How to Get Loads for Trucks

Written by the Logity Dispatch team for owner-operators and small fleets deciding where their next load should come from. Every registration duty, insurance figure and broker record rule below was read from the Federal Register’s eCFR service on 14 September 2026, against the title 49 issue dated 9 September 2026. Fuel prices come from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Where a number is a market rate rather than a rule, we say who published it and when, or we leave it out.

What is a truck load?

A truck load is a single shipment moved from one shipper to one consignee under one rate, on one truck. The word covers several very different jobs, and brokers post all of them with the same three letters, so the first thing to get straight is which kind of load your equipment is actually competing for.

Load type	What it means	Typical equipment
Full truckload (FTL)	One shipment fills the trailer, or pays as though it did, and rides direct	53-foot dry van, reefer or flatbed
Partial truckload	Too big for parcel, too small to fill a trailer, still moves direct	Flatbed, straight truck, hot shot
Less-than-truckload (LTL)	Palletized freight shares a trailer and stops at terminals	Class 8 tractor plus a terminal network
Power only	You supply the tractor, the trailer is already loaded and belongs to someone else	Day cab or sleeper, no trailer
Drayage	Container moves between a port or rail ramp and a nearby warehouse	Day cab plus chassis

The distinction matters because it decides which boards, which brokers and which shippers are worth your time. A power-only operator and a reefer operator are not looking at the same market even when they are looking at the same screen. If power only is your lane, the arithmetic differs enough that we broke it out separately in power-only loaded-mile math.

One term to retire early: there is no such thing as a load that is “available to everyone.” Every posting has a carrier profile attached to it in the broker’s system, and that profile decides whether your call gets returned. More on that below.

How do you get loads for a truck?

Four channels, in practice. Most working carriers use two or three of them at once, and the mix shifts as the business ages: boards early, relationships later.

Channel	Who you deal with	What it costs	Best for
Load boards	Anyone posting freight	A monthly subscription	Filling an empty day, learning a new lane
Freight brokers	A licensed intermediary	Their margin, taken out of the line haul	Steady volume without a sales team
Direct shippers	The company that owns the freight	Your own sales and credit risk	Repeat lanes at a better rate
Dispatch service	A dispatcher working for you	A percentage or a flat weekly fee	Operators who would rather drive than negotiate

Load boards

A load board is a subscription marketplace where brokers and shippers post available freight and carriers search it by origin, destination, equipment type and date. It is the fastest way to find a load today and the slowest way to build a business, because every carrier on the board sees the same posting at the same moment and the rate reflects that.

Use boards for what they are good at: covering an empty backhaul, testing whether a lane has any depth before you commit to it, and finding out who the active brokers are in a market you do not know. What they cost you beyond the subscription is laid out in the hidden costs of relying on load boards.

Freight brokers

A freight broker is a licensed intermediary who takes a shipper’s freight, finds a carrier to haul it, and keeps the difference between what the shipper pays and what the carrier is paid. Brokers move a large share of the spot market, and for a one-truck carrier they are usually the single biggest source of work.

The relationship is worth more than any individual load. A broker who has moved ten clean loads with you will call you before they post the eleventh, which means you are quoting against nobody. Getting to that point is mostly administrative: a complete carrier packet, fast paperwork and a phone that gets answered. We list what belongs in the packet, and what to refuse to sign, in broker setup packets.

Direct shipper contracts

Going direct means contracting with the company that owns the freight, with no intermediary between you and the rate. It pays better for the obvious reason, and it is harder for reasons that are less obvious: you carry the credit risk, you wait on their payment terms, and you have to be found before you can be hired.

It also is not always the right answer. There are lanes where a broker earns their margin in volume, coverage and same-day problem solving that a single shipper relationship cannot replace. The conditions under which direct actually wins are set out in going direct, and when it works.

Dispatch services

A dispatch service is a third party that searches, negotiates and books loads on a carrier’s behalf, working for the carrier rather than for the shipper. A dispatcher is not a broker: a broker is licensed and bonded to arrange transportation for shippers, while a dispatcher represents the motor carrier. The line between them is a legal one, not a matter of job title, and we walk it in brokers versus dispatchers.

Pricing comes in two shapes, a percentage of the line haul or a flat weekly fee, and they behave very differently once your revenue moves. The comparison is in percentage versus flat fee. If you are still deciding between all three routes to freight, brokers, load boards and dispatchers sets them side by side.

What do you need before anyone will give you a load?

A broker cannot legally tender freight to a carrier that is not registered and insured, and their software checks before a human does. Three filings decide whether you appear as bookable, and all three are federal.

