Starry eyed wannabe with lots of stupid questions

6 or 7 million a year! Most truck drivers make a lot of money, spend lots of time at home and never get caught in an inspection. LOL Now, My bro is hauling trailers for Horizon and he gets an average of $1.35/mi with a 1 ton. Figure $45K for a PU over 4 years, insurance, fuel at 14 mpg avg loaded and ety, roughly $175,000 running 130,000/year. Going out and buy a 1 ton tomorrow myself.

 

Really? I'm interested! How do I get in?

 

I would think 40k gross is a good number, but what ever you do ... DO not use any money you can't afford to use or any money you have for retirement for this work - that is plain dumb.

 

First always work the gross. If your tax liability is high and you need to produce say a $60k revenue, then part time work or leasure work is out of the question.

Second being realisitic, there is a lot more to this than you think. uShip, like eBay has ruined a lot of what we do by providing a direct access to people who are willing to haul stuff illegally or under market rates. I wish the feds would step in and force them to be brokers because that is what they actually are - brokers.

Third, forget about hazmat, you will need more insurance for that and if you go down that route, you will need the right permits (I think NY and NJ are strict about that).

Not really misguided but occasional $1000 a week and making consistent money are two different things. You have to start with understanding the markets, learning where the freight comes from and how to capture it. Maybe your best bet is forgetting about driving a pickup and trailer and maybe get into expediting with a van or a straight truck. $40k would be possible with the right company and the authority/insurance issue is not hard to deal with at that point.

Nope but I would add that first thing is to know where you are at financially, get a good cpa and lawyer to deal with the planning and ask questions.

 

As long as you don't have the big equipment payments you could make money by not running that hard, providing you are getting good rates. The first thing you need to do is decide what type of freight you want to haul and then spec your equipment accordingly. Insurance is one of the more expensive costs of this business. Rates will vary according to where you live, what you haul, where you go and your driving experience. Without experience, insurance my be a challenge for the first year. If you want to do hazmat, you will need hazmat authority in addition to motor carrier authority and insurance is very expensive when you haul hazmat. There are also additional requirements with hazmat. I would stay away from hazmat starting out. Unless you plan on working pretty hard in the business, I don't think it would be worth it to get the hazmat.

 

I have a few questions:

1) How is working off Uship illegal?

2) Do you have to have cargo insurance?

3) How did you guys get started on Uship? Reason I ask is because I wanted to take a drive to the west coast recently and decided to bid on some items. Out of at least 10 items no shipper took my bid and the competing carriers kept under bidding me. I have zero feedback on there and don't know how to start earning feedback if I can't get a single item to transport.


Any advice would be appreciated.

 

Most UShip loads seem to be pretty cheap. Most of the time when you bid on runs, rates can be rather cheap. No legitimate shipper will allow you to haul their freight without motor carrier authority, liability and cargo insurance. You will be required to have $750,000 auto liability insurance by the feds. Most brokers and shippers require $1 million liability and $100,000 cargo insurance.