LP of 6 years, on 2nd truck. Need Info on how to buy Conestoga trailer.

Hi, My husband & I have been in Flatbed six years now & we finally figured out how to stay steady & good lanes, but we really want a conestoga. We have rented our 48 ft flatbed trailers till now. it costs $300,00 per week for a 2020 with a side kit. What do you think it costs per month for a conestoga, where should we start looking, do they need great credit or will they use your taxes? Do you have any advice on this I am missing? We paid off our first LP truck just as it broke down so its sitting for now, & we owe 20k on this one. Hoping to find a way to get a better truck soon as well. Also wondering how others use the paid off trucks for leverage to buy new equipment. These trucks go down with deff issues all the time. We need to run more & be broke down less. It's been a huge learning experience doing the Independent contractor work & LP. We still feel pretty new at this on the business side as we had not had any such experience in the past. Thanks for any ideas or tips, we just hope to learn & survive better in this industry. WE love the road, & the trucking we just need help with ideas on navigating a good path forward especially on the business side. Thanks so much!!

 

Hi, Thanks for the reply. There are more details than what I put on here, I was trying to give an idea of what we had been doing. No, we have not done great until recently we were always told we needed to give it 5 years to learn the trade & know how to handle it all. So we started out with a training company first year to cover training, then went into an Independent contractor & signed on to an LP contract with a rented trailer. At first for a few years the trailers ran about $150.00 per week, but this year we decided to see if we liked the side kit so we rented a 2020 & yes it is expensive which is why we are looking to see how much we could save on our own soon. We are able to write off rentals & we do not pay for anything that goes wrong with the trailer so there is that. The first truck we paid off after it had broke down but after putting all the work into almost paying it off we were not just going to give it back. lol It really only needs filters now, we have fixed it up well. We didn't want to sell it the first year due to capitol gains tax being so high so we thought we may leverage it to get a trailers or as a trade in. I wanted opinions on that. The 2nd one we are driving only has about 18 grand left to pay at $400.00 per week it's newer & in pretty good shape. We bring home money after all our bills are paid, we did suffer a lot in the beginning due to so many break downs with the first truck but we are doing much better now. I just want to get ideas on how others would proceed from here. We want the Conestoga because of what we haul & multiple stops it would really help out. We have never bought anything like that though so we are just trying to get as much information as possible. Again, Thanks so much for the reply!

 

Hi, Thanks for the reply! Yes, thats sounds right. Our issue is until this past year we had been in survival mode, either making it by ok or breaking down long periods lol no happy middle grounds. We are better now in this 2nd truck, it runs much better. I am basically trying to figure out how to use our paid off truck (we are repairing) to our benefit & the next one we pay off. We would like a better truck eventually but for the immediate we want a Conestoga because it will really help us with what we haul. So I was hoping for ideas. Thanks so much!!

 

Hi, The truck is a 2016 Freightliner with around 590 thousand miles, but it's not using oil & running good so far. We keep up on the 6 month maintenance. Do you have any recommendations on where to get a good Conestoga? Thanks!