First, congratulations to dabluzman1 for putting together some impressive YTD numbers. $2.27 per mile for all miles driven is great by any standard.
We are down on all numbers from last year. Our rate per mile has dropped off. Our gross is off and our TVAL work has dropped off as well. That explains why our numbers are off. This month has been our best and last week was the best gross income week in the six years we have been in business.
That is what we saw in the six months before we left in June. In May, I made my first
public complaints about the new FedEx Custom Critical, but the downtrend in our numbers was clear several months before that.
I mention the timing of the numbers decline and my public complaints because some readers may be inclined to believe that our declining numbers were because of my public complaints. That is not the case. The numbers decline developed months before I began to speak out.
By the new FedEx Custom Critical I mean a company that used to run the same dispatch system for all contractors but then, without announcing it, began to buy (not lease) reefer trailers and use fleet managers to dispatch the reefer freight we used to haul onto those trailers (pulled by flat-rate tractors) while leaving percentage-paid contractors sit.
At the time, the claim was that these trailers were used to build the business and meet the needs of new customers but I dismissed that claim as wishful thinking from the company if not an outright lie. I dismissed it because after asking around and looking hard, I could not find even one new customer that these trailers were serving, while it became a common sight and common news of them serving the customers we served and hauling the 1-6 skid loads Diane and I used to haul.
So, watching our numbers decline over several months and then learning that the reason was not slow freight but a new and unfair dispatch system, we found a new home with another carrier.
This was not an easy decision and it was not made by ignoring positive contractor reports like dabluzman1 shared above. Had most of the other contractors we talked to shared similar reports, we might have stayed on board. But the opposite was true. Most of the other contractors and fleet owners we talked to shared experiences and numbers similar to ours.
(We dismissed reports that provide vague claims like "our income is up" "our bank balance is growing" or "lots of miles." Those statements may be true but they are meaningless without additional infomation such that actual revenue per all miles is shared and profitability can be calculated.)
Diane and I have met Dave (dabluzman1) and Linda on the road and visited over dinner. We do not know them well but I have no doubt that he is telling the truth about his numbers.
We considered his reports with all others and determined that our profitability can be best achieved by leaving FedEx Custom Critical, so we did.
I ask readers to note what I said in my
How's it Going at Landstar? post. Namely, "I am not encouraging anyone to leave FedEx Custom Critical."
As dabluzman1's post clearly indicates, it is still possible to make good money there, but finding it impossible ourselves in the first half of 2011, Diane and I left. Discovering that the company established a new dispatch system that is by design unfair to percentage-paid contractors made it that much easier to go.
