The way I see it is that when they got there authority they became a carrier. These carriers low-ball each other all day long to get new customers so I see nothing wrong with what ThibodeauxBayou did. What I do see wrong with this industry is people hauling cheap freight to "help there carrier cover the load" It was the carrier that took the load this cheap and by people covering these loads only brings on more cheap freight loads.
Fastrod, there are really two issues here, one being ‘cheap freight’ and the other leveraging the position you have with the company you are contracted with to create contacts to use to compete with the same company later on.
What ThibodeauxBayou did, get the authority and run under that is a good thing, no doubt about it but outside of that, there is a shade of ‘gray’ so to speak because of one statement. I am being polite for a reason.
Now when people post on here that they turned down cheap freight loads only to be reoffered these loads for more money because no one else would run them does not that make you realize that if everyone quit hauling these cheap freight loads the rates would go up. So the next time you take a cheap freight load to get out of a bad area or get closer to home remember or to help your carrier you become part of the problem and not part of the solution.
Again, there seems to be this fallacy that refusing cheap freight will send a message to the carrier and hence they will increase the rates. This is where supply and demand comes in – there is too many trucks so the supply is there to let the rates drop. Depending on the company the aggressiveness of their sales staff (if they even have one), a company can only do as good as the customer let’s them and the customer will get the stuff shipped one way or another. If they are bidding on freight and have say 250 trucks to move every day or so, it gets even worst without sales to create more opportunities for the contractor. It comes down to this in hard times, whether you want to have your truck move or sit and sitting does actually cost more than marginal running it. OH and remember that the customer will always find a way to move that freight.
Originally, our business cards had our carrier decaled vehicle clearly pictured. Never never ever did we ever Solicit "our" Business while working a load under another carriers authority. Nothing we did was unethical. We never never ever walked into an account and said "hey guys, we are starting our own carrier business" ONLY after we obtained our own authority did we begin to secure loads via a broker and begin soliciting our own work. This work was performed during out of service and we had a unique vinyl cover that contained the trucks needed numbers. Nothing we did was unethical. Going out and doing your own thing dosnt require you become some kind of unethical scumbag. Being successful doing your own thing requires a mentality of independence and determination.
This clears up some most of it but there is something else.
In your other post, this is the exact problem – “We also compiled a list of the names of everyone we met in both shipping and recieving. We had the address's so that was the easy part.â€
This is where the ethics comes into play.
All that other stuff does not matter, it is only this. The only reason for a list like this is to solicit for work, not that you did or would but the list is there and there could be intent. Even though you compiled the list, it gets confusing when the statement is added without a real purpose behind it and that is where the problem is, see what I am getting at?
“We begin not nearly as productive as we had hoped but we were relentless on the phones and contacts were established with the brokerage world.â€
Now I know that you said this and I glossed over it without thinking at first but here is where your hard work went into, or at least I think where it paid off.
