"Stuff" You Need To Know About Being A HotShot!
02/04/2021 Update: We are hoping that all of the Truckers, HotShots, Owner/Operators, and Fleet Owners can quickly get back to making money and moving goods across state lines uninhibited. To help with the "start up" and get you all rollin' we have teamed up with a few independent freight companies that will be listing all of their loads to ReadyShipUSA's load board... ReadyShipUSA would like to thank all of our truckers out there that have kept us all in toilet paper (lol) throughout this "Covid-19 Madness"!
Interesting Stuff We Thought You'd Like To Know!
Shippers list any item(s) to be shipped on our Load Boards for FREE...NO hidden or extra fees! No credit card required from our Shippers. Do business privately, receive QUOTES and deal only with the Transporter!
Transporters, Carriers, Truckers, HotShots, and Freight Haulers…find your next load and fill your truck while on the road and never run LTL or Dead-Head again. Transporters... pay only a small subscription fee of $49.99/Month…the monthly subscription fee gives you full access to and use of the site...there are never any limits on how many "loads" you accept per month.
With ReadyShipUSA there are NO listing fees, auction fees, bidding fees, broker fees, booking fees, or any other fee!
All “business” is done privately between Transporter and Shipper utilizing Private QUOTES and personal contact information! R
ReadyShipUSA has nothing to do with how you conduct your business.
ReadyShipUSA will never take your hard-earned money. You are in control of your time, your travel, and your compensation!
The Transporter will never have to wait for payment codes or payment processing for completed shipments…all monetary exchanges are between the Shipper and Transporter!
Do I Need a USDOT Number?
What is a USDOT Number?
Companies that operate commercial vehicles transporting passengers or hauling cargo in interstate commerce must be registered with the FMCSA and must have a USDOT Number. Also, commercial intrastate hazardous materials carriers who haul types and quantities requiring a safety permit must register for a USDOT Number.
The USDOT Number serves as a unique identifier when collecting and monitoring a company's safety information acquired during audits, compliance reviews, crash investigations, and inspections. Click the button below to access our interactive tool that will determine if you need a US DOT number:
https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/registration/do-i-need-usdot-number
The Rebirth of the Shipping and Transporting Online Marketplace!
by Tom Benner
August 2019
Back in the dotcom days, more than 15 years ago, numerous startups launched transportation marketplaces in a bid to revolutionize the way shippers and carriers worked together. Virtually all of them failed. These marketplaces (aka “exchanges”) didn’t work for many reasons, but the prime one was that these startups didn’t really understand the transportation market. They assumed that transportation was a commodity, no different than buying paperclips, and so their primary focus was on facilitating reverse auctions, where carriers would bid against each other for shipments to drive down costs for shippers.
But transportation is not a commodity. It is a relationship-based business where trusted relationships matter — because it impacts customer service and satisfaction, and by extension, the shipper’s brand and reputation — which is why the vast majority of freight is moved via contracted carriers, not the spot market.
Today, we’re seeing the rebirth of the transportation marketplace model, especially in the local delivery market. Will history repeat itself or will transportation marketplaces transform the industry as we know it?
It’s too soon to know, but the odds are better this time around for a number of reasons:
1. The value proposition is more balanced for shippers and carriers than the reverse auction model of the dotcom marketplaces, which mostly benefited shippers. The focus of these new marketplaces is on connecting shippers and carriers more quickly and efficiently, giving carriers the opportunity to maximize their productivity and asset utilization, which in the process results in lower costs for shippers. In some ways, you can view these emerging transportation marketplaces as the coming together of the traditional freight brokerage model with e-commerce.
2. GPS-enabled smartphones and mobile apps, which are ubiquitous today but didn’t exist 15 years ago, enable a much greater number of carriers, especially owner-operators, to participate in the marketplace. The technology also expedites the end-to-end process — tendering, dispatch, track and trace, proof of delivery, and payment — by putting more computing power and capabilities in the hands of drivers.
