... Well, chew on this.
You sit in that Petro for three days. An agent is reaching for the phone to call you with the load that's going to make your week.
Opps !
RollinCoal pops up as available on his screen. RC bought him and the misses dinner last month.
Who do YOU think is going to get that load ? ...
As I said in
Post #35 above, to fully exploit the Landstar advantage, you need to think deeper. You need to stop thinking that you know what Landstar is, and instead open your mind and look at Landstar as if you have never seen anything like it before. Set aside what you think you know about Landstar and pretend that you know nothing about it at all. Set aside the skills and experience that got you this far, and think instead about the new things you must learn and new skills you must develop to fully exploit the Landstar opportunity.
Diane and I interact with over 100 Landstar agents and have hauled freight for dozens of them. In over two years with this company, we have never once bought breakfast, lunch or dinner for an agent. Nor have we sent birthday cards, thank you cards, holiday cards or gifts of any kind. There are two exceptions but what we did early in our time with Landstar is done no longer because it had no impact.
In Zorry's example of two trucks sitting at the same place and an agent having received dinner from one driver and not the other; the agent will call not the driver who bought him and "the misses" dinner. The agent, having a customer to please, will call the driver he or she trusts most or feels most comfortable with to get the job done.
Buying dinner for an agent will not get you more freight. If that was the case, the dinner-buyers out there would get more fright than us, and they don't.
In addition to the money needlessly spent, there is another down side to that dinner-buy thinking. The strategy is easily duplicated by the next driver. If the strategy works at all (and I suggest that it does not), it only works until the next driver comes in after you and buys the agent dinner too.
.
