Check Call with Joe Antoshak: Breaking down broker pay

On this week’s episode of Check Call, host Mary O’Connell joins Joe Antoshak, director of business intelligence at FreightWaves, to break down the broker compensation survey. 

Key quotes from Antoshak:

“The market was really good for freight brokers last year, so you had more people feeling good about what they were making and feeling good about their career progress. Counter to what we were doing with the driver pay guide, trying to get median data from companies themselves, this is just individual anonymous, for the purpose of the white paper, freight brokers. This isn’t what companies are paying all their brokers. This is just individual brokers and what they’re making for total incentive based compensation.”

“This survey and all the data we collected was collected early February late March. In hindsight, this is when the freight market started changing a bit, certainly before the time the industry widely accepted we were in a recessionary atmosphere. Brokers were riding really high if they weren’t super-tuned to market conditions. I think a lot of them would think this is going to continue or if they thought it wasn’t going to continue, it wouldn’t be in the near term.”

“Despite having the lowest number for base salary and commission rate percentage, entry level workers from that region (East North Central: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin) said they had the highest average total incentive based compensation. That means that these people are brokering a lot more freight than the average broker or the loads are more valuable.”

“We did ask respondents if they receive company equity as part of their compensation. Fewer than 20% said they receive company equity. You have to figure that a lot of the respondents who receive company equity were also the executive suite, not typically floor-level reps.”

Also on the podcast, we talk about declining used truck prices. Auction prices of used trucks are falling almost as quickly as they rose over the last year. That is leaving owner-operators stuck with overpriced equipment they thought they could pay for in a hot spot freight market that is cooling off. The idea was to take advantage of record-high rates and not worry about the equipment price premium. Now owner-operators who overpaid for equipment stand to get burned. Trucking economy data shows rising terminations of owner-operator authorities and a steady and notable decline in spot rates from February through May

Got any pain points or things you wish were better in the supply chain and the world of transportation? Contact O’Connell to be on a future episode of Check Call.

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