Isn't Regulation A Good Thing?

You don't think millions of truck drivers’ available hours being cut by electric logs has anything to do with rates rising?

By the way, millions of truck drivers did not have their hours cut by ELD's.

First of all, the HOS rules didn't change.

Secondly, there are only 2 million truck drivers or so in the nation, and the only ones who can't run as many miles now as they were before are solo drivers that were turning more than about 3,400 miles per week. Only a very small percentage of drivers were turning those kind of miles on a consistent basis.

Sid, Commercial Carrier Journal, Freightwaves and even OOIDA just to name a few covered the surge last year at great length and each had several articles throughout the year dealing with what things were driving the market, the boost to the economy in the manufacturing sector which was one of the biggest jumps for high dollar freight and the spot market. I'm not sure just where you got your info from but it's just simply,,,,, wrong. If anything, it lowered the rates on some things because as Brett mentioned, paper logs were constantly amended and an owner op or small company could bargain for higher rates before the mandate. They could do so because they could assure certain time frames which in many cases aren't possible with the more level playing field. Feel free to link an article that supports your claim though because I'd honestly love to read it.

I'm an o/o.

Here is an article where the ATA says there's 3.5 million truckers. Not sure what year this was written. What I meant was available drive hours was lost. A lot of it. And because supply and demand that's what mainly drove rates up.

http://www.alltrucking.com/faq/truck-drivers-in-the-usa/

Secondly, listening to " experts," and "industry leaders" is very toxic. At the height of the rates they were saying the high rates were here to stay. You can make tons of money for the foreseeable future..Blah blah blah. Then a downturn came and all I hear is nothing from these experts again. All I see now are people that bought into the talk and now in financial distress.

But available driving hours WEREN'T lost. The HOS rules never changed. So I disagree with you.

Simple fact is, you can't cheat anymore since you must use elogs.

Sid, feel free to go to any of those three that I mentioned, jump into their archives and read where they predicted how the year was going to go and why. These experts you criticize work very hard to make solid projections knowing that owners throughout the industry are constantly looking for any available edge for profit. It's a part of market research and any smart business individual watches trends in their industry so they can chase the money.

Ok. We're all going to have to agree to disagree because I'm not going to argue on the internet. Honestly, I don't really care what raised rates. I didn't buy into the hype. With the extra money I made I paid off my truck and lowered my operating expenses by 50 percent and saved a good chunk.

Ok. We're all going to have to agree to disagree because I'm not going to argue on the internet. Honestly, I don't really care what raised rates. I didn't buy into the hype. With the extra money I made I paid off my truck and lowered my operating expenses by 50 percent and saved a good chunk.

You could have taken advantage of some of the lowest interest rates in history and continued to finance the rig while hanging onto your cash. You lowered your operating expenses but also cut a huge chunk from your cash reserves. The overwhelming majority of businesses that fail in any industry do so because they ran out of funding, not because they paid too much in interest on their loans.

Cash is king. When you're out of cash, you're out of business.

I'm not sure why people obsess so much about being out of debt. Mostly it's people on the lower end of the income scale, ironically, that obsess about getting out of debt. Rich people and big businesses will tell you that borrowing money at good rates is the most powerful engine of economic growth there is.

Personally I finance everything I can. In fact, when I bought my pickup I told them I didn't want to put anything down on it. They said, "Nothing?" I said, "Nope. Not if I can get someone to lend me the money for 2%. There's no way I'm spending my cash if someone is going to loan me their money to use that cheap."

Same with my house. I put down the bare minimum of 5% and got a fixed 30 year at 4.6%. If they're going to give me a gigantic pile of money to use toward a house for a measly few percentage points and I can hang onto almost all of my cash, by God you'd better believe I'll take that deal. Now all I have to do is pay like an extra $100/month on my mortgage and I'll cut 8 years off the length of the mortgage and save $35,000 in the process.

That's how you handle debt the right way. You think of it as a tiny insurance policy you pay in order to hang onto your cash. Running out of cash is always the worst case scenario.

Getting a truck paid off is definitely an awesome thing.

Getting a truck paid off is definitely an awesome thing.

I don't think it is, to be honest. Not when interest rates are at the lowest in history. If you're not going to borrow money at record low rates to shore up your finances and help stabilize or grow your business, then when would you borrow money?

Like I said, look at how the wealthy and the big corporations use debt to fuel their growth and hang onto their cash reserves. They don't pay cash for everything, even though they could.

I'm guessing he was close to having it paid off anyway. If I was close to paying something off, I'd go ahead and get it over with too. A new purchase? Heck no, but we're probably talking about a well used truck anyway.