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To a point, you are correct but our way of entry into the expeditie business was very common and it remains commonly available. Then owning a house, cars and a house full of stuff, we made arrangements to have the house cared for while we were gone and moved into a fleet owner's truck to begin...

I use "property-free" in a casual sense to mean that we own and are tied to few goods. Until you mentioned it, I never made the connection between the land we own and "property." In my mind, the land is an investment just as stocks, bonds, gold, or whatever are investments. I do not consider...

Actually, we do. Some of our expediting profits have been used to buy vacant land. Our plan is to sell most of it when our health fails us to the point we can no longer live and work on the road. The proceeds will be used to pay cash to build a house on one of the plots we own. If that were to...

Not to be disrepsectful, but yes. If you want me to understand the point (which I do not now get) you need to explain. I am not as dialed into our carrier's back-office operations as some others are. Maybe they can jump in to add more items to the list. Things that come to mind regarding our...

It is not impossible at all if you track every penny you take in and spend. You are right to draw the distinction between fixed and variable costs. Fixed costs are easy. You know what they will be each month (at least until a price increase on something like Qualcomm fees or insurance is...

Texpress offers a summary. In matters like this I suggest that there will always be more thinking to do once you get to the point where a summary is possible. Expediting is an open-ended business where yesterday's events, decisions and results may be a good guide for today's, and or may or may...

No problems here. The pay is as quick and reliable as ever.

TeamCaffee's point about fleet coverage raises an interesting question regarding the ability to broker outside loads. A carrier that allows its trucks to broker outside loads will, at any given moment, have a number of trucks on outside loads, and thus unavailable to cover carrier-dispatched...

Thank you for your informative reply, and especially for acknowledging that there is more than one way to approach the business.

We negotiated under the old dispatch system and new, and in "exactly" the same way. If a load is offered to us at a price below which we are willing to run, we immediately decline the load so dispatch will know we are serious about refusing the low price. The immediate decline also frees...

I would like to know why, yes. Was the money good enough to make it worth it to do for the money alone? Was it to keep a fleet driver from quitting because he or she could not stand sitting? Was it to relocate a truck to a better area? For those of us considering the ability to broker your own...

Can you give us an example? There are those on the forum who present brokering your own loads as the solution. But before new people decide to get into the business on the assumption that self-brokered freight is available and invaluable, it would be a service to them (and to me, maybe I am...

I'm all for additional tools. I'm not saying self-brokered loads are bad. I'm just questioning the claims that they are so very good. Where's the beef? If they are so good, why isn't everyone flocking to carriers where self-brokered loads are an option? If they are so good, why are people...

I would have no problem if our carrier allowed contractors to broker their own loads. My notion of limiting ourselves to profitable freight today and make a killing later extends industry wide. It is not held with a single carrier in mind. It does not matter what carrier a competing truck is...

DaveKC said, "I don't believe I could operate in the environment you describe and remain profitable." The "you describe" refers to the description Humble2drive offered in the opening post of this thread. If Diane and I operated in the environment Humble2drive described, we probably would not be...

I can't help but think that a good portion of the increased traffic to ExpeditersOnline.com is people looking at the expediting opportunity for the first time, or looking at it anew; because their present employment and business opportunities have been or may be adversely affected by the ongoing...

That was us you saw parked in a mall lot in Hurst, Texas. We are in the area waiting for freight. Having some time to spare, we went to the local Barnes and Nobel bookstore. Minutes after parking the truck, a mall security guard drove up and asked our intent. When we told him we were going to...

I know many expediters who drive in ice storms, if it can be safely done. Our recent ice storm experience was one such event. You can read all about it in my January 27 blog entry. You will see that safety was on our mind the entire day and safe driving was done. There are times when bad...

First, I can't help but notice that your service manager's first instinct is to deny a warranty claim before even trying to understand how SlushBusters work. That is sad. I invite you to learn more and reconsider your "thump" assumption and "adverse operational forces" belief. There is...

So, perhaps the working theory is that heavy, wet snow and slop has the mass and inertia needed to overcome the air flow created by the Airtabs that directs lighter, drier snowflakes and dust away from the back doors.