Is Hotshot still worth it in 2020?

This is actually the time of year that freight picks up. Next month it should get crazy busy. That’s the way it’s been for decades. These are some of our recent loads.

 

Good Deal keep Rolling

 

I am glad to see that you are busy. However what are the wait times and dead head miles on each load?

 

The way we operate here, not much of either. Typically we’re reloading within the same city/area that we’re unloading in. Most of the time, we have our next load pre booked before we leave a shipper. We work hard to keep our trucks moving and profitable.

 

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I just started hauling cars and it's the same on that front too. Sucks.

 

Knock and it shall be opened.

 

I could post some pictures of my recent loads but I’ve already done my sock laundry.

 

10 years experience is not bad TBH and I'd say it's a bit rough to just up and change careers for most people. I can tell you 1st hand that prior to trucking I did a bunch of web related work back in the early 2000's. I never really learned to code and yes I tried many times, but I just couldn't stay focused on it as my attention drifts and I get bored easily..

Added to this, you do not need to go to school to learn to code, and NEVER just jump head 1st thinking you will "learn to code by going to school". Schools drag out basic #### for years and when you get done you still aren't really hire-able for anything but lacky work.Meaning very low pay entry.

The guys who excel at that stuff just went to school to get the degree, the piece of paper that gets them more money but they were already self teaching them selves long before and even during their schooling. There is seriously an enormous amount of training material out their for learning coding. You do not need to go to school, you simply need to be a self starter.

IMO you need to test the waters yourself 1st to make sure you have the right mentality to learn something like that. Go learn some HTML on some free tutorial sites. HTML is very basic coding that is easy to pick up. If you have no problems with it, start learning CSS (which is kinda part of HTML today) then move on to Javascript & PHP.. In a year's time you could become proficient in all these learning for yourself and much more than if you went to a school.

You can do it in your truck while you are still working, assuming you have to sit while unloading or are OTR and stay in the truck each day. Any way my point is test the waters yourself 1st and see if coding is something you can actually learn. I mean it's simply not for everyone so just jumping into school might be a big failure if you don't know anything (assuming you have no prior experience in it).

As for Hotshot..

You have a lot more experience than I do so far as driving trucks.. I jumped in head 1st with a new authority in Oct of last year and I only had roughly 1.5 years in trucking but I had a lot of experience in shipping/receiving and even set up LTL loads to ship product at one company I worked at. Meaning I had experience on the other side of the dock so not totally a noob..

What I will say, is freight is very rough right now and I'm pretty certain we are headed into recession, all the signs are there and on top of it all we have this dumb ### trade war that has cut freight by at least 20-30% and now the coronavirus will be screwing stuff up..

Yeah people actually need to be paying attention to that, because auto manufacturers are already warning that if it keeps going on like it's going on in China, that they will start running out of inventory. A lot of people think it's being blown out of proportion but it's actually grinding China to a stand still right now and all those auto parts and all those things manufacturers buy will start running out which means less loads.

Anyway back to the freight, it's paying absolutely #### right now.. < edit opps hit reply before I was done../>

Why is it ####? because there are too many trucks vs the quantity of loads. Now with that said, I'm making money, but it's not that great but I will admit part of that is my fault.

I don't have a lot of bills, so I don't run a lot. I tend to go out for a week to a week & a half at a time then come home for 1 or 2 weeks. I can do that because I have very few bills and I'm sort of doing that to ride out winter and wait for the market to hopefully get better in the spring. The other issue is I didn't go buy a new truck, I fixed up a 2005 F350 SRW. I "try" not to push it too much and I don't like taking it too far into the cold regions.. (although I did just get back from a FL to TX, Tx to CO then back to FL trip. (dealt with all that storm last week)

I don't idle my truck all night so if I go into a really cold area I have to get a hotel hence the reason I'm staying out of the winter zone until I upgrade to a better truck set up. What I will say is right now freight is dead. Yea guys are running loads but there is a hell of a lot of 20ft/8klbs loads that the broker is listing for .50/mile. You see brokers trying to offer $1k to run a half trailer load from FL to WA or TX to OR.. ect..ect. meaning even if you put 2 together you'd still be making a $1/mile.. Yes you can find better loads but it's very hard right now and you might spends all day just trying to find a load on the boards. Literally right now the load board is nearly a full time job when you are trying to find a good load that pays well, much less trying to put together partials.

Due to this, I've switched mostly to cars at least for right now. With cars it's a bit easier and quicker to piece together loads to get a decent rate vs what the current market is for freight. Although soon as freight is back I'll 100% go back to freight and just use cars as filler because cars generally pay crappy but they tend to at least be consistent which freight is not right now.

Keep in mind as hotshot you are already limited on freight vs big trucks then you have a slow market and it's limited even more..

Yes you can still make it "worth it" but you have to do it 1 of 2 ways IMO.. If you go all brand new equipment, then you better be willing to run your ### off. Meaning staying on the road extended periods because $1k for the truck, at least $1k for insurance then $500 for load boards and other misc stuff ends up being $2,5k to $3k a month you have to make before you even make a dime and that doesn't include fuel, tires & repairs..

The 2nd way is to just go cheap like I did.. I have a $200/ trailer payment, $1,1k insurance and about $300 in misc.. So about $1,5k each month cost to keep my doors open. Granted that does come with "special costs" like I just spent $800 on 2 tires last trip due to a blow out and I'm always fixing something on the truck.. It's usually little stuff but I did a $900 turbo 2 months ago.. and so on.. so it starts adding up but at least I don't have that $1k payment over my head every month with potential repairs of top of it..

Anyway long rambling short.. Yes if you are willing to do what you need to do it's still worth it, but if you think it will be big easy money like some of the youtube guys claim , it's not gonna be that at least right now unless you are a special unicorn.

I'd personally not run a hotshot truck and work for someone else. Might as well drive a Semi if you do that. The only way I'd do hot shot is via my own authority hence my info is based off that logic.