It's always a delicate balance. As you know, one has both variable costs, and fixed costs. The more miles you run per unit of time (week, month, year), the more your fixed costs decrease per mile .....
Dunno about you (actually I do - your van is paid off
) .... but my fixed costs run about $1K per month ..... so I need to run some miles ...... in order to spread out that fixed cost.
Over a year ago my former carrier (not Bolt, who is my current carrier) went from being a business which depended almost entirely on their own dedicated customers ..... to one which began using bid boards (in addition to their own customers) ..... largely to book backhauls I guess ..... since they had previously had mostly one way loads ......
To paraphrase, the owner, one of the dispatchers, and the operations guy - after they got hooked up on various bid boards:
"You would not believe how cheap some of the freight is going for on these bid boards"
They were utterly aghast ...... and couldn't believe that people (independent O/O's and larger companies) would bid that low for freight ..... keep in mind that when I had been there a year or so before that, I averaged $1.20 per loaded mile with this company ... which tells ya something about the coin they were able to get out of their dedicated customers .....
Competition vs. no competition ....
Supply and demand ...... go to Laredo when there is 20 vans hanging around there ...... and then go to Laredo when you are the only game in town .... big difference.
What do you think it going to happen when you have half a dozen companies, with a total of 20 or 30 cargo vans and Sprinters down there .... and there is only 5 or 10 loads per day coming out ? (.... if that .....)
Take a look at inbound vs outbound loads for Texas vs other states .....
Yeah ...... don't think so ..... any carrier is going to be trying to make money on every load they book and haul .... if they were to do otherwise, they would be poor business people ....
Having said that, I do know on occasion, at least some of them will give it up ....