Where to find freight loads

Freight brokers help find truck loads for owner operators and fleet owners. The best part is they do most of the legwork for you, including negotiating the rates with shippers.

Brokers make it easier for independent truck drivers looking for quality loads because they usually have a relationship with the shippers.

Using a freight broker is one way to get loads for trucks but it can cost you. Look out for hidden fees associated with this service. Hire a dispatcher directly with industry experience and contacts in tow or contract with a trucking dispatching service to help connect you with brokers and shippers.

In many cases, trucking dispatchers can also provide some administrative services like accounting, billing, and collections. In other cases, trucking dispatchers solve more than how to get loads to truckers by providing the back office services that help to ensure shippers pay invoices on time. Load boards are another method that connects shippers directly to truckers. These boards make it very convenient to find freight loads by having multiple listings to choose from and most of the shipment details are spelled out.

A quick Google search will uncover online load boards with free or paid options to choose from. The best load board for owner operators and trucking fleets of all sizes will offer free trials, have mobile apps so you can search for loads to haul on the go and send you notifications so you never miss a high-paying load. Make sure you receive notifications from the load board for load searches. Adapting a successful strategy for how to get trucking contracts would be a big win.

More frequently, the government is outsourcing its staffing needs, and transportation is no exception. State and local governments have transportation needs as well, and you can bet no matter where in the country you are, there is a government agency nearby.

Being a government contractor requires a few extra steps, including registering to be one. Another approach is to partner with a company already hauling under a government contract. Call your city or state government for more details. Although it takes a little more work at the start, many freight companies find their owner operator trucking contracts through prospecting. Do some research on what shippers are in your area, what they ship and where.

Then you make contact, either by cold calling the person in charge of shipping or knocking on their doors. Introduce yourself. Carriers, learn about why you should partner with BlueGrace. Sign Up. In an effort to increase security for our BlueShip customers, we have updated the login process.

Freight Brokerages. Load Boards This is one of the most common ways brokerages find loads. Download Book It Now Referrals As is the case in almost any business, referrals are the best compliment a broker can get.

Actively Seeking Out New Shippers Freight brokers may seek out new shippers with loads to haul through several different methods, most of which revolve around basic sales or marketing tactics. Cold Calls Ah, the cold call. Get the App Download the most popular and best-rated load board app.

Keep trucking within one ecosystem. Search on the Web Ideal freight search tool for dispatchers and small fleet owners. Find your next load today. Load Board App Enjoy the many unique features of the Truckloads app including: Search , available loads daily Check a broker's credit score Redo your previous searches Stay tuned with push notifcations Watch the demo or visit an app store to learn more about the great features of Truckloads.

Watch demo. This method was developed by new digital freight brokers that started to automate load searching for shippers and truckers. Load matching apps are offered now by most of the larger freight brokers. Freight matching marketplaces and load boards are using the same methods to connect truckers with shippers. Load matching consists of truckers accepting posted loads at the published rate and then moving the load with little to no human interaction.

This removes the hassle of negotiating rates and the back and forth contact of getting set up on a load. If you are interested in tracking the freight market, including contract and spot rates, FreightWaves SONAR offers over , indices, most of which are updated daily.

SONAR freight tender indices are created based on actual electronic load requests from shippers to carriers, meaning you know that the index is measuring an actual load transaction. SONAR offers the fastest freight market data in the world, across all major modes of traffic.

The SONAR platform is the only freight forecasting and analytics platform that offers real-time freight market intelligence driven off actual freight contract tenders. The largest in the business are Convoy, J. Hunt , and Uber Freight. You May Be Interested In:. Tough sledding ahead for bid season November 3, Air Cargo. Trucking Carrier.