Did you start out in a beater?

The question still applies for company driver or O/O.

 

You gross $1200. Buy a truck and some months you will go in the hole $12,000. That being said, I would never drive for someone else.

 

I am still driving my 1st truck. paid $15,250 cash. drove 10 years without a breakdown, or ever calling for service on the road. got the 10 years & 1.1 mil miles, then had 1 inj go down near the house. 11.1 ser 60 det engine. luck & preventative maint was mine. I would hate to have a truck payment & pay for repairs, but the loss wages due to downtime hurt worse than anything. what worked for me may not work for others.then it's not always what you make , but what you do with what you make. buying spare parts instead of chrome can make a difference. been in my truck going on 16 years. over 1.6 mil miles. if I do get another one, it will be 03 or older, I will likely keep my dependable current one as back up if & when I do.

 

$1200 a week for what seems like an easy job and you want to trade it for a major headache and possibility to make a little more? Seems like a no brainer to me.

He'll have to pay taxes on his 1099 too so the gross matters most.

 

forgot to answer your question... I started out in a beater, still in the beater, may retire in the beater.

 

it sucks thinking about buying a truck you know nothing about. I'd rebuild my truck before I trusted somebody else's because at least you know what your truck has gone through

 

Started out in that yellow K100 in my profile picture for $7500. It had 744,000 original miles on it after 30 years, and it'd never had a DOT inspection because it had always been used to haul race cars. $4000 later, it just barely passed an annual inspection, and just kept falling apart from there. Leaks, ticks, dropped rods, parts out of production, and oh man the smoke it put out once it had burned through its manifold. I couldn't book two consecutive loads because every time I got empty I had to go wrench on something a few hours, and never knew whether or not the parts I'd need were still for sale.

I limped along keeping it running for a year before it blew up. I did better than some O/O's, and had scratched together enough nickels for a down payment on my freightliner, but if I'd known how much better I could do in a newer truck (tripled my gross and brought up my net four fold), I would have financed from day one just to have a decent runner.

 

I started out in a 95 Volvo with a 435 Cummins. I hated that truck. It took lots of teeth pulling to get me to haul anything with that thing. I traded it in on a 99 Pete 379 that was loaded with a 550 cat. That thing was a gold mine. For me, it was fun to drive and I ran over a 1,000 miles a day many of times without feeling like I've done something. I paid more for it but it made me the most money just because I looked forward to driving it

 

It's not how much you make, It's how much you can keep in your pocket.