3. Local delivery is hot today, especially same-day delivery, and it will only get hotter in the years ahead. As I’ve said before, companies are starting to leverage delivery as a competitive weapon, as a way to drive top-line growth and gain market share, which will drive demand for new technologies and services focused on local delivery.
The main challenge for any marketplace, including transportation, is getting a critical mass of buyers and sellers. Having too many shippers and not enough carriers, or vice versa, will limit the market’s value proposition to users. Therefore, reaching critical mass as quickly as possible needs to be a top priority for these marketplaces.
But they also can’t ignore the point I raised earlier: relationships matter in transportation.
When it comes to social media, a lot of people focus on the big numbers: Facebook has more than 500 million members, Oprah Winfrey has almost 5.5 million followers on Twitter, and so on. But in practice, social media is not about numbers, it’s about relationships. Facebook is really a federation of thousands of small relationship networks that add up to 500 million people. And although 5.5 million people follow Oprah, she only follows 31 people! She doesn’t have the time or interest to read the status messages of 5,499,969 people; she’s only interested in keeping in touch with the handful of friends, colleagues, and other business professionals that she already knows and trusts.
This is the same philosophy that underpins ReadyShipUSA and differentiates it from public load boards. The main objective is not to connect thousands of shippers, brokers, and carriers together, but to facilitate the matching of available freight with available capacity between known and trusted parties (“freight friends”), a process that for the most part still happens manually today, with shippers and brokers picking up the phone and calling their key carrier contacts.
The other important point these marketplaces can’t afford to ignore is what I consider to be the most critical factor in last-mile delivery: managing the end-customer experience.
The biggest issue and concern, and what differentiates local delivery from other transportation operations, is measuring and controlling quality — that is, the end-customer experience.
The local courier, and especially the driver and other personnel assisting with the delivery, represent your brand to the end customer. If a courier is two hours late making a delivery, or if the driver is wearing a t-shirt with offensive wording on it or drags mud across your recently-cleaned carpet, or if the driver and his helper break or damage something in your house, it’s the brand owner (the retailer or distributor) that the end customer ultimately holds accountable, not the courier.
So, if the buck stops with the retailer or distributor, how do they manage and control local delivery quality and the end-customer experience?
In summary, we are witnessing the rebirth of transportation marketplaces. They are much improved versions of their dotcom predecessors, and various trends and factors are in their favor, including the widespread use of smartphones and mobile apps. Will they succeed? The answer will ultimately depend on three things: building critical mass, remembering that transportation is not a commodity and that relationships matter (and taking this reality into consideration in their operating model), and measuring and controlling the quality of the end-customer delivery experience.
Input from Adrian Gonzalez
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***WARNING: USHIP has huge Broker fees....***
uShip's brokerage fees are huge, and they are hidden. Looking at the bids going down at uShip you might think the drivers are getting paid OK prices, BUT, behind the scenes, the driver is actually paying up to 12.9% of his earnings to uShip.
12.9% (applies to the first $500 of the bid price), 10.9% ($500.01-$1500), 8.9% ($1500.01-$3000), 6.9% ($3000.01-$5000), 4.9% ($5000.01-$7500), 2.9% ($7500.01-$10,500) and 0.9% ($10,500.01 and above). In addition, the minimum match fee for all transactions will remain at $19.99. These changes will not retroactively apply to bids placed before April 1, 2009, regardless of when those bids may match.
Once again, the guys who do all the work, pay ridiculous fees, and the middle-man eats most of the profits.
That site needs to have in bold letters on it's homepage that the driver is has to pay 12.9% of his earnings to uShip just to get a load! This is BS!
Yes, some brokers scam more than that, but legit load-boards are out there that cost much much less.
And that ###### show, Shipping Wars, must be a big commercial for uShip, cause they never even mention a ###### "Matching Fee", which is really just a brokerage fee.
This info, and this message needs to be at the top of the forums list. It needs to get out there before more truckers buy a truck to haul uShip stuff & end up having most of their planned profit-margins blown by deceit. uShip does not make it clear upfront what their fee is, and drivers need to know before it's too late.
Truckers Report
