Smart Driving
M ost of the time, Paul Rowbury knows where his loads are coming from. The owner-operator hauls potatoes every other Friday from near his Flatonia, Idaho, home to Wal-Mart in Ohio. From there, he takes loads arranged by Roadrunner Transporta-tion Services to Seattle or Portland. But to get back home, he needs to find loads. This year it's been pretty difficult, he says. If I can't find a load, I have to go empty. I don't have much choice. In a rocky economy, freight is harder to find, and rates are down. Oftentimes, you face a choice of tak-ing a low-paying load, waiting for something better or deadheading to a more lucrative location. But hav-ing fewer choices shouldn't prevent you from exercising smart judgment in the search for good loads. At the top of the list of factors is profit. If you have a choice be-tween a haul that pays a lot and one that nets a profit, profit usually wins over revenue, says Gary Ayers, vice president at Arlington Heavy Haul-ing. We like guys who aren't too finicky, he says. Sometimes guys are attracted to a load because of its color or where it's going or how it might look on their trailer, instead of what it pays. The key is to take the load that has the most profit. The most profit may not go with the longest haul. Ayers says the most savvy drivers are the ones who un-derstand their profit margin and re-alize they might make more profit on a 300-mile haul than on a 3,000-mile trip. Those are the guys who are pretty golden because they'll work a regional area and do pretty well at it, he says. Yet Jeff Roach of Brooke Trans-portation Training says long-mileage trips appeal to many carriers because they can concentrate on driving and not worry as much about dispatch-ers, brokers and city traffic. Bryan Jones, president of Get-loaded.com, says choice of long hauls versus short hauls usually in-volves personal preference. You can get more money from a longer haul, but you run the risk of get-ting a lot farther from home, he says. That may work for you. [But] we're seeing an industry trend that people are trying to get away from really long hauls. The best benchmark in determin-ing the best loads is how well you do per mile, says Don Thornton, se-nior vice president of freight busi-ness services for TransCore. Every-thing should be looked at as a per-mile basis, he says. That way the driver can compare their actual costs as they relate to the total mileage on the trip. Roach says you also want to know how many deadhead miles might be necessary for each load you're con-sidering. A high-paying load may turn out to be less attractive if you end up driving many empty miles to get your next load. You should also know the load's weight, Roach adds. Many operators like lighter loads to help improve miles per gallon and wear on their equipment. Other im-portant considerations include ex-pense items such as tolls, fuel costs and fuel taxes that can eat into your bottom line. Your chances of securing a prof-itable load increase when you oper-ate in a market where loads are more plentiful. Some cities and regions have reputations for being deathbeds for operators seeking outbound prof-itable loads. Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner-Opera-tor Independent Drivers Association, says the Northeast and several East Coast markets have seen low pay re-cently. The Northwest used to offer good rates for hauling fruit and other produce, but rates have fallen as the number of trucks has risen, he says. You can help yourself avoid these markets by subscribing to an online load-matching service. For exam-ple, TransCore's DAT 360 service of-fers a Hot States indicator that gives the load-to-truck ratio in different markets. For example, a 4-to-1 ratio tells you freight is plentiful and rates should be higher. Conversely, a ratio of 0.5-to-1 gives a signal that avail-able freight will carry lower rates. The service can tell you what states to avoid and which ones might be Loading Up Distance, pay, location and competition are some of the factors that go into selecting your next load smart driving max Kvidera www.truckloadrate.com: Online subscription service for getting freight rates, load information and diesel prices for lanes you select. www.getloaded.com: Load board www.3sixty.TransCore.com: Load board sources 34 trucKers news DeceMber 2009 Paul Rowbury