Unprofitable O/O - Canadian

Your fuel cost is $.70 per mile, that seems pretty high to me. My fuel cost averages around $.50-.52 per mile. Add up all your miles, and that's alot of money!!

 

Your making $1.53 a mile in Canada and wondering why you're going broke? You're paying $1.07 per mile in fuel that week. That's a bit excessive don't you think in a 65 mph governed truck?

 

Even without the "howevers" that's still a money losing proposition. There was a guy on here a few weeks ago arguing that he made great money off his trucks and paying drivers on rates like that I was the crazy one. I don't see it if your fuel cost is half what it is now. You may or may not find much better rates at Landstar. If you do you may or may not come to the realization that independence, with it's higher costs, doesn't always equal out to better profits than leasing on. Sometimes it does but I think most times it doesn't. Too many variables and everyone is different. Good luck whatever choices you make. In your shoes my first one would be fire the drivers, terminate the lease, sell excess trucks then climb in a cab figuring out making the one self operated truck profitable and go from there...

 

Places here for containers only pay the company driver around 24% of what the broker pays you. Why don't you go to a percentage pay?

 

The first problem is you aren't being paid enough. Making 1.53/mile is too little especially for current diesel prices. The second problem I am not sure so you will need to answer a few questions.

When did this start. Was it when you had your surgery. If so then it is the way that your driver either drives or he is selling fuel on you. You are getting around 4.7MPG. You are getting close to the mileage you would expect hauling Super Bs around not a container, especially if you are empty going back. I haul super B cement trailers and average 5.2MPG and that is pulling 140,000 half the time. If you got a respectable 7MPG it would cut your fuel costs by $1500 on the example you gave us for the 6.5 trips.

If this didn't start when you had surgery then you need to look at what equipment you are operating. What is the drivetrain set up. Have you looked to see if you have a turbo leak or something.

The rule of thumb I was always told and what I based my business off of. Fuel and drivers pay should be around 25% of your revenue each. This leaves you with 50% for either finance or replacement costs, maintenance, tires, and the leftover is profit to you.

 

can anyone do math? the owner is paying the drivers .43/mi! i ran his numbers i maybe wrong but the owner is left with $100/wk per truck after paying fuel and the driver unless i'm missing something.

it seams like the owner is paying the drivers way too much.

1) slow the trucks down or figure out a way for the trucks to burn less fuel
2) drop driver pay
3) GET YOU RATES UP! if you cant raise the rates with who you are running for you might wanna start beating on everybodys doors to see who is paying more as quickly as you can!

by all means make start working on these trucks to get their fuel mileage up. check out kevin rutherford site lets truck great advise there on raising the fuel mileage.

 

Well that's nothing to sneeze at. You spend $4,800 on fuel per truck you should be getting a rebate of approx $624 x 26 weeks = $16,224 annually.

 

7.0 miles per Canadian gallon right? If I was returning empty one way, I would expect to get 6.7 US (or 8.0 Canadian) MINIMUM for Toronto - Montreal. That is me driving a 1998 M11 at 62 mph. We have another guy here that drives his 14L 475 ISX at 70 mph and he gets 7.0 CDN on his best day.

Do you mean they all average 5.8 miles per US gallon when you put them together or they EACH average that. I would be calculating each truck individually. I wonder if they aren't all in cahoots together and making it look like they all get the same mileage.

You never said how heavy. What engines? Do they idle at night? What was the mileage for EACH TRUCK last summer?

Do you have another driver you can put in the truck for one trip to measure the fuel mileage? Can you do one trip?

I agree with the other guys that $1.53 avg revenue is pretty darn low but I still want to know where the equivalent of four red 5 gallon fuel cans worth of diesel is going every trip.