One of the hardest things to get a handle on when learning the expediting business is learning when to stay in an area and wait for a load and when to “turn and burn” i.e. drop the load and leave for another location.  Pick the wrong location and you can wait for days without getting a load and spend a fortune in fuel and food.  Get in a good location and​ you’re rolling and making money in no time.  

You also have to learn that not every load offer is a good offer.  You might get what sounds like a good offer on the surface, but the delivery location is in a horrible place to get your next load.

And then there’s the “even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a while” bit of luck.  That’s what fell into place today. 

Last week was decent but not great for us money-wise.  So when we got a load from Morehead, KY to Covington, GA, we decided to take a chance and head down to Waycross, GA to try to get a load over the weekend.   Now this is always a crap shoot.  We’ve had times where we haven’t even made it to Waycross and we already had a load.  And we’ve had times where we’ve waited for days.

So we waited all weekend and finally got a short load to Jacksonville, FL on Monday.  We’ve learned that Jacksonville isn’t a really good place to get a load so we dropped and came right back to Waycross.  

Tuesday came along and we landed a very unusual double load.  We picked up two small shipments in Savannah, GA and took one to Fort Myers, FL (more on that very strange dropoff in a later post) and the other went all the way down to Miami.  

Now we know from past experience that it’s nearly impossible to get a load out of Miami.  So we were heading out of town this morning back towards Orlando and we’re shocked when we heard an “Ooogah” about ten minutes after we dropped off our load. 

A few back and forth phone calls later and we landed a nearly 1400-mile run to Canton, Michigan near Detroit.  

Sometimes it’s skill and sometimes you just find that acorn.  The Detroit area has always been good for us, so hopefully this could end up being a very good week if we can land another good run before the Easter Holiday.