Livestock/Grain Hauling Rates

Their rates are different than ours. More importantly, they are running exempt, so their costs are lower.

 

Really you think exempt hauling makes insurance or tires cheaper than a regular freight hauler? What about fuel & maintenance?
You still have to pay the UCR fees,IFTA, & your Apportioned tag fees.

 

And there employees are exempt from overtime pay, lol.

 

So what do you think we are exempt from exactly?

Yeah I don't need federal authority, but still need apportioned plates, ifta, 2290 all the other stuff anyone else does.

But to answer the question I don't think we get paid enough. I'm speaking for livestock, fat hogs is my only experience. Sure the rate for the loaded miles is great, but unfortunately 87% of the time I got back to point A empty.

 

cost to haul expempt are the same as hauling regulated freight,,

 

I've been spending too much money. I had no idea my costs are supposed to be lower.

 

hopper bottom stuff loaded rates sound great but your empty unpaid half the time. when your loaded your heavy, and you can sit for many hours every day unpaid waiting to get loaded

 

My best hauling grain was $300 to go three miles, so $100/mile per load. The first load took 2 hrs 15 mins, the second took 5 hrs 45 mins because of line ups.
A longer haul: I got $72 per tonne to go about 500 miles times 43 tonnes (94,800 lbs payload) equalled $3,096 per load or about $6.19 per mile, but then I had to come back all the way empty. A set of super-b hopper bottom trailers is worth about $100,000 plus it has 20 tires on it worth around $10,000 that you have to change about every year and a half or so.

 

Hopper sucks right now, but is starting to see an uptick. Harvest has started in various places. Parked the hoppers in January. Livestock has sucked for the past two years. Whey the rates come back to where the are supposed to be we will hook back up and go at it again. We use the dry vans as filler when the market sucks for the hoppers and pots. As far as cost, hoppers and pots cost a more to purchase, have more maintenance involved. Fuel mileage will suck most times, as you are either idling in a line waiting to loaded, or idling at a sale barn waiting to get loaded. Once loaded it is balls to the wall running, this is not a place for freight haulers to come to. You actually have to sweat, get dirty, and get stinky. The freight hauling mentality has started to creep in on this arena, and while we used to get paid round trip money, now they only want to pay one way. This is not like freight hauling where you only have to bounce 50 miles in between loads. Here you may bounce 250 - 500 miles to get your next load. That is why we only run our trucks on this type of equipment when the market will pay the all mile rate, otherwise we park that equipment and run the dry vans. Insurance is less for hopper because the products are worth less, Insurance is more with the bull racks, because the risk are higher. Hope that helps