thetruckingsoftware.com

posted by admin on May 19

As I mentioned before, I was really shocked to find out 75% of people that took the survey did not know what Power Only was. So I am here to shed a little light on exactly what it is and what it entails.

Power Only means that you provide only the power to pull a load. In other words, you provide the tractor the company provides the trailer AND freight. Sounds like a great deal right? No worries with having to buy a trailer, insure it, or make repairs to it. Oh but wait a minute, that also means by pulling a company’s trailer you are strictly to confined to pulling their loads. And most of the time they run a power only driver (or fleet) as if they were a company driver. Ouch. I don’t know if I like the sounds of that!

I can guarantee if you are an owner operator, you will not either! Speaking from the experience of running a small fleet of power only drivers, it is just like being a company driver. The person (at the time I was a broker running power only) works as a dispatcher. You book the loads, you dispatch the loads, you keep track of the drivers, and you hope all goes well. All of the wonderful headaches are included in it to like late loads, bad pickup numbers (there goes the start of the long chain of calls to make!), drivers wanting more miles, and drivers wanting to be home since it IS their truck.

When you run a power only fleet you have to make several decisions. Not just for yourself but also for the safety of the drivers. You get put in ethical situations as well. You have a driver that you know just ran his full 11 hours to deliver to point A and he wants to get to point B he really needs the miles. But you know if you give him another load you are giving it to a fatigued driver, so what do you do? Make the driver happy but know if there is an accident you are partially to blame? Or have the driver get mad at you for having a conscious? Sorry drivers, but I always went with my conscious on this one. I could not see giving a driver more miles and keep him on the road fatigued when I knew I had family and loved ones sharing the same road as that driver.

You are probably wondering how I came to the conclusion of knowing the hours they had right? Well, I am a pretty smooth talker on the phone and I would always ask how the weather was where they started from. By doing this I was able to know exactly how far they had driven and whether or not to give them an extra load or not. I would literally sit there and log the time and throw in a couple of hours for using the bathroom, fueling, etc. I did this to protect the driver and the people around the driver.

Then you have the drivers that are part of a small company that runs their fleet through the power only services  of a bigger company. So you have the driver yelling at you (I want extra money on this load) which you have nothing to do with because you have made the contract with the company to pay them so much per mile (again it works just as an owner operator/lease purchase driver getting so much per mile plus FSC that is agreed upon between the company and the driver/company that signs up to be power only) so you have to tell them to go back to their boss and take up with them. It is a very confusing non-circle at times.

Power Only is a good advantage for those who cannot afford a trailer and do not mind being told where to go (unless you get someone willing to work with you and then you tell them where you will and will not go). There is definitely money that can made being power only, but you really have to have the skill of negotiation in order to get the highest per mile rate and FSC you can out of the company you may sign up with or you will not make any money at all.

I hope that I answered some questions about Power Only and if you have any questions, ask and I will do my best to answer them!