OverLoaded

First, my hotel/backup laptop's plug-in gave up the ghost and refused to take ac power, so I spent a couple hours scouring the phone book til I found a guy to fix it and dropped it off. I'm now using HAL, who has his plug siliconed in because he's not far from doing the same damn thing to me.

If I can get the #2 laptop back on monday, I'll drop HAL off to get him fixed next. If the guy doesn't have the plug in stock, I'll have him ship it to my PO Box and try to get HAL to him when I can.

Dammit. Stuff just keeps happening.

Anyway, I continued my obsessive/compulsive loadboard research. I now have three free ones in a separate favorites folder. Found another one for ten bucks a month that appears as good as the others.

The expedited load board isn't special at all with the normal loads they list. Only the urgent/expedited load feature would separate it from the rest of the pack, and my last couple searches of it showed zero results.

The shipper-direct site started by networking commodities, and my current research indicates that the bulk of their van freight might be onions, paper, chemicals, and other raw materials. These loads tend to be heavy, which would cost me fuel, and not to pay as well as car parts, shoes, or other finished products, so I'm leaning away from them as well.

It's beginning to narrow down somewhat. I'll be running more comparisons of the other sites, but at this point am seeing the ten buck/month one as just about as good as the rest.

So far, the site with the fewest redundant listings is www.directfreight.com, but www.123loadboard.com is right behind it. these both have a lot of loads, but directfreight is the boss there.

My further research will have to stress non-redundancy with the three free boards I'll use, for one thing. Then I'll focus on hauls over 1500, and over 750 miles. I kinda think I'll be picking just one paid broker to go with my three free ones.

My plan is to have these in a favorites folder, and, once I know where I'm going and when I'll get there (usually before I even pick up my current load), I'll search them from least to most redundant, and grab the next load days in advance.

I've determined that to get the really good long ones, you need to look seven or more days ahead, and I'll probably start doing that...staying two loads ahead. If they're not drop-and-hooks, I can stay out as long as I want with my company's trailer.

One load which is on every single load board is 42,000 lbs. and goes to Logan, Utah. I salivate over 1500-plus mile runs like that, but it's probably long gone and nobody's bothered to pull it (because it attracts so much attention), or else it pays beans.

Well back to the grindstone okbye