2024 Update
- Nicole Rodriguez
- Jan 19, 2024
- 4 min read
It's been a minute since I've posted some Virago Transport LLC related news....
I'll preface that this post is long, brutally honest in our reality and the realities of so many others in this industry.
What have we been up to lately you ask? Well...Definitely struggling to make it in this market, that's what!!!!
We've been changing gears in our operations in an effort to stay afloat and in the game!
You may notice something different about Obsidian..
She's not pulling our step deck behind her these days as we had to make the decision to park the deck for the winter and instead run power only until the rates hopefully improve. This time of the year is already historically slow with open deck. It's been compounded and almost worse due to available freight and the continued over saturation of trucks in the game. And with the rates being what they are, it only makes sense to not put the wear and tear on our deck if brokers refuse to come up to a respectable rate to haul.
After some deep conversations and even deeper review of our company's health and ability to continue to survive in this market, we opted to not give up our authority just yet and toss in the towel.
Daryl spent a couple weeks researching the feasibility of doing power only and we came up with a plan that allows him to keep running in different markets, gives me a bit of a reprieve of living on the load boards and have more time to dedicate to the back office support, reconciling records for the new year, homeschooling and of course, still recovering from having a whole ass human being almost 7 weeks ago lol
So I touched on what power only was several months ago, but essentially it is where we haul
someone else's trailer, in our case we are hauling dryvan. It's usually for a large company...Hence the familiar branding on the side of the trailer, for a set rate, and saves the wear and tear on our own trailer.
Is it the best option out there? No
Is it extremely profitable? Also no.
Is it helping us to keep from going under like so many have been over the last few months?
Yes...Absolutely yes.
So the reality is, as per usual in my honest and non-sugar coated opinion, trucking sucks right now, for a number of reasons.
We are seeing so many fellow drivers and company owners struggle and have to give up all they've worked so incredibly hard for and we are right in the mix of it. Scamming is in full force. Double brokering is at an all time high. And giving up our authority would require us to start all over as a fresh brand new carrier should we start over again. Which means we would lose the ability to haul for the brokers and customers we have established a relationship with because they are all changing their policies on working with "new" carriers due to the concern with scam artists and losing their freight to theft.
Add on having a baby in the middle of a horribly down market, significant increases in the costs of living, and hella expensive overhead, the decision to close up shop was tossed around for several weeks, not going to lie. We have been on the brink of shutting down operations after being off the road dealing with the breakdown and shop time in October, my medical situation with my pregnancy during November/December. It has been a whole thing. We've been surviving off owner contributions and haven't had a real payroll since July. That's the reality of life, and as per usual, I'm not going to hide it, as this is what the cost of keeping America running as a small 1 truck carrier consists of. Maxxed out and missed payments on credit cards and bills, relying on financial help from family to put food on the table and keep the lights and heat on. We have had to swallow our pride and accept charity in order to get through and it's absolutely painful because we are usually the ones that help others out giving a hand up when people have times of need. But this is owner operator life in many households.
Full transparency, my mental health hasn't been the greatest due to a number of reasons, business and personal. Since the delivery of Xae I've been struggling with PTSD related to birth trauma, my physical health hasn't been the greatest since the delivery of Xae, and this has all fallen on Daryl's shoulders in many ways, on top of the company.
It's not all dreary and gloom and doom though, we are finally hopefully seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. Daryl was lucky enough to network with some drivers and learn the ropes on the PO world in a way that is ever so slowly helping us get back on track. We are incredibly blessed with the ability to diversify and bob and weave in this industry, and honestly it's what has saved us.
I am working on my mental health and trying to get back to a good place, healthy again.
So where is Daryl right now? He's stuck in Memphis, TN where there are hundreds of trucks waiting to be unloaded after a major ice storm that shut down the warehouse....The town he's in is pretty much shut down due to icy conditions. Police came out in the middle of the night to tell all the trucks lined up to move out of the way...I assume because a truck pulling a trailer in the area the night previous jackknifed due to the conditions and resulted in the trailer being broken into with tons of theft happening. Total cluster. We are hoping he will be able to be unloaded today, but right now, it's out of our hands lol
So yeah, that's where we are at as of January 1st lol It's been a bumpy and stressful road, and we haven't exited the off ramp from this highway of chaos, but we are slowly creeping along and staying on course. We are still in operation (for the time being) and busting humps to get through this and keep on truckin' until we can't do it anymore!
Thank you to those who have helped us along the last few weeks, for checking on us, for sending groceries, for loving us when all the things have felt like they were falling apart.
Shout out to those sporting our merch and giving us a smile on those dark day! We appreciate and love you. More than you can ever know!
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