CharlesD
Expert Expediter
I know you're being humorous and all, but it's only funny because there is some truth in it. I hear people all the time complaining that another vehicle class is stealing their loads, but in my mind it's only a problem when a larger vehicle is taking something that would fit the smaller one. The other side of the coin is that if you're in a straight truck and you get a call offering you a two skid load and you're in an area where you're not likely to get many good offers, you'd be crazy to turn it down. Plus, lighter loads are more economical to run. Yeah, it ticks me off when I see a straight truck hauling a load that I could fit in my vehicle because I can't return the favor and grab a 10000 lb load that he could have taken, but that's the nature of the business.
What does tick me off is when someone with a larger vehicle will combine two or three van expedites going the same direction and run them for LTL rates. Sure, if you bid that van load at .60 a mile and combine with a couple more loads at .70 or .80 a mile, you can get an ok rate for your truck, but those loads should not be moving for those rates. Fine if you want to combine loads; I've done the same thing myself. But move each individual load at a full rate, the same rate a van would move it for. I'm convinced that's what is keeping the rates for van freight so ridiculously low anyway. There are times I've put two cargo van expedites on my Sprinter but I don't do it often, mostly because there often isn't enough time to do each load within the time frame expected. The times I have done it, however, I've gotten $1.00 a mile or more for each load. I don't lowball one of them just to get it because the two combined will give me enough money. I consider that each load needs to be priced where I could move it by itself. If I could remove any terms from the trucking industry vocabulary it would be partial load and backhaul.
