Want to purchase a truck

Well I'm sure everyone here Would like to be helpful to you but with that being said what your suggesting is a very difficult thing. This business has something like a 95% failure rate and much of that is people that have a lot of experience.

And just to give you an idea of the cost involved, it might cost a single person usually $100,000 or $150,000 to go into this business if they drive themselves. Now that's for one truck and trailer.

For you to have trucks and have drivers in them and make the amount that you would make running one truck yourself, you would have to have like three or four trucks. That shows you that the profit margins are very slim if you have a driver, not to mention all the problems the driver can cause especially if you're not familiar with this business and you don't know what to look for or what actually they need to be doing.

Whatever you do just remember this is a very tough Capital intensive government-regulated business with an extremely high failure rate.

I applaud you for wanting to get ahead, but I don't know that this is the way. At the very least you should go somewhere and drive for maybe 2 or 3 years.

And by the way, having your own truck is not the path to riches. There are plenty of people that have a really good job that make more than owner-operators. And there are plenty of people that invested their life savings and have gone broke in this business.

Good luck.

 

Oh boy i could walk you thru it. But it would take a week. Before i wven started i have to ask why trucking? What state do you live in?
If i was in your shoes, i would go to OOiDA dot com. Ask questions there, (might have to spend the $45 for membership)
Remember 90% of people are gonna try to talk you put of it.
5% of people are gonna try to be your partner or employess without investing anything.
3% are gonna tell you I dont no.
Its the other 2% that your looking for.

 

Can someone even come up with a business plan for a mom with 3 kids with little or no trucking experience?
The idea must seem simple to a lot of people. Buy a few trucks, hire drivers, haul freight for a profit. It is not like starting a landscaping business or a becoming a builder where know how is a must, right?

Assuming you have enough starting capital to invest, you have two options.
1. In theory and ideally, you could lease the trucks on to a carrier and remain hopeful that it will be a profitable solution with the minimum of your personal involvement. But I am not too sure how often this theory met the reality.

2. Build/acquire a fleet.

A fleet of 10+ trucks or can make a non driving (no CDL) person to be a stationary boss, managing from office. However, it is something that can be hardly done with 3 kids to keep an eye on. You need to be a boss to answer phone 24/7 and make decisions. Even with that, this is the full time job, that often needs
-extra clerical help for payroll, accounting, safety management.
- dispatcher/capacity salesman who knows the intricacies of the freight market and how to find customers...that person wants 75k + salary. It translates into additional 2-3 trucks to offset the cost.
- Fleet maintenance and equipment acquisition.
Do you know about break downs and diagnostics? It is important to
- find a local, reliable, friendly and trustworthy shop for regular visits and repairs.
- hire another knowledgeable person to oversee these things - addition cost of 60- 75k salary - additional 2- 3 trucks to pay for that guy.

People I know who built fleets of 20+ trucks successfully, were dedicated and very involved in all aspects, including warehouse work, maintenance/repair work, dispatching work. They even drove trucks for local pickups and deliveries, if needed. But all if them had one thing in common. They all evolved for at least 5-10 years. None of them bought a fleet of 20-40 trucks and became a boss in one day.

 

As already mentioned .
This is a really bad idea.

getting into any business that you have absolute zero knowledge of is a bad idea.

especially if you have to borrow Money to get started ,
And if you have $100k in cash,
I can suggest several less risky businesses to invest in than a truck .

would you start a hair salon?
A pizza restaurant?

would you buy a building and start a tire store ? To compete with Goodyear and Firestone and NTB and Tirerack ?

would you start an internet auction site to compete with eBay ?

Would you buy a house and rent it ?



no ?
Why not ?
You could drop $100k starting a new hair salon and hire some people who have graduated from a hair cutting school and you will have about the same odds of success as getting into trucking.
In fact I’d say starting a hair salon or pizza place would have a better chance of success , since your entire business revenue wouldn’t be dependent on ONE person, (the truck driver ) and dependent on ONE machine (the truck )

at least with a pizza place you have more than one oven and more than one waitress and more than one customer per day.

you can make good money trucking if you know what you’re doing and you’re the driver. and if you’re truck doesnt break down.

But if you’re thinking you can buy a truck and hire a driver and watch the profit roll in, that just ain’t gonna happen.

I’ve been there , done that, got the bank statements to prove it .

Dropping the $100k on a rental house would have a much better chance of succeeding , if you follow the usual rules and can find a house that the rent is at least $400 a month more than the payment insurance taxes maintenance and repairs.

And houses go up in value ,
Not down,


Best way in your situation to make more additional income is to take in one or two more children to care for during the day.

I guarantee that would make more
Money than buying a truck. With our shelling out thousands for a down payment and insurance and truck payment and the constant repairs .

Trust me ,
I made a good living owning and driving my truck , made so much that I foolishly thought buying more trucks and hiring drivers would equal more profit.

it all looked good on paper .
My wife is an accountant and did the math.
I assumed the hired drivers would work as hard as I did. (Hint: they won’t)
And it never occurred to me that the maintenance and repairs would quadruple.

Every one of my drivers worked almost exactly 1/3 less than I did.
And the repair costs went to the moon.
I’d get three years out of a clutch doing local and short haul work.
My drivers averaged 9 months for a clutch that cost about $2k to replace , plus several days downtime and several thousand lost revenue since the truck wasn’t rolling .

 

I’m going to be blunt and to the point, if you don’t respond by engaging us, then it shows us you are not serious.

To just touch on the most basic part of this, unless you have at least $100,000 that is disposable, forget this idea.

we already have enough cheap owners who are marginal operators at best and this industry doesn’t need one more.

drivers suffer because of it and so does the rest of us.

 

This makes the most sense of any post in this thread...

 

I’m going to say this as nice as I can

do you have another business doing really well that you want to off set for taxes or to move your own product with the truck?

if you answered no, it’s probably not for you

 

I’m just in it for the back rubs.