Some numbers for new O/O

If it were that cost you could throw your truck away and buy a NICE used truck every year. When your maintenance/repair is that great it is catastrophic not average. Like John Wayne said "Life is harder if you're stupid"... That advice transcends to #### near everything.

 

I guess its like an airplane, if you are clueless how it works or anything about it and just jump in the drivers seat and go, you'll probably crash. .. in this case financially. Goes to show the dumber you are the more you pay, those number are just crazy. Ripping people off on costs seems to be a good business too.

 

In other words, successful owner operators do not base their business plans on what they expect in a good year. Plan for a bad year, and a good year is even better.

 

From my experiences you should always set your stakes high even if it doesn't get that bad. After being in business now I think good success starts with most of your things paid off. Have a safety net for "surprises"...

 

Dont buy a emmisions truck and have a mechanic check out the truck before you buy it if you dont know anything about trucks mecanically and 2 theres tons of good vids on how to inspect a used truck !!! Not to say yiu cant get screwed easy

 

To be fair, by the time you are old enough to drive interstate CDL-A, a large chunk of the current population of pre-emissions vehicles will be gone. The parts will be more expensive. There will likely be more laws restricting them.

At the same time, in 8 or 9 years, the industry will likely have ironed out most of the remaining significant bugs in emissions systems.

 

Completely agree.

I have a friend that wanted to go O/O and started part time with a used truck... 550k miles

Told him when he goes full time it needs to go and replace with new truck and warranty.

So then he went Full time... Thought he'd beat the statistics.... It didn't work out so good.

He complained it was too "Expensive" for new... Etc etc.......Found out that in a year he spent 50K on that heap of uncomfortable , worn out , unreliable truck.

He could've owned TWO new trucks for what he pissssed away in that heap. I tried to warn him!!!

*Because of his "Cheap" non-committal choice, he's now back to collecting a paycheck from a boss ... He went out of business unfortunately.

 

It will be literally several decades before pre emission trucks are rare enough to be impractical. Today you can easily find late 70s and early 80 models for sale at a reasonable price. And parts are still available and cheap for trucks and engines going back to the 60s. Pre emissions is anything with an 02 or older engine, plus all gliders, current and future production. So at least 25 years before the late 90s/ early 2000s models are hard to find and expensive. Even longer before parts availability begins an issue.

As for legislation similar to carb limiting their running area, that isn't a concern. The vast majority of this country is rural. Those folks aren't going to outlaw old diesel engines. It would destroy their economies. Gotta remember carb style emissions don't just effect trucks but farm tractors and construction equipment, even freaking generators and air compressors. We might see carb legislation extend to the high population northeast but three will still be plenty of areas left to run and make money with an old truck.