as going out west, depending on what you are driving, California is not a problem for us. Anything north of that, I refuse unless a return trip is booked at the same time. They do get loads out of CA, but if there are too many trucks there, I would go to Nagales,AZ or El Paso, TX . Might have to sit a day, but they have real long runs that come out of those locations. You might want to find a owner that has a little better pay structure. In your situation, you might have been better off to refuse the load if you have to absorb all of the external costs. Worst case scenerio is you only have two runs that week, but the truck should gross 5 to 6000.
Kinda news related; Nagales just opened a major port crossing there. Won't be long before it turns into another San Diego or Laredo. Not sure with Mexican trucks coming in as to whether that will change anything in those areas or not. I don't think it will effect team trucks in those areas at least for a while. If we go to Laredo, we have our return trip usually before we ever get there.