That doesn’t fit the economic model generally. Backhauls work when they are along the beaten path that you want to be on without diverging you dramatically off the route you need to be on.
Generally, most manufacturing for the things that we haul is One Direction from the US to Canada, and we’re highly specialized to do what we do. We have discovered that it makes more economic sense for us to run down, empty and come back loaded, unless it’s something that we can carry with the equipment that we have and we don’t have to diverge too far off the beaten path that we follow generally from Northwest Indiana to dealerships across Western Canada.
Working within the hours of service (HOS) rules, and Cabatage rules (no state to state deliveries for Canadians), there’s a finite amount of time behind the wheel before Driver has to stop for a minimum of 36 hours to reset his logbook (or try to run on recap hours, which are a pain in the ass), every load that we pick up in the US has to cross one international border (but not two, to keep Canadians from delivering to Alaska).
An American driver could deliver oranges from Florida to Montreal, and if he has a load from Vancouver to California….he can pick up an “incidental load” in Canada to get him from Montreal to Vancouver. It’s just the way things work.
They are rare when the economy isn’t stagnant, because we are highly specialized for what we actually do. Our equipment isn’t designed for general freight.
Trump is not new, but he is a blatantly extreme example of what you’re trying to describe above.
