Haha thanks. I am in the US.

Freight brokers connect shippers with truckers. The reality is that the logistical details and markets for freight are complex, and most companies are in no danger of being able to employ a competent person to deal with it. Enter the freight broker. Freight brokers need to keep a close eye on the transportation market for whatever goods they specialize in (most specialize pretty narrowly) cold call to find clients who need loads transported, and maintain relationships with truckers who provide a good service at a reasonable price.

Freight brokers make money by charging the customer x, paying the trucker y, and pocketing the difference between the two. A substantial % of the loads on the road are handled by freight brokers.

Successful freight brokers are capable of understanding markets that are usually seasonal, rapidly changing, and very illiquid. They are also good at project management, negotiation, and sales. Negotiation in particular has a MASSIVE impact on a freight brokers paycheck. This is the main reason why I was attracted to it. It checks almost every box for me.

I decided to go back to work because 1) I have nowhere near enough money to make as much investing as I could make doing work that I'm actually suited for (like being a freight broker... I expect I'll do worse than I would have investing my first year, and then be doing the equivalent of 30-70% a year returns afterwards) 2) I'm incredibly bored with grinding investments, I've been doing it for the entire time I've been in college (since BF)

Like most people with less than a vast BR my best asset is myself. The fact that I've managed to make a reasonable living from investing over the last few years just goes to show how much money I could make starting a business or working for someone else. Pouring huge amounts of human capital into a small amount of financial capital to generate acceptable returns is a terrible investment. It's worth noting that getting a job after college was always the plan.

EDIT: I'll definitely still be actively managing my portfolio... I'll just be spending about 5-10% as much time looking for new opportunities. I'll probably limit the scope of what I'll be investing in to companies with certain metrics to make that work. I've kind of drifted away from just picking what I think are the 2-5 best companies on the magic formula screen in recent years... I may very likely go back to that to reduce my workload.

SECOND EDIT: Just to be clear I haven't actually worked a day as a freight broker yet. I've just done a ****-ton of research and spent huge amounts of time trying to figure out what industry I wanted to break into. Freight brokerage seemed like the best possible fit for my skill set after all of that work, so I went out and got hired at a small and rapidly growing brokerage. I wasn't nearly as interested in larger freight brokerages that have hundreds or thousands of brokers because the internal competition has likely stripped clean most of the low hanging fruit sales wise. That low hanging fruit is a big part of any successful salespersons production. The place I'm going to work for has about 20 brokers, and from what I saw of their sales floor they are quite fat and happy. I expect to do pretty well there.

Not really. Tesla is a potentially huge growth prospect if they ever get costs down. If they don't they'll still be a good luxury car brand.

I don't know much about the Tesla dealership situation. How is it different from other car dealerships?

my buddy at work knows a Jeep guy who does fleet sales. He offered me $2k under invoice for a Jeep Cherokee limited that my sister wanted w/ 3 years of oil changes. How good of a deal was that?

That depends on a lot of things actually. If it included rebates/promotions from the manufacturer it was either a 100% standard deal or he was trying to make money off of you... If it was 2000 under invoice-rebates then it was probably a pretty strong deal. I mentioned earlier in the thread how sometimes dealers are incentivized to sell a few cars VERY cheap. This jeep could have been 1) very old and 2) they could have really needed another unit. In situations like these it's not super uncommon for car guys who know they have really good deals to do to pass them out to friends and family.

No, the Cherokee is a new model, so it wouldn't have been very old. My buddy bought a Grand Cherokee for like 90% of MSRP or something, not sure why he anchored to that though. I guess I don't know what incentives were but my sticker was $1k over invoice and then I got the $2k under...

'old' in this context refers to the amount of time the unit has been on the lot. My definition of 'old' is ~200 days. At ~300 days you start to see people do some pretty serious discounts.

Assuming you're talking about pre-rebate price you're getting a very good deal at invoice-2k

Tesla dealerships are not franchised. Franchised dealers are losing their ****, and are lobbying state legislatures for protection in the form of either a) a tesla ban (lol) or b) a law that all new cars must be sold through franchisees.

looks like incentives were 500-1k. is that just a fine deal then?

I am looking to buy a used car. I want to finance it (credits very good) and get best deal possible. I want to put little down as possible and get the lowest interest rate possible. How do I leverage my way into this?

