New driver with own authority advice

Check w these guys.

Ask An Owner Operator

 

If you have zero truck driving experience, get your CDL and go to work for a Company for a year or three. The vast majority of new druvers wash out in the first 3-6 months. Why would you invest 100k of your hard earned money, just to find out that you hate the job. Plus.....with no verifiable experience, no Insurance Company will cover you. You can't just buy a truck and start hauling freight. You NEED EXPERIENCE!

 

Note, I'm not the OP.

So what exactly would prevent a person from simply selling his rig in this case? I thought the used truck market was hot right now? Also, don't you suppose there might be a difference in job satisfaction between someone making good money as an O/O, taking only the jobs he wants vs. some poor schlub who has to work as a low wage slave for a mega-carrier (like you may have first had to do)?

Just today at my CDL school a retired former cop in his late 50's passed his final driving exam. And he actually already has his authority activated, is insured, has already bought a truck and trailer and is ready to go. On his insurance forms (with Progressive) from what I gather he simply registered his LLC name and listed "1 active drivers". Although he has been dealing with an understanding independent insurance agent, and I'm not exactly positive on all the details.

As well, here's a link to an extensive Youtube channel (JustTruckin) of a guy who went O/O directly after CDL school, did manage to get insured, and years later he seems to be doing just fine. https://www.youtube.com/user/azcat8899/videos

Time after time I read stories here and elsewhere about drivers being teamed with a trainer for 20 or so working days who teaches the person next to nothing, and then of the driver being thrown out on the road to figure out the rest for himself. So I just don't get it. How can a driver be inexperienced - and granted, probably making some embarrassing mistakes - and get by as an employee for a big carrier, yet conversely be completely unqualified to drive for his own company? It almost makes me think that a lot of you guys may feel a subconscious need to see other people suffer like you had (or chose) to do. When in actuality, maybe all that misery on your part was just a waste. Or necessary only because you were young then and lacked the start-up money that other more fortunate people may already have.

But lastly, if you really do feel you lack the necessary experience, why not just hire a veteran driver/trainer to ride with you for the first 3 or 4 weeks, give him most of the money during this time, and then at the end of this period be in the same position as every other rookie driver who goes the more "traditional" route?

 

The bottom line of all of it is that inexperience costs money. So either you learn on someone else's dime or it costs you your own money to learn.

The retired policeman that you're talking about probably has a full pension and he might even double dip and have another pension. It would not surprise me if his insurance literally cost him 40 or $50,000 a year. Whatever it cost him, if he had experience it would be less.

People think trucks are indestructible. If you have no experience and just jump into your own truck it's possible you can damage your truck if you don't know how to drive properly. Takes a little time to get in your groove of how to slow down how to pull heavy loads how to shift the whole thing of it. And to be safe.

It is a good idea to at least get into a truck somehow for at least some time to see if it is for you. Just like people go through four years of college and major in something and never use that degree, there are people that will spend $150,000 on a truck and trailer and soend massive amounts of money on plates and insurance and everything else, and they do it for a month or so and say oh that's not for me. It does happen.

Plus there may be a lot of other factors that if you've never actually done it for any period of time you didn't realize it was going to be that way. The reality of doing something is rarely what you've imagined it to be.

I can't speak for anyone else but I could care less if you want to buy a truck and get your mc and you never worked for anyone.

But in an industry where 90 or 95% of owner-operators fail, and any business or even people just working somewhere there is massive colossal turn over, and in an industry that is capital-intensive that you're going to tie up hundreds of thousands of dollars, it's a good idea if you know that's what you want to do and you have some idea of how to actually do it.

 

Although i agree with experience and other parts one part I don’t is “buy a truck and start hauling.”

I did exactly that with a few hours of training in 2018. It’s doable but it ain’t for the faint of heart.

 

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