So you want to "own " your own company

Redforeman, you may be right about the HOPE scholarship. I may be thinking about a different tax. It has been a long time ago. You are correct about the taxes. You pay them one way or another. The county in which I live has a sales tax of 9 1/4%. It is one of the highest in the nation. Property taxes seem high until I speak to family and friends who live in other areas of the country. We don't have an income tax. You can't get away from taxes. Some states do seem to have lower taxes than other states. Until the taxpayers get behind these politicians and force them to cut the size of government we won't see a true reduction in our taxes. As long as there are those who demand government services we will need taxes to provide them.

 

First off, this thread is simply AMAZING!! There is a huge amount of knowledge poured into the last 160 pages....and yes i read every single post. It took me about 4 days, reading it whenever i had the chance.

Following the theme of this thread, I'm putting the numbers together to not necessarily become an o/o but start a trucking company. I do have quite a few questions but I'll start out slowly .

i've read over and over again, and do agree, that controlling overhead is the primary concern to making any money in this industry. a good portion of the loads i'd be hauling would be in CA. with the laws that CARB has put in place, i'm very limited on time to have "older" trucks be legal over there. the trucks i'm looking at are Pete 386 that would allow me to run until 2023 if i bought 2008 or newer. the down side is that the "buy in" is higher depending on mileage. i can get a high mileage 386 for around $40-ish but i'd be looking at a potential rebuild in short order. if i pony up more dough up front, i can get much lower mileage truck for mid $50's up to $90k+. i believe i could run an '05-'06 truck until 2014 but the prices of those trucks isn't much better than an '08+ truck. any insight here would be GREATLY appreciated! in the next day or so i'll post the numbers i've put together so far and you guys can pick apart what i've got and see if i've missed anything.

The company I work for has it's own authority but has never been interested in dealing with any o/o for fear of losing it's customers to the o/o. there is an SLIM chance i could sign any truck onto thier authority. if the owner was agreeable to that, how would something like that need to be mapped out (fuel, insurance, maintenance, etc etc). that would CERTAINLY be the easiest for me to do, but i'm not convinced the owner of the company will go for it.

thanks in advance for the help!

 

Avoid any truck that meets emissions by a dpf only. Always in the shop, poor mpg, poor performance. If you want to meet emissions get something 2010+ that takes def. They seem to burn very clean and have less problems, also some report the new ones are in the 8 mpg range

 

thanks for the heads up.

i have not stopped into the local dealerships yet to discuss the differences from year to year regarding the emissions equipment. i knew that the newer trucks dumped the dpf system all together and went the def route instead. by going that route, it bumps the purchase price into the $60,000 range. but if that is the better way to go for the truck, it could be money well spent. is it safe to assume that def is readily available at truck stops now? a peterbilt rep was in to our shop a year or so ago and brought a brand spankin' new, fire engine red 386 with him. he said, at that time, they would do a "no maintenance" lease for $2100/month i think was the dollar figure quoted. the only thing we had to do was supply a driver, fuel and insurance. they would handle the rest.....even said they'd come out every other week and wash the truck!!

 

You may want to check on the current CARB restrictions in California. I believe they have postponed implentation a couple of times. You may check on different brands than Paccar in order to keep start up costs down. Paccar trucks tend to be more expensive than some of the other brands. You could start with a different brand and then trade up in a year or two once you get a feel of the business and have more cash that has been generated from your business. In other words, you would be paying for something newer with profits from your business rather than paying money up front to get started.

Before buying ANY truck I would suggest that you have a plan put together as to what you want to do. If you want to lease to your present company or another, I would have that in place before you start writing checks. If you want to run your authority then you may want to get that started before writing any checks. It usually takes 3-6 weeks to get your authority approved. You certainly don't want to go to the expense of buying a truck just to have it sit.

 

G/Man......i printed out some info from CARB last week (and actually called them just to verify what i printed). the lady i spoke with didn't mention anything about any delays....unfortunately! in fact, they way they have their break-down written up i thought i could get away with an '07. when i brought that up, she corrected me stating that not ALL '07 trucks had the "correct" emissions installed so i had to be sure that it had the PM filters already on the truck. otherwise, i'd be required to add them by 2014. i've heard a range of prices for those set-ups that range from $12,000-$18,000. i want no part of adding these flippin' filters to a truck that was never designed to have them. that is a HUGE problem in the making!

one of them biggest reasons i was looking at staying with Peterbilt was because of driver retention. there doesn't seem to be too much price difference between any of the models when i look at the "aero" models from each manufacturer. whether it's a prostar, a century, a volvo or a 386 they all seem pretty close. it does seem to be easier to find low mileage volvos than the others though.

as for spending money, i haven't spent anything yet and don't plan to until i have every question answered that can possibly be answered prior to spending my cash. i hadn't considered using someone else's authority until i was typing out my original post. the company i was looking at putting the truck on with would verify my background info just the same way they would verify any driver i put into my truck. i was trying to do this on the QT without my employer knowing, but that isn't going to happen if i go the route i originally intended.

 

the following is a list of truck requirements for a 3-axle tractor:

18,500 lbs with max fuel capacity
no more than 12 feet - 6 inches tall
max of 240" wheelbase
must be less than 8 years old, be mechanically sound, road worthy and have an appearance that communicates professinalism and safe driving

i would be pulling their trailers......

i've been trying to find a description somewhere of the different weights of the tractors that would fit my application and haven't been very successful yet.

settlements are every 2 weeks,
paid as a percentage (75% goes to truck),
$25/month for blower rental (it's pulling bulk trailers, they own and maintain the blowers, handle the install)
$25/month for qualcomm (they own/maintain this as well, also handle install)

 

I have been running an 09 cascadia and it's been pretty maintenance free. Talking with the other drivers, the dpf systems on all our cascadia's have been running rather trouble free.

I am in the process of buying my own truck and i would HIGHLY recommend buying a truck with a tripac on it.

They don't have the idle time that seems to cause the issues with emissions systems.

 

By tripac do u mean an APU? I've been trying to keep an eye on how many trucks i come across with those as well. Im not that familiar with them since none of our trucks have them, but i do know they can cut down down on idle time. It doesnt really seem to affect resale price much. Dont those things run like $10,000 to have installed?

Thanx for the info.

 

Tripac is thermo king brand apu.

Each hour of idle time is like 50 miles driven.

So pull the ecm report and see what idle time is.


There are some nice century's in oregon for mid 30's and more in kansas city set up for flats for 29k

http://www.truckpaper.com/listingsdetail/detail.aspx?OHID=3651393&

http://www.truckpaper.com/listingsdetail/detail.aspx?OHID=3424475&