Back in Episode 36, you can listen to it by clicking here, we talked about the cost of sitting for a day to wait for a better paying load. If you are like me, I can't remember what I ate yesterday, it might not hurt to go back and listen to that episode again. In this episode we are going to analyze a similar question, but instead of looking at if from the front end of a load, we are going to consider the back end of a load.

Dealing with shippers and receivers is one of the most frustrating things about running a trucking company. As carriers, we are held to their schedule when it comes to pickup and deliver times and those usually are built to benefit their efficiency, not our efficiency. We talk a bit about why shippers and receivers schedule the way they do and how that affects us as carriers.

Receiver's schedules affect our profitability so we have to take into account transit time and sit time with every load we accept. Not all loads are created equally. The wrong load may look good when you look at rate per mile, but it may not be as good as another load with a lower rate per mile when you factor in transit time. It often boils down to how much transit time the shipper and/or receiver has built into the load. Many add some extra time to make sure the carrier arrives on time and that can have bad consequences for trucking companies.

We dive into several of the factors regarding transit time you need to consider when accepting loads.