I started in the brokerage training program with 9 other people and a sales manager. After about 9 months only 1 of those people remained. Basically, they brought us in to be account managers making 30% on the margin of each load. The program was probably "revamped" about 5 or times within my time there until they demoted us to a business development coordinator. Which was basically cold calling all day until you found a customer who would allow you to handle their shipments. The commission went from 30% to 5%. You would pass this customer over to a veteran AM (who already had been given a solid book of business to begin with) for them to cover your loads and feed their bank accounts. Problem was that they really didn't care enough to move your 2 loads a week so they didn't. Customers would then hound you about the loads and you would either lose the relationship or be the AM and do it yourself. So your livelihood depends on someone else covering your loads for you but they're not. So if you're "smart" in order to hit your quotas and keep your job you would have to cover your own loads. You also be sat down and told not to cover your own loads even though you were just being "hungry". Once the load was covered you would get you 5% and the AM of your customer would get 30%...even though they did nothing. Not really an ideal sales compensation plan.
Also the phrase "we ship nationwide" is completely false. We struggled to find trucks in other areas of the company all the time. With tight capacity and trying to get your foot in the door with a customer, the margins were razor thin. Making 5% on a $200 is peanuts for the amount of effort.
My advice to anyone joining logistics is do your research on their compensation plan and don't settle for a position where the chips and stacked against in almost every avenue. Find a company that can back their claims of ship nationwide at any capacity.
