New to trucking, just purchased my first truck, advice please?

If you are not willing to drive the truck yourself. You need to sell it. It will get worse tomorrow and the next day and so on. If its financed you ARE going to loose it and will be sued for the difference after a cheap auction.

 

Get your settlement sheets and redact Any personal information , and post them on here .

the time to ask for advice is before you sign a bunch of contracts and borrow or spend a bunch of money .

Post up the specs on the truck and the balance due on the loan .

I understand this is all very hard to do and embarrassing.


A few years ago I jumped into a business I had zero knowledge of , because I saw lots of other people making good money on it .
And I’m still paying off the losses .
Everyone was making tons of money flipping houses , it must be super easy .
I bought a house to flip in 2008.
So I guess you know how this story ends .
I borrowed money to buy it , then I lost my regular job THE NEXT DAY !

then about four weeks later the real estate market crashed and burned .
Yaayyy me !


everyone else was raking in the money , in the same business but I lost my shirt .
I lost almost $75k
I even contemplated suicide because I felt so stupid.
Since I borrowed Money to buy it , I couldn’t sell it for half what I paid .
But I could squeak the payments out every month , so I still have a rental house , that gets really frustrating dealing with late paying tenants trashing my house etc
But I’m stuck with it, in a few more years I may be able to sell it for what I paid in 2008

so I totally understand how this situation can make you feel.

but , you have come to the right place .
The people on here are solid and The advice on here is solid.

but you’re going to have to share some info with complete strangers and listen to their advice. And act on their advice .

don’t post up any company names or numbers , just the financial info and the settlement and load info .

it’s very hard to make money in trucking if you’re not the driver .

I quit my dream job as a state park ranger because I just wasn’t making any money, and bought a truck , and leased it on with a company . usually a lease purchase never works out , but mine was fair , and with a good company that had plenty of good freight, and I went from earning $1000 a month at the state park to $5000 a month profit driving my lease purchase tractor.

I made so much money with my first truck that I foolishly bought several more .

my drivers got paid a percentage , it was local and regional work , I paid them 33% of the gross .
I ran all the numbers and it looked like there was some good profit leftover .

my wife is an accountant and she did all our bookkeeping and the hired drivers worked 65% as hard as I did .
That was not something I had factored in to my calculations .

the maintenance and repairs went up tremendously.
I could get years from a clutch , yet my drivers would fry a clutch in 9 months .
Same with every wear item on the truck.
I would replace the brake shoes every three or four years , my drivers would wear out the brakes in less than a year.

same situation as you, I was losing money . Every day .

I sold the trucks . I sold one to the guy that was driving it .

and sold the rest to a dealer.
I had planned on keeping the best truck for myself to drive but
I was so burned out from the experience that I just sold them all and got a normal job.

you can salvage this situation before it gets worse but you need to act .

if your settlement checks are that low, you should consider temporarily parking the rig until
You can get a plan together of what you should do next.

parking it may be better than risking a major breakdown or accident.



it’s either going to be

1 take the truck to another company

2 quit your regular job, take the truck to another company and drive it yourself

3 sell the truck if you can sell it for enough to pay off the loan

Depending on the truck and what you owe , you could actually come out ok.
The value of used trucks has gone up a lot in the last few months .

 

Omg, look … I’m not trying to be mean or an ******hole but here is the thing … this is never a business to generate a passive income.

so here is my recommendations which you need to take.

first sell the truck. I do not know what you have, what you paid or owe, but chances are you will get out from it maybe with a slight profit because of the market, but don’t wait.

second talk to a good accountant to see what you can write off in losses, because you should have a good amount of losses at this point and this will give you some money back into your pocket next year.

Third never ever go into business with family or friends.

You’re on your own to deal with your sister, I would never bring up the subject again.

 

Couple of sayings. When families owe each other Thanksgiving dinner taste different. Or the only ship that won’t sail is a partnership

 

Don't buy something u have no clue about. O/O ITS NOT JUST A JOB . ITS A LIFE STYLE. Either u get in it and do it ur self. But never an O/O gets 25% of what the load is paying. The norm is they get 20% to 25% and go from there.

 

I can't believe you guys spent 6 pages on a troll post.

 

So the guy/gal doing the bulk of the work, only makes 20%.
Yet the person doing almost nil, makes 25%.
Do you see the problem here.
Pay the driver 30%, and the dead weight troll 10%, the other 60% covers costs, and what goes into your pants pocket. Your sister probably spends less than 10 minutes per day, sitting on her butt, making 2 phone calls, that involve your truck.
I'm injured, unable to driver at this time, so from my couch, I answer the business calls that are forwarded to my cell, i have the passwords to the business email, banking, and everything else. My father owns 8 trucks, 13 trailers, and 2 of those trailers are being pulled by O/Os that are contracting to my Dad's company, so basically I dispatch and do the books for 10 trucks, it takes me less than 2 hours per day total. To sum it up, you're screwing your driver, and your sister is screwing you.

 

By the way, my dad charges 15% of gross, and they are pulling his trailers, not their own. Yet he makes good money off of them. If he had 10 O/Os out there yanking loads, he would be rolling in piles of money, for doing nothing. He could hire someone like me to do all the work, service the trailers, and pay me 4%, give 3% to the government for taxes, 3% for tires, brakes, and grease, keep the other 5%, and make good money, while golfing, or tanning on the beach in Mexico. Basically $4,000 and your in business doing what your sister does, I'll assume she doesn't own the trailers. She needs a cellphone, lap top, desk, chair, and 3 filing cabinets, total cash laid out is $4,000, and she would work about 60 to 90 minutes a day is all. A gorilla could do her job, it isn't difficult. If you can unload your own groceries when you get home from the store, you're smart enough to do her job.

 

Quoted for posterity.