Simple Question, is it worth it?

It is worth it, very worth it, but you hae to approach it in a smart manner.

Don't do a lease purchase and think you are an owner operator. You are simply making payments on a truck and allowing the company that owns it to continue making money with it, rather than trading it in for the actual value it is worth.

No matter how good your credit is, don't buy a new truck and fincance the majority of it. Hard to make a living when you are paying a huge chunk of interest on the primary portion of your business.

If you want to be an Owner Operator, do it the right way. Buy a truck. Don't finance a truck, buy a truck. If you are strapped with financial obligations and cannot afford to save up for a new truck, then don't pursue buying a new truck until you get the other financial obligations taken care of.

Once you can go out and buy a truck, take a portion of your profits each month and set it aside for your next truck purchase a few years down the road. There will come a time where the truck you own will become too much of an expense due to the repairs. The cost of repairs, the downtime not hauling freight, all ads up and at some point, you gotta get rid of it, and buy another one. If you set the money aside, you will have the money to once again pay cash for your next one.

 

Not Voted cause I am not driving nor been an O/O.

But do I think it would be worth it? Yes.

Will it be alot of Work? Yes anything that any good will require you to work at it.


I notice many who commented saying No they would not caiuse of the expenses, what did you think? Fuel just jump into your truck? Would the SHop repair it for nothing? Yes there is expenses, and have to plan for it.


If Fuel was 5.00 per Gallon, if you plan for it you still can make it as a O/O.

1 Main thing nobody mentioned yet. They said you had to be smart with book, and plan, but nobody said this yet, YOU MUST HAVE THE CORRECT ATTITUDE FOR IT!

 

My attitude is,

If the rate isn't right, I'll stay home, wash and grease the truck, fix little things before they come big, catch up on my paperwork, go do a truck inspection or two for some spending money, and generally keep busy.

But if the rate is right, I'm there a half hour early and ready to go.

 

I've done a lot of dirty things in my life but never owned a Freightshaker. Look at the resale value of Petes and Kw's. We used Dallas Pete and they never once complained about warranty. Buy new, write it off over 4 yrs, buy a new one and sell the used one. It will have warranty left unless you run team and will have a higher resale value. Take a vacation while you sell the old one, otherwise you never get a vacation. Write off everything you can, work 18 hr days and take pride in your ride. Study the weather and road conditions and run around snow storms. Most of all deliver ontime or call with a reason. Take a look at who runs the shiny trucks and go there. Get some good experience and I wouldnt run a reefer or a van if you have shoulder trouble, go with long distance dumps. They have rollup tarps. That shiny stuff dows make money, we had customers tell our co. dispatch not to send dirty trucks or company ones into their yard because they had pride. Look at Pride trucking. They haul aircraft engines and they dont have a nasty Freightliner in the whole fleet and its the highest paying lease out there. You have to run team tho.

 

I bought a truck in '85 and failed in 2 months. Finally after a few co jobs I found a co hauling and setting up office furniture. I got paid good by the mile and hourly for setting up the offices. I had 6 paid holidays, 6 personal days, $600 Christmas bonus, worked 5 days, and only gone from home 2 nights. I worked there 4 years and they downsized from 6 trucks to 1. There went my cushy job. I tried a couple co jobs but couldn't stand the training trucks(that won't go the speed limit) qualcom, and only getting home every 2 wks. So I did research for a couple months and decided to make it I had to have a truck payment less than $1200. It worked, I'm now shopping for my 3rd truck after I sell my pete(ad in classified on this forum). I can now afford a pmt of $1350. I am leased to a co out of TN and get home an average of 5 days(3 going east 5 going west, more if the load east load doesn't go by the house). When I get to the yard I usually have a choice of 3-5 loads, I pick 1 then they ask me when I want my appointment. Always drop and hook(the advantage of a dry van) at the yard and 80% in CA, so I don't waste time loading and unloading.
Do your research, fuel prices shouldn't be a problem, the higher fuel prices the more money I make. My co figures fuel surcharges at 6 mpg w/ a 1.25 a gal base. My truck averages 6.3 mpg, it gets over 7 if I drive slow but I run the speed limit. Tires are about .02 a mile.
If it wasn't for the tax advantages I wouldn't have my new shop and all the tools in it or my hobby-(copy and paste it wouldn't let me link).
67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/showthread.php?t=188362
Any questions while doing your research just ask.

 

Sweet project you got there.

Sounds like you also got your rig leased to a pretty good company, and you run your business responsibly, both of which are very important points.

