Grain hopper in midwest

Hi, Anyone know if grain is doing well enough in kansas area to make a living ?
Was thinking of buying a new truck and trailer but not sure if regional can pay for that these days.
Might also consider end dump or pneumatic. Have done all as a company driver here.

 

I get their texts about loads. I used to haul grain but it got so bad when them elogs came into play it was killing business. Was not sure if it would be worth buying a truck and trailer for grain.

 

The elogs caused lots of people problems with grain. Not being able to run to where you need to be because you are stuck to a strict log rule. These small town co ops etc open at 8 and close at 3 -5. Got to be there if you do not want to miss your next load. On paper we just ran till we got it done. Faking them logs so sitting at a closed place did not eat up our time. Leave at night and sit so we would be at front of line instead of eating up 4 or 5 hours waiting to get loaded. then when ready to load just make a new log saying just got there. Elogs stopped that.
Around here we mainly ran grain, fertilizer from port 33 as back haul and hulls or mids to make money. DDG just a waste of time and too much work in a hopper. Also damages hopper from all the beating bumping scraping to get it out. I spent 7 months hauling lots of ddg. Will never do it again in a hopper.
Perhaps a belt trailer is different. Do not know anything about one.

Many places I went had to have a flat or mid roof cuz could not fit inside since old places built in 30,s. My trailer was tall for hauling soy hulls and had to drop bags to get inside some places.
Only got salt once in a while. It went to omaha to packers hide. Not worth it.
When I ran end dumps we had a good salt contract. Company driver. Made good money on road salt.

Trying to decide if I want hotshot, end dump or grain. Any way it goes it is a lot of cash to spend to get going.

 

Did not know you could run off duty 150 miles. Not sure how that works . AG exempt is not something I know about. There was no AG exemption when I did it. Was company driver. This was before elogs came out.
How do you do that and get by the feds in an audit ?

I just read the ag exemption. Still not clear on it. Does this mean any time the load goes less than 150 miles you can deliver off duty ?
Or does it only apply if the load is within 150 miles of your home ?

I had major problems getting ddg out of a hopper. Usually 4 or 5 hours of hard work. Vibrators I had did absolutely nothing. I used to use a long piece of rebar and poke a hole down the middle. Quite dangerous being on top of that stuff poking around. I fell in several times. Was lucky I did not get buried.
I never hauled any feed salt.

 

Cool. Had no idea.