It's fine. It's still 1-1500 under invoice. It's a pretty standard fleet deal tbh. That's not knocking your friend, fleet deals tend to only be available to customers who buy at least several cars per year.

Yeah.. I'm not surprised that dealers are ****ting themselves. Obviously b) won't happen no matter how powerful the dealers associations are at the national level... It's entirely possible that b) does happen in some states though.

Shop multiple lenders before you ever go onto a lot. Arrive at the lot with a loan already done. Then the dealer will have to beat the loan you have to get your business. There's a good chance that whoever you bank with gives you an unbeatable rate.

I would have thought that you should stand your ground. I remember when I offered $5,800 I think for my car when they countered with $6k and they wouldn't accept it then and there but a couple of days later they came a knocking and said they would accept.

I've now been doing B2B negotiations every day for an additional 3 years. If anyone has any questions I think saving this thread from the archives isn't the worst idea.

On a scale from 1-10 how would you rate Trump's negotiating skills

1. From what I've seen he acts like a crazy person to induce the other side to give him their best price. This feels a bit to me like getting chemo as an alternative to shaving your head. Then he routinely tries to renegotiate once the victim has already gotten into bed with him and faces breakup costs. He bragged about this during the campaign, and somehow he didn't get tagged for screwing literally hundreds of vendors . I feel slightly less bad for people who negotiated with a crazy person and then did a deal and got screwed... But it's still pretty awful behavior from Trumps point of view.

Weirdly for me the worst thing about him is that he doesn't pay his vendors. Maybe it's because I'm a vendor and live in terror of something like this. A guy like Trump could turn off my lights pretty easily. Business owners (like me) lend their customers astronomical amounts of money sometimes relative to how much they actually profit. In my case for instance I have a customer right now who if they defaulted would take out 2.5 years of my income. They are large and credit worthy, but that doesn't mean I don't feel for anyone this happens to.

Getting a good one time price (because they are never, ever, ever getting back into business with YOU again) using every ****ty move in the book doesn't make you a good negotiator. It makes you a piece of ****.

Totally get the bolded. Interesting thread. I have two questions. How do you finance accounts receivable? How would you like to finance accounts receivable in the future?

I'm an agent for a freight brokerage and they finance the receivables. I get 60% and they get 40%. Part of that is that I get paid for everything done the previous week every friday. I don't really NEED that, but it is really nice.

I get significantly more than just financing from them. They also cover all software costs, handle all the billing, have a really good reputation/credit and carry the insurance, are good at claims, and handle a significant amount of dreary carrier verification work.

If I went out on my own I would probably just get a revolving line of credit of some kind (looking for lowest cost way to hold cash basically) to cover customer receivables.

I think going out on your own starts to make sense around 25M in total sales. At that point you can justify hiring someone for accounting, someone for carrier services, figuring out all the software, figuring out the finance, and just generally doing the freight brokerages entire job for 40% of the cut. My freight brokerage however has assured me that as my volume increases their cut will decrease. And I gotta be honest- they are really good at what they do. If they are planning to stay competitive on costs I don't see myself leaving.

A huge part of success in life is having the right partners. It took a few tries but I found my first set with my current brokerage. They've also sent me a substantial amount of fresh customer leads (including a good size house account which is incoming) so clearly the regard goes both ways.

When I buy a new car (say MSRP is $20,000) but I negotiate price to $18,000, do I pay the 7% tax on the $20k or the $18k? My sales guy made me pay on the 20k but I am not sure that I believe him. I see differing statements online when I tried to research it.

It should only be on the $18k. There should be a line in your paperwork that shows how much sales tax you paid.

I'm not a good guy to ask about car business stuff anymore. When I last sold cars there was a market segment called the 'camera phone'.

TBH those kinds of one-off negotiations with strangers are pretty basic to me at this point. The best way to go about it is already in this thread, and it's not super hard to execute or anything.

Much more interesting are complex B2B negotiations that have tons of variables.

you pay tax on the purchase price, not the suggested retail price. Would you pay tax on the full price of a $70 shirt that was on a clearance rack for $20?

Depends how good the salesman is I guess.

As posted it's pretty shady actually. Not the worst thing I've ever seen/heard but pretty bad.