I call while on the way to check the amount on my fuel card, it won’t be enough for the gallons I want. I pull in the fuel island there’s a line with one truck ahead of me, I open my laptop turn on the connection card and move money from my savings account to my business account. After fueling I post my truck on “getloaded .com, internettruckstop.com and posteverywhere”. I get a few initial calls, hum, freight must be heavy today.

They try to tell me how many miles are in the load, I’m not buying it So I ask for the zip code pick up and delivery for the loads, run them on my “mapping program” to find the miles, then I put the miles in my own quoting spreadsheet that I built with “Excel”. I ask a few details about the load and give them a price, they all try to bring me down on my price, but I’ve already done my homework, I’ll wait. I run in the Truckstop for a moment and take my “PDA phone”, I get a call or two while I’m in there, I can’t run miles but I got the spreadsheet quoting program on the PDA phone, I ask them for good solid “practical miles” and ask what mapping program their using, I’ve been known to make the quote based on if the miles are realistic once I get a chance to check them; so I shot em my price, they’re still not giving in to my price, that’s ok.
 
Finally I get a call, I give my price and their ready to do it, I tell them I have to have certain things in writing, they agree and we’re off and running. I’ve not worked with this broker before, so I will have to do the paperwork “contract and company info”, I ask can they “email” me, they say no, so I give them my “fax number”, and it comes right to my email, I “print it”, fill it out fast, scan it in, my “document manager” turns it into a “PDF file”, the broker said I could email it back so I shoot it back to him in a jiffy. I call to make sure they got it, and I get the shippers address, plug it in my mapping program. While I wait for the broker to send me a rate confirmation I check my “Motor Carrier map” for the route the mapping program gave me and I call the shipper and get directions. By this time the rate confirmation is in my inbox, I check it carefully and quickly, especially checking the dates, times and weight. I sign it and shoot it over, call them and head out for the load.
 
Don’t think to yourself “that’s it” “that’s all I have to do to earn more? Or you’ll say “it doesn’t work that way for me and I’ve been doing this for twenty five years. Nope, I’ll show you how I really did it later, but what you need to know is that  I never could have made good on what I do to get high earning loads without the right equipment. Now you have a glimpse, hang in there, there’s more.