Closing up shop, or thinking about it?

Oh man thats exactly what i was thinking ! Definatly need some toys to tinker around with. Id do exactly the same thing. Also have a bunch of old project cars to restore and big ac/heated shop when i get tired of playing in the sandbox. A guy can dream!

 

Times with "easy money" are rare and there really is never a good time to get in or out of this business. Literally thousands of O/O's get in and out of the business every year and it has absolutely no effect on rates. Whenever there is a truck shortage in a particular area, the rates rise a little until word gets out, and then that area will have too many trucks from O/O's, mid-size and mega carriers all scrambling for the good rates. I didn't become an O/O to chase leftovers on the spot market. I saw a need in a particular segment of the industry and created a business model based on that need. It worked very well for me, and my best year was my last one. I got out for health and family commitments, not because I was going broke.

Anybody who takes out loans to buy equipment these days for a one truck/one trailer operation just to work with factoring companies, load boards and brokers will fail in short order regardless of if rates are great or horrible.

 

I made a complete 180. Out here doing pretty darn good considering the industry. However, You can tell things are bad when you see me in eastern NY and Massachusetts.

 

Just had a conversation with a friend of mine
He sold his truck and retired.
Had a ‘20 big bunk and 45 days later went and bought another
Said he was pretty bored at the house and he’s in his 70’s

 

That's not necessarily true......

 

Ill second that, I had a very good friend who was a very successful business man with multiple businesses give me great advice one day. He said he hever uses his own money for anything, he however had enough money in the bank and then alot to cover anything he had borrowed. So in other words, if you had 40-80 grand laying around and wanted to start a trucking business, he would use none of his own money to start it, he would how ever have his own money sitting liquid so if something went wrong he could cover everything. It is the same way I started and it somewhat worked but I threw a snag in there that was completely unplanned, I had 60 in the bank when I started, bought a truck that was 32, financed it at like 5.5% interest. Also had available credit of 40 something available to me on credit cards (this is where I kinda screwed myself) used some of that to bankroll fuel in the beginning (which I shouldn' have). Then when I was ready to pay the fuel on the cards I had a fall and ended up in the hospital for 2 months, and out of work for 9 months trying to get my driving rights back and generally just trying to get my life back, I was able to start driving again. I had some money left but just barely enough to keep paying my bills, and restart the truck. SO now that I have been back for a year, and operating my own authority for about 9 of those months, I am just finally starting to catch up. The kicker in all of this is, I missed all of 2021 when rates were through the roof and on top of that a tow truck smashed up the sleeper on my truck pulling it from my parking spot when I was in the hospital, I finally have a sleeper back on it, but drove it for a whole year as a daycab trying not to go broke and make it work.

The point of all of this is, you don't need to burn through all your available capitol in the beginning you can put some stuff on credit, but you better have enough to cover everything if it all goes tits up, it went tits up for me and I barely made it out, The first thing I did when I got out of the hospital was pay off my truck, I could just sell it afterwards if I couldn't get cleared to drive. I am still working on getting credit cards to zero, but the fuel is off of there, business expenses ate up all my available capitol when I was down, I didn't want to not pay insurance and some other things so I paid for everything when I was down. This business eats money in a hurry when you are not running, now my rule is no days off I try and put in as many full weeks as I can in a row to bankroll some and then take time if I need it to fix the truck and take care of other business things. Its not what I wanted when I bought my own truck, but I am playing the hand I dealt my self by falling in my garage.

 

Yeah maybe one day I will have all that .. For now, the shop is just the dirt in front of my house

 

Having an exit strategy is important. My line in the sand was that I'd never borrow money to keep the truck going. I dipped into the truck fund in a big way last year to build a house and then guess what happened. Lol... But it didn't break me because of my line in the sand from the get go, and for that I'm grateful. I've still got money in the bank, just not enough to fix my truck.

I'm still trucking just like I did in my own truck booking my own freight and making a truck earn some profit that would have otherwise been parked or sold. It's given me reason to pause and look at everything I've done wrong over the years. And there were plenty of missteps and forks in the road that I wish I could do over. Might not have mattered though. Beware of taking money from your truck fund.. Anyway, there's time to take a breather and figure out what to do next.