Requirement	Rule	Form	Figure
USDOT number	49 CFR 390.19T	MCS-150	Before operations, then every 24 months
Operating authority, new applicants	49 CFR 365.106T	MCSA-1 (URS online application)	Filed electronically
Operating authority, existing registrants	49 CFR 365.105T	OP-1 series	Property carrier or broker
Financial responsibility	49 CFR 387.9	Filed by your insurer	$750,000 public liability

Register and get a USDOT number

Under 49 CFR 390.19T, a motor carrier conducting operations in interstate commerce must file a Motor Carrier Identification Report, Form MCS-150. The filing schedule in paragraph (b) sets two deadlines: “(1) Before it begins operations; and (2) Every 24 months,” on a month decided by the last digit of your USDOT number. The biennial half is the one that catches people, because nothing visible happens on the day you miss it and then the number deactivates. That failure mode is described in the lapsed MCS-150 filing.

If you are hauling for other people’s money rather than your own goods, you need operating authority as well as a number. 49 CFR 365.106T defines a new applicant as an entity “who does not at the time of application have an active registration or USDOT, Motor Carrier (MC), Mexico owned or controlled (MX) or Freight Forwarder (FF) number, and who has never had an active registration or USDOT, MC, MX, or FF number.” Such an applicant “must apply for a USDOT number and if applicable, operating authority by electronically filing Form MCSA-1, the URS online application”. Applicants who are not new applicants file the OP-1 series instead, under 49 CFR 365.105T, where Form OP-1 covers a motor property carrier or a broker of general freight or household goods.

Whether to run under your own authority at all is a genuine fork with money on both sides, and we laid the two paths out in own authority versus lease-on.

Get the insurance filed, not just bought

Under 49 CFR 387.7, “no motor carrier shall operate a motor vehicle until the motor carrier has obtained and has in effect the minimum levels of financial responsibility as set forth in § 387.9 of this subpart.” Note the verb: in effect, meaning filed with and accepted by the agency, not merely paid for.

The figure in 49 CFR 387.9 for a for-hire carrier operating in interstate or foreign commerce, in a vehicle with a gross vehicle weight rating of 10,001 pounds or more, carrying nonhazardous property, is $750,000. Hazardous cargo carries higher schedules in the same table. The same section adds a detail worth knowing before you switch insurers: under 387.7(b)(1) coverage “shall remain in effect continuously until terminated,” and “cancellation may be effected by the insurer or the insured motor carrier giving 35 days’ notice in writing to the other,” counted from the date the notice is transmitted. Switch carriers of insurance without overlapping those 35 days and you have a gap. What underwriters look at when they price you is in how an underwriter reads an owner-operator.

Make the profile bookable

Once the filings are live, what a broker sees is a profile, and profiles get scored before they get called. A new MC number with no history is the hardest version of this problem, and it is common enough that we wrote both halves of it: why brokers reject new MC authority and the nine fields brokers actually score. Safety data is part of the same picture, since a broker’s system reads your CSA score the moment your number is entered.

How do you get loads directly from shippers?

Direct freight is won, not searched for. There is no board to open, which is precisely why the rates hold up. The sequence that works looks like this, and it takes months rather than days:

1. Pick a lane, not a map. Choose one corridor you already run and one commodity you already handle well. A shipper hires the carrier who is obviously already there, not the one who is willing to go.
2. Find who actually ships it. Manufacturers, distributors and co-packers in that corridor. Trade association directories, industrial park tenant lists and the loading docks you already back into are all better sources than a purchased lead list.
3. Call the traffic or logistics manager, not the front desk. Ask what lanes give them trouble and what their current carrier does badly. Do not open with a rate.
4. Be ready with the packet before the first call. Authority, certificate of insurance, W-9, references. A shipper who has to chase paperwork will go back to their broker.
5. Start on their worst lane. The one nobody covers reliably is the one they will hand a new carrier, and covering it well is how you get the good one.
6. Price the payment terms, not just the miles. Net 30 from a shipper is a different number from quick pay from a broker, and the difference belongs in your rate.

The risk you take on is credit. A broker pays whether or not the shipper does, and a shipper who does not pay is your problem alone. Check credit before the first load rather than after the invoice ages, and treat the same scepticism as you would apply to a broker you have never worked with.

Direct does not mean permanent. Most carriers who go direct keep two or three broker relationships alive underneath it, because one shipper’s slow quarter should not be your slow quarter. Where the line sits between holding a rate and holding a relationship is covered in rate floor versus broker relationship.

How do brokers get loads, and what do they earn on yours?

Understanding the other side of the phone changes how you negotiate. A broker’s freight comes from shipper contracts and from the spot market, and their business is coverage: they have promised a shipper the load will move, and they are now looking for the truck that makes that promise true at the best margin they can hold. Your leverage is highest when they are late and lowest when they are early.

Two rules govern what they can and must do, and both are useful to a carrier.

The broker’s bond

Under 49 CFR 387.307, “a broker must have a surety bond or trust fund of $75,000 in effect,” and “FMCSA will not register a broker until a surety bond or trust fund for the full limits of liability prescribed herein is in effect.” The instruments are Form BMC-84 for a bond and Form BMC-85 for a trust fund. That $75,000 is the pool every unpaid carrier claims against, which is why a bond alone is not a guarantee of payment and why broker credit still has to be checked.

