Creating passive income from trucking?

Is Deregulation to blame for working on such small margins? J.B. Hunt was quoted as saying right after deregulation that they were happy making a penny a Mile on each of their trucks.
So it makes me feel like the mega carriers help drive down rates.

 

Well I guess that is what makes this world interesting and so greatly appreciate that we are all different. But, I would buy the trucks and trailers

 

One of the biggest myths in trucking is the big carriers pull cheap freight and drive down rates.

Most of the big carriers are publicly traded companies so their financials are easily found with a bit of research. They also must declare power units and annual mileage with the fmcsa, again public into that's easy to find. Take that easy to find info and with some basic math you find their average $/mile trucking rate.

 

What did he do wrong that caused him to fail?

 

He bought trucks.

 

Sometimes when it looks like your making money, you actually are not. Multiply by a bunch of trucks and when those trucks need repaired or replaced and the money is not there then it’s bye bye you go.

If your account is just maintaining vs increasing, then your actually losing money. If your account is going down and then your actually losing your ###. It took me a long time to figure that out. It’s because in the NOW you may be ok but all the time that truck is wearing out and needs tires, parts, repairs, and ultimately replaced.

So, that’s why so many guys run on the cheap and keep rates down because they don’t understand their true long term costs and these concepts.

Edit: So simply put: He ran for too cheap.

 

Rental real estate!

Not trucks.

 

Yes, yes, yes.

Take the cash you planned to buy trucks with and use it as down payment on as many rental houses as you can afford.

Set your payments to the bank about 25% less than your income.

Build a $10,000 nest egg to cover expenses for when you lose a tenant or have to replace an air conditioner.

Then, apply the excess 25% to ONE of the home loans, the one with the highest Interest rate, if they are different.

Pay that home off, repeat.

Sure, real estate values go up and down but...

Rent ONLY goes up.

 

He didn't have any trucking experience, relied on incompetent drivers.

 

If he had had experience and decent drivers, do you think he would have been able to expand into a large business? Like 50 or 100 trucks? I'm interested in how many companies are able to make it past 6 trucks given the statistics