Nope, it's ALWAYS the O/O/driver that loses.
Not always. Expediters have scored many large wins because we are the only solution remaining to the customer. I remember one load in particular where the shipper complained that our carrier's rate ate up half of his quarter's shipping budget on the single load we carried.
In the bigger picture, the owner-operator wins every time he or she is able to profitably serve the customer. While the new rules erode our productivity and profitability in certain circumstances, and while the new rules do absolutely nothing to improve safety, expediters can still win, and sometimes they win big while the customer loses big because of circumstances owing to customer failures or faults.
We had it happen once when we and another truck arrived at the same dock in Florida, each to pick up a computer server. Ours went to New Jersey. The other one went to Baltimore. While it would have made better sense for the shipper to put both servers on one truck for a two-stop run, and while, as the shipper said, there was no reason whatsoever to not do so, the shipping person's higher-ups insisted that two trucks be used. Customer fault, expediter win.
One instance of this has already been mentioned on the Open Forum and I expect there will be others. It was an expedite load that was created because the new rules prevented a larger truck from completing a delivery as previously arranged. The expediter was called in to take part of the load so the consignee would continue to be supplied without interruption.
That is a case where the new rules worked in an expediter's favor and the customer lost because he or she had to pay for the additional expedite run.
Trucking is a large, complex field. The effects of one-size-fits-all rules changes will cascade through the industry in numerous ways. Because the industry is so complex, tabulating the winners and losers under the new rules will be complex too.
This thread is about the truck parking effects (when it stays on track), but those are just some of the many effects we will see moving forward.
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