If you have to depend on the advances to make the fuel payment to pick the load up, maybe you need to examine your operating practices and maybe change something.
Just saying...
Greg
I understand what you're saying. It's not about depending on advance's to be honest. It's more about only advancing a truck a percentage of the line haul only and not the payables. Many carriers do it on the total payables, not the line haul.
Good Example of what I'm talking about, lets say you have a reefer load that is only 1000 miles but it has seven stops. To pick this load up you have to dead head 600 miles to get it the load at 1.50 a mile. It's will cost you based on $4.00 a gallon $369.24 or 92.31 gallons to make it to the pickup. Now your on this reefer load for seven days and we all know you need fuel for the reefer for the seven days, which is 168 hours and 117.60 gallons based on 7/10 a gallon an hour. That is about $470.40 in reefer fuel based on $4.00 per gallon. Lets say the load pays $1.50 a mile, plus a .46 a mile FSC, plus reefer fuel. Now the customer wants the truck to be at 3/4 tank of fuel at the pick up. Your tanks are 150 gallon tanks on each side. So you need to have 225 gallons in the truck plus your reefer tank full which is 60 gallons plus . That is 434.91 gallons or $1739.64 that is needed to do this load.
Now lets say the carrier only does 50% of the line haul and not the payables. Based on this load you would only get $750.00 loaded to your Com Data card. So you have to call your carrier and ask them to load money up front on your card so you can do this load. Your carrier will this but they will charge you a fee of 5% plus take it out of your very next settlement. Now you have to wait three weeks to get pay for this load and pay a $90.00 fee to service your carriers customer.
Some carriers will do 45% or 50% of the payables of the load. I think 45% is a enough so we will use that.
Line haul miles 1000 X $1.50 = $1500.00
Dead head miles 600 X $1.50 = $ 900.00
FSC pay 1000 X $0.46 = $ 460.00
Reefer fuel $ 470.00
Stop off and hand unload pay $ 500.00
SMS and CSL charges $1000.00
Total $4855.40 X 45% = $2184.93 loaded to the Com Data
The advance is taken out when you get paid for the load and everyone is happy. Now you may ask what happens if the load dry runs. Lets say you only asked for $700.00 to be loaded up front to your Com Data card because you was already at a half tank and needed to top off the reefer with 25 gallons. The carrier could take the advance out what is left over from the deadhead and the dry run pay.
Doing the advances this way keeps everyone happy and helps with driver and owner retention.
