Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/85415
roadside attractions G A UGES Truckers: Freight and rates are better 13% I'm ready to try something else 15% Freight and rates are worse 22% No change from last year 25% Year-end van rates spike Dry van rates jumped a dime from October to November while reefer rates recovered 6 cents during the same peri- od, both due, in part, to seasonal holiday demand. Flatbed rates dropped 1 cent. DRY VAN FLATBED REEFER $2.50 $2.25 $2.00 $1.75 $1.50 $1.25 Nov. 2009 Nov. 2010 Nov. 2011 freight holding More than 60 percent of owner- operators say their businesses are steady, with more than 10 percent saying freight and rates have improved. More freight's available, rates still low 25% Scott and Suzanne Bawcom's Dream Time Transportation is one of five owner-operator businesses competing in the new Shipping Wars reality-TV show, making its A&E debut Jan. 10. Anger management "A good reason to start a business is because you're mad," says Scott Bawcom of his four-year-old hot- shot trucking business, Dream Time Transportation. In 2007, Nashville, Tenn.-based Bawcom bought a 1940s Ford coupe street rod in Dallas. The 700-mile haul to Nashville took weeks. He decided he could do better, and he did. The business that he and his wife run is one of five selected to be featured in the Shipping Wars reality-TV series, premiering Jan. 10. It will have back-to-back episodes at 9 and 9:30 p.m. ET and PT and running every week thereafter. The show fol- lows the A&E network's success with Parking Wars, about Philadelphia towing companies, and Storage Wars, about the storage auction business. Bawcom's business has moved upward of 400 total loads since its launch in early 2008, more than half of them secured via the competitive online bid- ding marketplace uShip.com. "It's a great menu to get a customer base from," he says. All of his regular direct customers he origi- nally met via the site. Dec. 7, 2011 diesel price averages $3.92 Atlanta-Buffalo Chicago-Dallas Dallas-Jacksonville Houston-Mobile Los Angeles-Denver Memphis-Cleveland Philadelphia–Indianapolis St. Louis–Boston Seattle-Phoenix $3.87 $3.84 $3.80 $4.02 $3.87 $3.90 $3.94 $4.03 FUEL SURCHARGE INDEX (www.Fuel- SurchargeIndex. org) prices are col- lected daily from more than 5,500 truck stops and averaged along specific routes. His record should serve him well in the show, where five haulers com- pete to net the highest earnings after expenses by securing freight in the uShip system. – Todd Dills Scott Bawcom's 2011 Ford F450 pulls a Broward trailer that was loaded with three boats, not without a good bit of problem solving involved, of course. He says you'll see plenty of that in the Shipping Wars show. 10 OVERDRIVE JANUARY 2012 Overdriveonline.com poll, 55 respondents Internet Truckstop Courtesy of uShip.com Courtesy of uShip.com