Is owning your own truck the natural next step?

Use to be worth it. Now you’re just buying yourself a job. Only advantage is time off, I tell them the days or weeks I’m taking for holidays. As little or as much as I wish.
I own my truck and trailers, but lease to a company. The only angle to making money with your own truck, you can control expenses. Especially if you go for a really high fuel efficient truck. Plus you can save money doing as much maintenance and repairs you can stand.

 

I've always been a company driver. I thought being an owner operator, but it's really nothing more than a title these days. It's so expensive to operate a truck that it's a razor thin profit margin. For me to make that move it has to make financial sense. I'm not worried about controlling where I take loads too, or having time off. After crunching numbers, it seems that I would make more as a company driver. Some guys will dispute that, as they've had success. It's not that many that will succeed running a trucking business. One can't look at the owners that have done above average. Look at what the average is, while some may gross 150k or so(example), after all expenses, take home may be in the 50k or 60k range......the same, or in some cases worse than a company driver.

 

Truck ownership is a different ball game than other businesses. That 800 credit score is nice, but lots of capital is better.

 

No it is not the natural Next Step.

The natural next step is finding the best job that you can find with the best benefits and the Best 401k.

The next step is working hard and making money and saving money and learning the business.

Then, when you have hundreds of thousands of dollars and a job that you're making 90 or $100,000 a year with full benefits and great retirement benefits, then you have to decide whether you want to jump off the cliff and fall into the abyss of being an owner operator.

Where you have no benefits and no 401k and no one matching your 401k and self-employment tax and a lot of money for insurance and repairs and you don't even know if you will make money or not. And if the economy really tanks you'll probably wish you had that $90,000 a year job.

And once you get to that point you'd be much better to just buy real estate than take that money and invest it in a truck. There is no comparison.

Every owner operator story is different. Yes I have my own truck and trailer and Authority.

I was in a completely different situation than most people.

If you're thinking it's some kind of progression to more money that's positively the wrong reason and no offense, it shows you don't know that much about the industry.

That is the worst reason of all to ever become an owner operator.

 

I never wanted to own my own truck. Seemed like too much work. I am a yard dog now making more, with OT, then I ever did OTR.

 

Depends on the individual. I cannot imagine ever going back to being somebody's boi.

 

I was company drive, then had my own truck for 10 years, now company driver again. Running your own truck can be good and it can be a disaster. Trucking is hard business to make profit, because the rates change with the economy. When it slow it almost impossible to make profit. When time are good like last 4 years it would be easy money. When I had my truck I seen rate at $0.99 per mile to $2.26 per mile.

Trucking is tricky because look at a Mega trucking company. They do lots of little thing make money. They have their own trucking school. They hire new drivers general pay less per mile. So they can run their truck cheaper then you can because that have a fleet of all new drivers working cheap. They don't buy regular accident insurance. They are so big they are Self Insured. They have 1 million dollars for any accident they are in it could be more today. So they get a big discount in insurance you can't get. Because any accident under $1 million they just write a check.

Their is the lease scam, new drive want have his own truck. The trucking company has Walk Away lease program. You basically make all the truck payments at $1,000 a week. You get a new truck that's fun. At end of lease you get another new truck. The trucking company has basically a paid for truck. They return or sell the truck as a used truck and they might get $30,000 for it. That's just my twist on it. Who knows what they really get when a trucking company returns a lease truck.

When you go for a truck repair and it takes a week or two to get fixed. Your paying for motel when it's your truck plus not making any money. Plus a crazy repair bill on today's new emissions truck. I had a $12,000 emissions repair on my truck. That was after the previous year or two of paying $20,000 in repairs. I had warranty work on the engine all free to me but it took them 2.5 weeks to do the warranty repair. No money coming in but I had to still pay motel and food and truck payment that month. I would not own a truck again.

 

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