An Interesting Trucking Company Model

I was listening to a trucking show the other day on my XM radio, called Trucking Business and Beyond hosted by Kevin Rutherford.

He had a caller call in about how he was operating under his own authority, but was dedicated pulling a larger companies trailers doing it.

It appears that some companies are drifting towards this kind of business model, where they have their owner/operators get their own authority so they have to handle all of the FMCSA's rules and regulations on compliance.

Another model is where a trucking company will go and either start or team up with a brokerage firm, then allow their drivers to use that firm to book freight.  It sounds like a great deal, which it is, but there is another possible motive for this.  By going with this model, it allows the company to go to a customer in the following possible scenario.  Before having a brokerage firm, they could only take contracts with X amount of loads per week.  Some customers have a 'surge' or seasonal freight where they might need a large amount of trucks to pull freight for a short amount of time.  By having the brokerage firm, they can inform this customer that they can handle ALL of their freight needs, not just the X amount per week.  By using the firm they can use it to cover the surge with outside trucks if they are needed.

When this model was explained, I realized that the company I currently work for is showing signs of possibly going to this kind of model.  As far as I'm concerned that's a good thing since it could give us more freight lanes to pull from, increasing our load volume and revenue potential.

It should be interesting to see how this will turn out.