The broker’s records, and your right to see them

Under 49 CFR 371.3, a broker must keep a record of each transaction that includes, among other items, “the amount of compensation received by the broker for the brokerage service performed and the name of the payer.” Records are kept for three years. And the section says plainly: “Each party to a brokered transaction has the right to review the record of the transaction required to be kept by these rules.”

That is a right, not a tactic to open with. Carriers who invoke it routinely find their call volume drops. It is worth knowing it exists for the load where the numbers do not add up, and worth leaving alone for the ninety-nine where they do.

How do you tell a good load from a busy one?

A load is only worth taking if it clears your own cost per mile with margin left, and that number is yours, not the board’s. Build it from four inputs:

• Fuel. The U.S. Energy Information Administration put the national average on-highway diesel price at $5.967 a gallon for the week of 7 September 2026, up 36.8 cents on the week before and $2.201 higher than a year earlier (EIA Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update). At 6.5 miles per gallon that is roughly 92 cents of diesel in every mile, loaded or empty. Regional spread is wide in that same table: 5.605 on the Lower Atlantic, 5.754 on the Gulf Coast, 6.987 on the West Coast and 7.764 in California.
• Equipment. Truck and trailer payments, tyres, maintenance and the repair you have not had yet, spread across the miles you actually run.
• Insurance and compliance. Premiums, filings, the drug and alcohol programme, the annual inspection.
• Empty miles. The deadhead to the pickup is part of the load whether or not it is part of the rate, and it is the line most often left out.

Run those together before you take a rate rather than after, using your own cost per mile and your own deadhead cost. For context on where the market sits, spot rates for owner-operators covers the published benchmarks.

Two more things belong in the same arithmetic and usually do not make it in. Detention, which is revenue you have already earned and often do not collect (how detention actually gets recovered), and payment terms, because a rate at net 45 is not the same rate as one at net 15.

We do not publish a national average rate per mile on this page, because we could not verify a current one from a primary source on 14 September 2026. When we can, it will be dated and attributed like every other figure here.

How do you keep the truck loaded, week after week?

Finding one load is a search problem. Staying loaded is a scheduling problem, and it is the one that separates carriers who net money from carriers who are merely busy. Four habits do most of the work:

1. Book the next load before you deliver the current one. The truck should know where it is going while it is still being unloaded, not afterwards.
2. Work lanes, not loads. A lane you run weekly costs you less in deadhead, less in negotiation and less in surprise than four unrelated one-way runs at a higher posted rate.
3. Keep a short list of brokers who answer. Five brokers who return your call are worth more than fifty who have your number.
4. Track the paperwork like it is revenue, because it is. A rate confirmation, a clean bill of lading and a same-day invoice are the difference between a thirty-day cycle and a sixty-day one.

This is the part a dispatch service is actually buying back for you: the hours between loads, spent on the phone rather than at the wheel. Whether that trade is worth a percentage of your line haul depends on how many of those hours you have, which is a different question for a single truck than for five. Load boards, dispatch and brokers in 2026 compares the three on exactly that basis.

Frequently asked questions

How do I get loads for my truck?

Four channels carry almost all freight to a small carrier: load boards, freight brokers, direct contracts with shippers, and a dispatch service that works the phone for you. Most new operators start on boards and shift toward repeat lanes, because a repeat lane removes the deadhead.

What do I need before a broker will book me?

An active USDOT number, operating authority if you haul for hire, and proof of insurance on file. Under 49 CFR 387.9 a for-hire carrier moving nonhazardous property in a vehicle rated 10,001 pounds or more carries $750,000 in public liability coverage.

Can I get loads without a broker?

Yes, by contracting directly with shippers, but it is slower to build and it moves the credit risk onto you. Direct lanes usually start with one shipper who already knows your truck, then grow by referral. Most carriers run a mix rather than one or the other.

How much does a broker keep from my load?

The rule does not cap it, but it does make it visible. 49 CFR 371.3 requires a broker to record the compensation received on each transaction and states that each party to a brokered transaction has the right to review that record.

How do I know a load is worth taking?

Compare the rate to your own cost per mile, not to the board average. Fuel alone is most of it: the U.S. Energy Information Administration put on-highway diesel at $5.967 a gallon for the week of 7 September 2026.

A truck earns while it is loaded and loses while it waits. Logity Dispatch runs dispatching for owner-operators and small fleets: we search, negotiate and book, we keep the paperwork moving, and we will tell you when a rate on offer does not cover the miles it takes to run it.

Sources checked on 14 September 2026: 49 CFR 365.105T, 365.106T, 371.3, 387.7, 387.9, 387.307 and 390.19T, read through the eCFR service against the title 49 issue dated 9 September 2026; diesel prices from the U.S. Energy Information Administration Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update for the week of 7 September 2026. National average rate-per-mile benchmarks could not be verified from a primary source on that date and are not quoted above.