It is easy for someone with a year OTR experience to get a truck these days, but unfortunatly, it may too easy. There is much thought and planning that goes with owning your own truck, and far too often, people get into something they were not prepared to handle. (Especially those that dive off into huge truck payments, or insane lease purchases)

 

In my research I learned early no lease purchase or big payment

 

I didn't vote, I've never been an owner op, but I did spend some time as a dispatcher for lease purchase and owner ops for a major OTR company (to remain nameless, but not any of the companies listed on the bad companies with ripoffreport.com listed here). It's a personal choice, I worked with drivers with 20 years of experience and their own rigs and I worked with drivers just getting into a lease purchase program for the first time. Here's what I saw to be successful and to assure failure. I learned more about trucking in that 6 months than I did in five years.

Know the industry. If you know the industry you know the rates, which helps you make educated decisions. For instance, Chicago is a headhaul area. Loads pay well and you should never take a cheap load out of Chicago. Florida is a backhaul area. The loads will be cheap out of here, don't turn down loads expecting 1.50 plus fuel (dry van).

Average your pay over multiple loads.

Get your own dispatcher or don't stop changing until you get one you trust and who works with AND for you, not vice versa, if you work with a company.

Be on time, and if you can't, make sure the customer knows!

Be prepared to work. However you choose to obtain your truck, you won't make the payments sitting at home. Either way the truck payment needs to be made to keep the truck, and that doesn't happen sitting in a shop or at home.

Prepare for bad times. Many companies offer voluntary escrow accounts. The company I worked for, if the o/o or l/p wanted to, could set any per mile amount to go into this account. It is all your money and all the driver needed to do was ask for it to be transferred to his card. If you are on your own set it up with a bank. If you put so many cents per mile into that account you will have a nice 'safety net'. I had a true owner op with 18 years in, he had it nailed. He had his own account and when his engine blew he paid straight up for a rebuilt engine and was able to spend two weeks hounding the shop to make sure it went well. I had another l/p that was broke down for 6 days. He had six months experience and spent all of his profits on gambling. On the 7th day he walked away to work at some fast food joint, because he didn't plan for a bad week. BAD WEEKS WILL HAPPEN, but so will good.

Never EVER do forced dispatch as an owner op. I'm not sure if there are even companies that do this, but if you see one, RUN. You don't care about miles as an o/o, you care about rates.

Take pride in your truck. Brokers/companies, etc will give an ontime, clean truck a good load before a truck that is always late and looks like crap. As either L/P or O/O you either have or are working towards making that truck yours. The truck is a reflection of you, not the company that may be stingy with truck washes.

Get to know a few brokers well. I had brokers calling me because they wanted such and such truck on their load and no one else. Trust me, that o/o had it made.

Keep track of everything! You should never need to ask anyone how much money a load pays... two weeks after it is delivered. See the suggestion on being prepared. This works on the other side of the coin as well. How can you make good decisions on which load to take if you have no idea what it costs to operate your truck, feed yourself, etc. Once you have your cost per mile average your loads out over a week. Was your per mile revenue above your per mile cost? Yes? Then you paid for your truck, fed yourself, and the rest is for you to do what you need. No? You need to do something and do it now. Change the loads you are taking, where you are going, your company, your dispatcher, etc. Don't expect anyone to change it for you, because that will not happen.

Finally, which has been stated, have the right attitude. At some point in time you are going to sit and wait for a load, it's life. You are going to breakdown. This is not 'the world has it out for me', it's just the way it goes. Do what you can to establish good relationships, a good reputation, a good shop to do PM's, and a good plan. You will stop having fun when you begin to become a slave to your truck instead of enjoying the open road.

Good luck!

 

This is an excellent point. If you can't save any money, you are either working too cheap, have some bad personal habits, or else you are just in a bad situation beyond your control (such as the sickness of a loved one). No matter which one of the above applies. It just is not a good idea to try to become an O/O until you overcome whatever problem you might be having.

Once you become an O/O you have got to save money. Don't look at those first big paychecks and get stars in your eyes. Forget about that new car, bike, big screen TV or whatever. The first thing you have to do is put a nice healthy roll in the bank for the bad times. And the bad times will come sooner or later. Trucks break, sooner or later something is going to need repair and you have to be prepared.

How much is enough?????

Think you are going down the road and you hear RAP...RAP...RAP and BANG and the truck shuts off. You open your hood and there is oil everywhere and a connecting rod hanging out the big hole in the side of your engine block.

What this is going to cost is going to be a different number depending on a lot of things. What kind of engine it is, Your level of mechanical skill, and where it happens.

Now you need to have enough in the bank to pay for that in cash and all your living expenses while it's down, and enough to handle some other kind of lesser problem, like time to renew your registration, or a blown tire or whatever.

Then add $5,000 to that number.

Total it all up and that is how much you have to put away before you can start spending any money on things you want instead of things you need.