Updgraded from non CDL F350 SRW to F550 with apportioned plates insurance dropped $400

Now, this is one I didn't expect. I finally got my F550 insured and tagged. I switched from a non CDL 25,999 rated 2005 F350 that is a single rear-drive. I switched over to a 2007 F550 long frame cab and chassis with apportioned plates good for 40k and my insurance actually dropped $400. No changes to the policy other than going to CDL set up with the heavier duty truck. Still running the same trailer at the moment.

Never in a million years would I have expected my rate to drop..

 

I do mostly cars now whichj is why I needed to go CDL with them. It's nothing like freight, With cars you can haul 2 for .70 mile and make $1.40/ mile you can add a 3rd for another .70 and now you are making $2.10/mile. Add the 4th you are now making $2.80/mile.. The other thing is it lets you broaden you price range a bit with carrying more.

For example, with just the 2 car the minimum I can take a car is .70/mile because I only have 2 cars to make my money with. Granted say I can take a .90 car and then a ,50/mile car but it's much harder to put together a load with fewer cars. Meanwhile, if I carry 3 cars even if I take 3x .50 cars I'm still doing $1.50 mile which is still more than 2x .70/mile.

It's basic math.. cars stack much easier than freight does so when you are doing cars, yes it is worth doing CDL. It's not like freight where you run out of deck room, with a car trailer you have X amount of spots you can fill with a known commodity. It's not a lot of guessing. A Honda civic weighs X amount, Kia soul weighs this much.. ect..ect..

It 100% makes sense to go CDL with cars.. Freight I'm mixed because I used to miss quite a few loads being non cdl..

The biggest thing is you don't want diminishing returns.. like say you take 4 that all go different places you eat up a lot of time dropping them all over whereas it might of been better to take a load of 3 cars all going to the same location but pays a bit less.

But yes CDL is needed to be proficient with cars and keep rolling. CDL with freight is mixed bag. Honestly, I'm not 100% if I'd go CDL if I was just doing freight because you can make that work a lot easier it really just depends where you are running from. I mean I already have a CDL for a few years so wasn't a real reason for me to not go CDL but someone without a CDL could easily stay non CDL with freight. You can do it with cars too but you need the right set up.

 

I'm just giving examples, but I don't see many $1/mile cars out of FL unless it's something odd like a RV, something oversized or something heavy. Yeah if you do short distance you will see them but not very often here in FL.

 

Yeah, it's apportioned plates for 40k combined now. The truck is 17,850 and the trailer I'm likely getting to replace my current one is 21k. So I just went with an even 40k.

 

It turns sharper but due to the long frame, it's a bigger turn radius than my other truck which was a short bed crew cab. I'd suspect if they were both equal length it would turn tighter.

I'm still out on judgment on ride quality. It's much more stable towing but empty for sure it's a bit harsher ride. I still need to get airbags on the rear before I decide on ride quality.

The biggest drawback is fuel MPG is much worse than my other truck, but I do have an injector that's spitting out some codes on the 550 so I think it might be affecting it some.

With that said on my F350 I had 20" wheels with some tall tires on it so it runs at around 1,8k rpm doing 70 mph while towing. The F550 is lower geared and it's running around 2,2k rpm at 70 mph so just that alone will cause it to burn more fuel.

The F350 I was getting very consistently 14 mpg hauling 2 cars. The F550 I'm closer to 11mph right now but again I have a known injector issue that I think might be causing some loss there however I may at some point put some 22.5's semi wheels on the F550 to lower the RPM's at highway speed.

I'll need to investigate a bit on that though to see if the RPM drop will be enough to make it worth doing.

As for that MPG on the F550 I've seen many of the youtube guys claiming they were only getting 9-12mph with their Ram's 5500's and so forth so might just be that's what these trucks get.