So you want to "own " your own company

No, I would never chase "big money" projects unless I had the equipment already. But I get calls and emails weekly from some contracts I made when I was up in Minot, ND this last year. For some reason I my email found its way onto a hiring list and get weekly emails of people needing trucks. In October it was daily then went to weekly and then stopped in December. Last message was he was going back to TX to work for in house recruiter because Haliburton was reducing by 20% number of trucks in most sectors.

I am working on doing pipe for Haliburton from TX to ND. That contact says they are not reducing just not hiring.

Other is just conversations with small businesses that work this.

As others have said, I think the money is still in support business.

 

BigBadBill - Thanks for the information! We are from northern Minnesota so the cold and snow does not bother us. A friend of mine is out in Williston right now work on the drilling rig. We have talked several times and he says that they are a little slower right now due to the cold weather but have plans to run hard all summer again.

 

Countryboy, if you want to go up there as a company driver the pay is great! I have a friend that lives up there and pulls a tanker for a company out of MO. He works nights, 60 hours a week, $24 an hour at night and like 21 for days, and every other weekend is a 3 day weekend. He has awesome company benefits to. I would look into being a company guy up there. The company he works for is still expanding and he was told that if he does not make 70K his first year he is doing something wrong.

 

If you're planning on putting a used truck in the oil fields, understand that the equipment will be broken and abused as an inherent cost of operation in that kind of environment. If you don't have experience with repair shops, get the lube out... not for the truck, either. They feed on newbie owners like sharks during lunch time at sea-world.

 

Bigbadbill- just wondering how you managed to come to owning a business with 6 trucks..do you have team drivers/ are some of them o/o do you drive one yourself are you a one man showhen it comes to finding loads/paperwork..just curious, my goal is to own five trucks and have a small company..how did you start out

 

I own one truck and drive it. The rest are O/O's leased to me.

And we are 5 now with number 6 coming on in a few weeks.

I started as a one man show. Booking loads, invoicing, collections, sex god - I did it all.

Now I have my wife running an office and a full-time dispatcher. We are looking to hire another person to work with dispatch/sales as we just had our brokers authority go active.

It would be a special situation where I would own a truck. I'm not looking to grow that way.

Keys are finding people you can work with, hiring the right drivers first (a lot of growing pains and you need drivers that understand that) and selling. I am starting to see a snowball effect of work I did last summer.

Oh, and we are 5, #6 had some personal issues and missed last weeks orientation. Should be on in next couple of weeks.

 

Are YOU leased out to a company with your own authority & drivers leased onto you? Who's orientation is it? What is the snowball effect you are beginning to see again?
Ps: Sex god- always good. =p

 

No, it's my own company/authority. The drivers are leased to me.

As part of being in compliance we have to make sure that every driver understands our policies and are compliant with all regulations. This includes having to do a "check ride" to make sure they can drive.

So our orientation is just like any company. Difference is our drivers stay in a bed-and-breakfast, in on Saturday and ready to roll Monday and we go have a good time at a nice restaurant on Saturday night.

The snowball I am talking about is in the past week contact that I have made over the past year have been calling. We just signed a contract that is giving us better paying direct seasonal freight, some dedicated lanes and an account (if it works as planned) will give us the ability to 10+ trucks by May. All this from work done over the past 8-months that just happened in the past 7-10 days.

 

Nice to hear your doing well; hopefully one day ill get there; saving as much as I can now while running coast to coast. Do you use spreadsheet like many others to calculate expenses or do you use a program to organize everything

 

Milskired - Thanks for the info!