Calling All Hot Shots

That's pretty consistent with everything I heard when I got started. I do know my Dodge runs like a beast and will do anything I have asked of it, so I'm glad I made that choice early on.

 

I definitely think knocking on doors is the very best way to get customers. You don't have to use a broker (or pay one!) and if you can tough it out for about a month and a half, you don't need a factoring company either.

It sounds like you're in a good area, there must be a lot of industry there to target as a customer base.

Well, the truck is the 5500 as stated before. It's a crew cab, c&c with the long wheel base, and I started out with a 40' flat float gooseneck trailer. (I would have just gone with the regular cab, but a truck dealer up at Tulsa had these on sale cheaper than our local Dodge house, so I jumped on it.)

I recently sold the 40' and downsized to a 20' float. My experience with the trailers was that the 40' was a junk magnet for some reason and the 20' is seen more as a hot shot trailer. I don't have people trying to push of cheap LTL freight on me now like I did with the 40'. I can't explain why, but that's my take on it.

The truck has an 11' bed, and I have two toolboxes mounted underneath. I also had a big aux fuel tank / toolbox combo as the stock tank is 52 gallons and I wanted extra fuel on (I run out here in a lot of desolate areas where fuel stops can be a long way off). I also recently took that off as it sprung a leak and replaced it with a smaller 38 gal tank. It was not just the leak that bothered me, as that is being fixed before I sell it off, but it was eating up too much valuable cargo space on the truck.

That wasn't something I thought about at first, I assumed most of my freight would have to be trailered. As it turns out, I get a lot of truck only work so I definitely needed the truck bed space.

The first pic is the original setup with the 40'


And this is the 20'

 

Yep! I don't mind driving the automatic tranny at all, even though big trucks are a lot more fun. After 1000 miles I'm thinking shifting can get tedious... but dang it, I don't have heated seats! I'm envious.

 

Sorry about the huge pictures in my previous post... I did shrink them down, but they blew back up again when it posted.

And to the sharp eyed guys out there, yes, I was leased at the time but have since split ways with them, so whited out their logo on the rear door. I run my own authority now.

 

From what I can tell G/Man, hot shotting is getting even more prevalent now than it has been in the recent past. I don't know if it's got something to do with oil booms going on, or fuel costs, or a little bit of both. Seems to make sense that there are more than a couple of reasons though as it's not all oil field...