It seems to me that the ones that are complaining the most are those with the expensive TVAL trucks that are sitting and waiting for that high dollar load so they can make that next truck payment. You know, the ones that have all the qualifications and can haul anything but won't because the rate is too low.
I don't know about the ones, I only know about this one, namely me. Our truck has been fully paid for since 2008 and we have enough money in the bank to sit for six months or more if we had to. My complaints were not inspired by a need to make a truck payment.
Diane and I could match the gross revenue numbers posted by dabluzman1 and jackdixon_2000, but to do so, we would have to lower the rate per mile (all miles) we were willing to accept. Because we have seen high-paying freight volume decline at FedEx Custom Critical, we lost the luxury of running higher paying loads one after another.
There was a time when Diane and I could demand exceptionally high pay to move our truck. Why did we do so? Because we could. It made little sense to us to run for less money per mile when you can run for more, when demanding more would not leave you sitting long.
The reason the volume of high-paying loads declined, we believe, is because company-owned reefer trailers were and continue to be introduced into the system, and dedicated dispatchers are now tasked with putting the high-pay freight we used to haul onto that equipment before it is dispatched to percentage-paid trucks like ours.
Our reasons for leaving the company were financial and emotional. A large part of the emotion was our inability to live with a new dispatch system that is by design unfair to percentage-paid trucks like ours. It is a system that we can neither trust nor abide, so we left.
Now at another carrier, it may well become the case that we will have to settle for the kind of money Jack and Dave report and the rate per mile that must be accepted to generate that kind of volume.
If we must do that, we prefer to do it while leased to a carrier where the customer, dispatcher (agents) and contractor interests are more closely aligned, and not at a carrier where the primary source of competition is from company-owned equipment. (I am not yet ready to settle for a lower rate per mile. Many opportunities remain to be explored at our new carrier.)
We also prefer to do it with a carrier where the culture is more relaxed and contractors are more respected. If the money is not there to make it worth putting up with the crap, why put up with the crap?
FedEx Custom Critical used to be a company where the dispatch system was fair and the customer, dispatcher and contractor interests were closely aligned. That changed with the introduction of company-owned reefer trailers, flat-rate trucks and preferential dispatch of them over percentage paid trucks.
If we believed we could make better money by staying, we would have held our nose and stayed. But we don't believe that any more, so we left.
We may only make equivalent money at our new carrier but at least it will be without the stress of being dispatched under a system that is unfair by design and skewed such that percentage-paid trucks are passed over and dispatched last if they are dispatched at all.
That, jjoerger, is what inspired my complaints; not the need to make a truck payment.
