The Recipe For A Backhaul
A few weeks ago I was at a rally in Northwest Arkansas, seated and enjoying the day and the time I was spending with my wife. Seating was limited and a couple asked to share our table, which was no problem at all. As the conversation ensued, naturally the standard questions of where's home? What do you do?...All came up.
The gentleman that joined us with his wife was a truck driver that had some time off. Naturally when he learned that I worked for TALTOA, the conversation immediately went to the trucking industry. He had specific views on several subjects concerning the transportation industry but the one that amazed me was his thoughts on backhauls. His view, “there is no such thing!”
That amazed me. How could this seemingly intelligent man make such an absurd statement? He really believed that all loads were headhauls. Thus I felt a need to share with you The Recipe For A Backhaul.
When a person that owns a truck or trucks decides that it's time for them to become a trucking company, they do so generally with an account or two already set-up. In other words they have one or two customers that they know they can haul for when they start their business. These first shippers, customers, accounts (whichever you prefer to call them) are normally located in a close proximity to their (the trucking company's) base of operations. Before you send letters, I said first accounts and normally.
The shipments acquired from these accounts, the ones that the trucking company can call customers, are generally known as headhauls. The reason for this is that these are the trucking companies own customers with freight headed out or away from their customers location. Thus headhaul, freight hauled by the trucking company headed away from their own customer.
As a rule and depending on the location of the load, the rates paid by the trucking companies own customer to the trucking company is in the neighborhood of 10 -15% more than what they can get from a freight broker for a backhaul. The reason the rates are lower from a broker than from an actual customer is because the 10 - 15% is the fee the broker charges to provide the trucking company the load.
A backhaul should be a load moved by a truck that returns the truck to the general location of where the truck has accounts and can get the higher rate. There is a difference! A trucking company should have a plan. They should not get their own authority with the idea that they can use brokers until they can find their own accounts. If you have no accounts, don't start a trucking company.
Every day we have trucking companies register to send their people to a FBT Workshop. The reasons are twofold, 1) it serves their best interest to have their people know how to find and set-up customers for headhauls 2) with the accounts they’ll be adding they can obtain their broker authority in order to broker their excess freight to other trucking companies as backhauls generating a new form of revenue.
To learn more about the Freight Broker Training Workshop click the links found on the right.
The gentleman that joined us with his wife was a truck driver that had some time off. Naturally when he learned that I worked for TALTOA, the conversation immediately went to the trucking industry. He had specific views on several subjects concerning the transportation industry but the one that amazed me was his thoughts on backhauls. His view, “there is no such thing!”
That amazed me. How could this seemingly intelligent man make such an absurd statement? He really believed that all loads were headhauls. Thus I felt a need to share with you The Recipe For A Backhaul.
When a person that owns a truck or trucks decides that it's time for them to become a trucking company, they do so generally with an account or two already set-up. In other words they have one or two customers that they know they can haul for when they start their business. These first shippers, customers, accounts (whichever you prefer to call them) are normally located in a close proximity to their (the trucking company's) base of operations. Before you send letters, I said first accounts and normally.
The shipments acquired from these accounts, the ones that the trucking company can call customers, are generally known as headhauls. The reason for this is that these are the trucking companies own customers with freight headed out or away from their customers location. Thus headhaul, freight hauled by the trucking company headed away from their own customer.
As a rule and depending on the location of the load, the rates paid by the trucking companies own customer to the trucking company is in the neighborhood of 10 -15% more than what they can get from a freight broker for a backhaul. The reason the rates are lower from a broker than from an actual customer is because the 10 - 15% is the fee the broker charges to provide the trucking company the load.
A backhaul should be a load moved by a truck that returns the truck to the general location of where the truck has accounts and can get the higher rate. There is a difference! A trucking company should have a plan. They should not get their own authority with the idea that they can use brokers until they can find their own accounts. If you have no accounts, don't start a trucking company.
Every day we have trucking companies register to send their people to a FBT Workshop. The reasons are twofold, 1) it serves their best interest to have their people know how to find and set-up customers for headhauls 2) with the accounts they’ll be adding they can obtain their broker authority in order to broker their excess freight to other trucking companies as backhauls generating a new form of revenue.
To learn more about the Freight Broker Training Workshop click the links found on the right.
posted by TALTOA at 3:27 AM
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