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How to find loads as an owner-operator
There are five ways to keep a truck loaded, and they suit different operations. This walks through all of them, including the ones that mean not hiring us.
Owner-operator basicsBy BSG Carriers·Published ·4 min read
There are five ways, and most carriers use two or three
Finding freight is not one problem with one answer. It is five different arrangements, each with a different cost, a different amount of your time, and a different amount of control. Most working owner-operators end up running a combination, and the combination shifts with the market.
What follows is all five, including the ones that do not involve paying anybody. If one of those fits your operation better, use it — a dispatcher who will not tell you that is not worth the percentage.
The five routes
1. Public load boards
A subscription and your own time. Everything is visible to everyone, so rates are competitive in the literal sense. Fine when you are flexible; punishing when you are in a hurry.
2. Broker relationships
You build a list of brokers who know your truck and call you first. Free, slow to build, and the most durable thing you can own.
3. A dispatch service
Someone works the boards and the brokers for you, for a percentage of the linehaul. Buys back your evenings. Costs a share of every load.
4. Direct shippers
Best rates, no middleman, hardest to get. Wants a track record, the right insurance and usually a sales effort you may not have time for.
5. Partner carriers
Running under another carrier’s freight when they are over capacity. Easy to start, and you are last in line when volume tightens.
What each one really costs
A load board subscription is a fixed monthly cost, and the real price is the hours. Searching, calling, waiting on hold and re-checking a lane is a second shift, and it happens at the end of a driving day when you are least sharp. That is the cost people underestimate.
Broker relationships cost nothing but take months. They also concentrate risk — a carrier running three brokers’ freight is fine until one of them changes lanes.
A dispatch service costs a percentage of the linehaul, so it scales with what you earn rather than with what you drive. It only makes sense if the freight it finds, plus the time it gives back, is worth more than the fee. For a carrier who already has strong direct relationships, often it is not.
Direct shippers cost a sales effort and usually some payment-term pain: 30 to 45 days is normal, which is a cash-flow problem a broker with quick-pay does not give you.
The part that matters more than where you find them
Whichever route you use, the same three things decide whether a month works.
- Know your cost per mile. Without it, a rate is just a number that feels high or low. Our calculator does the arithmetic including deadhead, and does not ask for an email.
- Count the empty miles. A rate to a market with no freight out of it is worse than a lower rate to one that reloads the same day.
- Read the rate confirmation before you sign it — detention terms, TONU, lumper responsibility and anything excluded.
- Record arrival and departure times against the appointment. Detention is the most commonly abandoned money in trucking, and it is only claimable if somebody wrote the times down.
- Check the broker pays, and how fast, before you put your truck on their freight.
When a dispatcher is worth it, and when it is not
It tends to be worth it when you are running broker freight, losing evenings to the board, new enough that you do not yet know what a lane should pay, or watching deadhead quietly eat the difference between a good month and a bad one.
It tends not to be worth it when you have two or three direct shippers keeping you loaded, you know your lanes, and you are comfortable negotiating. In that case a dispatcher is a percentage on revenue you were going to earn anyway.
If you are not sure which describes you, say so when you call. We would rather tell you it is not worth it than sign you up for a month and have you leave.
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