I have been in trucking since March, (I tell my students that)... of 1980 and have seen a lot of different ways to look at getting a tractor hauled from point A to point B.
With today's driver shortage, and companies having to deal with electronic logging devices and restructured hours of service compared to when I started, or even as late as 15 years ago. The driver shortage has basically caused the rate of pay for drivers to go up. Most are currently in the $.50 cent a mile range plus benefits. The revised Hours of Service then reduced the amount of miles a driver can run, thereby cutting their salary over the long term. Safety and fuel costs were next to reduce the speed that trucks run and then came along emissions that had to be met, which increased the cost of running the truck (and sent repair bills thru the roof!!). Trucking companies are having to get creative in order to keep the wheels rolling profitably. Teams run a lot more, thereby reducing the cost of having a truck per driver, and the amount of time the truck is sitting while the driver sleeps. Teams also require that a truck be kept running, because having two drivers sitting instead of their wheels rolling means two unhappy drivers. To allow two drivers to take the time needed to pick up a tractor or some implement, which normally takes several hours (most cases in my experience) just usually doesn't compare to backing up to a dock and getting a load, or pick up a pre-loaded trailer. There are a lot of companies running "hot-shot" loads, which basically are loads smaller than a full semi truck load. Large space, lighter weight loads are great for Hot Shot companies (think PVC pipe or maybe a piece of equipment needed at a job site). These types of companies can grab a tractor and haul it for a reasonably lower fee, but if any of you have priced new diesel pickup trucks, you know that they aren't cheap to buy or operate, and wear out way too soon.
I guess my point to all this is, as most of us have realized, if you have the capabilities of hauling a tractor, you can do it a lot cheaper than a guy that does it for a living. One poster mentioned doing it for 1/3 of the cost of what he was quoted, and included the cost of fuel, tolls, and 3 nights motel rooms. However, I didn't notice the cost of vehicle replacement, cost of insurance, cost of a CDL, cost of commercial license plates, cost of weighing the load, the cost to go from where they last unloaded to the point where they started getting paid for hauling your load, the cost of paying the broker who found the load and took a cut off the top before the trucking company ever got it, and the trucking company cost/profit before the poor driver got to haul it.
I have a couple of trailers, (one is a Big Tex that another poster mentioned being a nice trailer) and have been known to go across the country to pick up something that I "wanted or needed". I always look for a load to haul over the empty miles, and typically quote about a dollar a loaded mile to cover the cost of my fuel on the whole trip. If I weren't going after something for myself, a dollar a mile would not have been near enough to cover all my expenses and wages.
If you live in an area where freight is cheap to haul, consider yourself lucky. I live in an area where most truck drivers either go 500 miles empty or haul loads for basically the cost of fuel in order to get to an area where the shipping rates are better so they can make enough money to earn a living. I ride around all day watching empty after empty truck heading north because the loads going north either don't exist or don't pay enough to mess with.
Hope this helps, David from Jax
