Ready to jump in, Looking for advise

As far as how long for your authority to go active, if you did it all correctly it'll go active in 2 to 4 weeks. Check your MC number on www.iccasap.com If you see it on there you can get it faxed/emailed to you from them instead of waiting a week or two for the FMCSA to mail it. They'll charge you $17.50 but it beats waiting for that week or two mail time.

 

Armyguy, have you enrolled in a random drug testing program yet? You need to be, you also need to take a pre hire test and wait for the results to come back in to your office before you drive the truck in a commercial capacity. If you fail to wait for the results, the DOT can hit you with a $10,000 fine.

There's plenty of other stuff you'll need to know. Here's another one, and this one sounds stupid but it's also the law. Make up a job application on yourself. When they come to give you your first audit they ask to see it.

If I think of anything else I'll post it here. Just looking out for you.

 

Is your business type Sole Prop or did you go LLC, Inc etc?

 

Really as a sole prop you have the best of all worlds, I was a sole prop till last year, we went S-corp and honestly if we were to do it again I would stay sole prop! Most people think there is a safety factor being LLC or inc but truthfully you can purchase protection insurance for far less cost or the hassle of going inc if that's why you plan on going inc. The BIT being a sole prop was easy, the BIT being inc was a nightmare. Can you believe we even had to have an employment and test drive report for me being a company driver! That's just one of a thousand bs things you wouldn't encounter as a sole prop but there are time and $$$$ costs both initial and recurring that you wouldn't have as a sole prop.
You won't need the job app on yourself as a sole prop. Also I had to get a new CA number, they let me keep my old MC and DOT numbers but that was a painful process. My years built up as a no claims bonus meant nothing as Progressive told us, now your INC you are a brand new company with no experience! We mostly have our own customers and a few brokers that call us for premium loads, we use loadboards and other contacts for return trips, funny thing was one company we had worked with for years told us they couldn't tender loads to us because our MC had just gone active under the company name (which was the same with inc added) and not active for a minimum of 6 months. We were the new kid on the block again!
You need to contact your local Highway Patrol or Texas Dept of Public Safty branch and schedule your BIT / safety audit. They will supply you with a checklist of things to have on hand and what their going to be looking for.
What level of general liability and cargo insurance did you get?

 

Depends on what type of freight your chasing, 100k cargo / 1m general liability will catch most stuff through brokers as their insurance kicks in if yours is not enough. With a hotshot your not going to have expensive heavy equipment either. If you haul high dollar freight directly for shippers you may be asked to provide a higher dollar amount. Your insurance is as good as most big rigs so your all good, you can always add more coverage to any load on a case by case basis.
What kind of F350 have you?

 

Good for you Armyguy! You are doing it the right way. Being in Texas you can get rid of the DPF and pipe right through which will turn that motor into a 600,000 mile motor.
The 6.0 was a good engine, the reason why a lot of them gave head and turbo issues was because of the exhaust treatment system, think of sticking a potato up the exhaust of an older engine. It put drastic pressure on the entire system. I managed to go from the 7.3 to the 6.4 which had tackled the exhaust issues a bit better and I have to say the 6.4 has been good with the exception of the DPF getting blocked up once. It hasn't missed a beat otherwise. We have 6 Fords here and wouldn't even consider anything else as cummins and duramax are now experiencing the problems ford has already worked out. We are excited to order the new 2015 F450 with 19.5 rims once they are available.
If there was any advice I could pass on it would be don't get caught up running your ### off for $1pm, you are in a perfect position to sit back and be selective about the loads you take. It is better to run two days a week for $2000 than run five or six days for $3000. Base your business on cost vs turnover.
Thats pretty much how we did it and have built up a growing higher profile customer base this way.
Don't sell yourself or your service short, on the same token keep your rig and yourself shinning and look for customers in industries who have so much money it's never an issue but you can make their problems disappear when your on speed dial. Be a can do guy but never promise something you only think you can do. I'll post a picture of the type of freight and customers to look for.
Best of luck.