I think there is a wide variety of rates used by most people, but here is what we do. We do not charge anything for keeping the bull until the buyer wants it delivered. If possible I try to deliver the bull at no cost to the buyer within 250 miles of here. Your deal is different in that you are delivering the bulls for your uncle, so someone has to pay you for your expenses... either the bull buyer or your uncle. That is something you need to talk to your uncle about. If the bull(s) are going a long ways away I try to make all the trucking arrangements and get a quote on what the cost will be.If it is crazy high I will subsidize the cost. Thinking back over the delivery of many bulls, I can't think of too many bull buyers who did not insist on paying me something for delivering the bull, especially if it is more than a few miles. I never try to make money on delivering to my customers, but again, your deal is totally different as you are really a third party in this. You have to consider your fuel, your time, and the cost of the wear and tear on your truck and trailer, meals etc. It ain't cheap! These are all things many people forget when they are pricing their bulls. It is better to make sure you don't price them too low so that there is no room to cushion many of these costs. In our case, if we have US buyers, we always pay the costs of export testing and health papers. Just in the past few years I have started charging the bull owner the US customs fees which are a complete ripoff. I guess Obama has to make some money wherever he can. These charges are beyond stupid, for example, I delivered 9 females last fall and the broker bill was $1860 and it worked out to be more per head than I charged to drive 3000 miles. I just got the invoice for a heifer I delvered in N Dakota and it was $187 for a heifer calf. I drove over 3000 miles delivering the 9 head I mentioned and I charged $200/ head for delivery. I did not make any money, but it was as close to a vacation as I get and I saw some interesting country.
What gets me about the broker fees is that I fill out all the stupid forms and fax them into the brokerage firm, and I never see them again and have never needed them to export an animal... yet the cattle will be turned back if I have not used a broker.
For our bull sales, we offer to deliver the US purchases to a central midwest location at our cost. We determine where this will be after the sale when we see where the bulls have sold to. The last two years we have delivered the bulls about 1000 miles from here so that the buyers don't have too far to come. It seems to work pretty good and in every case, the buyer could not get the bull that close any cheaper than we do it. You don't make any money trucking your own cattle to your buyers but like any business, customer service is important. I sometimes wonder if some buyers appreciate what you have done for them, but we still do it as if we didn't at least try, it would probably do you more harm than good.
