Advice for new car haulers

@Banker
Let the bashing start !

 

I generally don’t bash. Trucking has been extremely good to me over the last almost 35 years. Carhauling for the last 10, 6+ as an owner operator carhauler have been very good as well.
I can say I would definitely work for someone first before I jumped in with both feet and bought something. Preferably a larger company who has company trucks and owner operators. A company who will train you and pay you close to $2,000 a week after you know what you are doing in 6 months to a year. Carhauling is great for me today, it sucked at first and roughly 90% of the people who try it don’t stick with it long enough to get good at it.

What has worked for me may suck for you, but you never know until you try it.
*Side note* running team in a carhauler would absolutely suck in my opinion. If you really want to run team I would find a good LTL carrier like Old Dominion or another great paying company and run team with them. Just my opinion and I have several hundred thousand miles in a team truck so I may know a little about teaming.

 

If you are running as a true team the sleeper in a carhauler isn’t big enough. From my experience running team to be properly rested you need to have a big bunk condo. The bed has to be far enough away from the drivers seat to not hear everything the driver says on the phone and listening to on the radio. It also needs to be a stand up sleeper and carhauler sleepers definitely aren’t that. If you are running as a single driver who has a helper then it might work. Also if you plan to haul auction freight regularly you will likely give up carhauling quicker than most people. I pulled 3 or 4 auction loads as Backhaul years ago and decided they don’t pay near enough for the hassle factor.

 

I am leased to a large carrier and haul strictly their contract freight so I won’t have any useful information regarding getting loads from any other source like central dispatch or other sources. There are others on this forum who could possibly help you.
Much of the freight out of ports like Savanna is contract freight but carriers do broker freight out that they can’t handle. Get a company job with one of the many carriers hauling out of Savanna and see how you like it.

 

You are welcome. Let us know how it goes. Carhauling is an awesome job for some people, myself included. I very likely will not haul anything else until I retire.

 

That’s simple. Just DO THE ####ING SURVEY. You can learn the rest on the fly if you learn that first. If you don’t, you’ll be too expensive for anyone to keep around.