Some numbers for new O/O

This is good advice but can also be misleading to newbie owner ops. I have seen many take it as run the minimum miles you can get away with taking only the best paying loads. Which while not incorrect is also not correct. To clarify it a bit.

What you need to do is find the average cost to run per mile using the average miles per year. I tend to say 100k miles is a good average to plug in for thay part. And here is the reason. Namely using dunes example of 22k a month for everything your going to get 264K a year and need to run loads worth on average 2.64 a mile over 100k miles to make that number work. Which gives you around 500 miles a day required to hit it over 42 weeks and 10 weeks off a year or less miles run per day or more miles run over more or less time off .

Knowing this number means say you want to only run 50k miles a year. You would need to find a route paying $5.28 a mile or if you want to run 150k thats $1.76 a mile. Now obviously the first is more desierable then the last and this is a simplified example as more running means more maintaince and more fuel costs among other things which skews the numbers a lot.

But by knowing your basial cost to get the pay you want and to make ends meey you can then know what type of loads to run to get the most money for the least work. So say you can average $3 a mile. You can earn more money over less miles and be better off for it as you will have lower fuel and maintaince costs which is more money in your pocket. Where is if all you care for is miles and you take any and all loads, your going to be doing more work for less reward.

Of course there is nothing stopping you from running more. Say you find that unicorn $5 a mile load and they have unlimited miles and loads. You could stop at 50k miles. Or you could bust your butt and do 150k miles. But the reverse is not true. If you have a $1.50 a mile average you cant run less miles and it hard locks you into being forced to either take much less home or to run much harder.

 

This slow market had turned down many other good brokers into bad.

 

When you pay at the pump, you've paid that state's fuel tax. When you do your quarterly filing, you'll add up all the fuel purchased and all the miles run then you calculate your average fuel mileage. You divide each state's miles by that to figure out how much fuel you needed to run in that state. You subtract from that how much fuel you purchased and you will have an over purchase or an under purchase. The states you over purchased you will have a positive, the ones under, will be negative. Add that up. If you purchased in high tax states, they'll owe you money, if you purchased in low tax states, you'll owe. The important thing to remember is each state, except Oregon, collect their share at the pump.

 

So many pages of confirmation that truck drivers are viewed as a worthless hassle for the business to deal with and is why self driving trucks with computer drivers (that don't complain with these annoying things like seeing their kids) will roll out between Dallas and Houston very soon..

I was told once by a #### company, by a guy that never drove a truck before "you probably should not have got your CDL if you have kids"

There's the problem in life. Ask if the thing (company/ boss) controlling your life is saying this behind your back, before they go home to their kids. I've been driving for 15 years now and my best time was specialized work (requiring class A) in oilfield until it relocated to the cheap labor of Arabia or the other 2 ####holes in America. This is life, someone is always looking to pay less and charge more. And yes that's about 2 years out of 15 of truck driving that was good... worst would be when I bought a truck and hauled sand, 2nd to that was selling it to haul rock to be home nights and weekends.

Maybe I'll buy a few of these self driving trucks one day and work from home like everyone else wants to. Most of you posting here are very smart people managing something, that is for some reason, being intentionally run into the ground by forces out of our control. I highly recommend starting a 2nd business and shifting focus/funding fully to it over time.

 

You hit the nail on the head here...110% agree with this. I've been researching this topic for a number of years now trying to decide if what I want to do is feasible. For whatever reason, information is hard to find and the entire industry seems to be shrouded in mystery. The original post had a really good all-inclusive look at what real time costs and income could be. Unfortunately, that was pre-covid numbers and this only goes so far for someone like me anyway, as I want to be a local o/o like what you're describing. There's so many variables that it is almost impossible to know if you're going to make it or not.

Fuel prices are a killer. I tried to estimate that annual cost by calculating how many miles would be even possible in a day's time, what kind of fuel mileage I could expect, and what pump prices are right now. I about fell out of my chair when I saw that number! I put together my own spreadsheet to calculate income and expenditures on an annual, monthly, and daily basis. It's something of an estimator tool that I can manipulate inputs like fuel mileage, fuel prices, maintenance costs, etc, and have a real time comparison on how certain things impact the bottom line. For instance, having a 4.5mpg truck vs. a 6.0mpg truck at $4 diesel had a difference in fuel costs in the tens of thousands. I also have the ability to run tests on all of my theories. A farmer friend has a truck/side dump and I haul for him on occasion so I have first hand knowledge of how things can work and how things can go horribly wrong, too. He hires other guys like me and I know their pricing structures so I can reverse engineer a lot of this to make the numbers come out in the black.

Where I struggle is on the legal/tax end of things and state/federal compliance. It certainly seems to me that I'm by no means the only one struggling after spending some time lurking around this forum. If 15 years in corporate America has taught me anything, it is to play to your strengths and delegate to those who know more than you do on the other stuff. I think my next step is to talk to an accountant/tax person and get a handle on the inner workings of all of that. Luckily, I don't plan on working across state lines (I'm in Nebraska), so that should keep things pretty simple.

Even with all of this knowledge, it's still no promise of success. It's tough to take that plunge...

 

Pro Tip-

If your truck only gets 6, you're going starve.

 

Depends on context. My dump truck gets 6 and does better then a lot of others doing the same thing.

 

He’s talking about doing local work in NE so that’s probably going to be 6 axles at 90k or 7 axles at 95k gross.

 

7 axles at 95k gross is my aim. Maximize the tons I can haul as this will most likely be the way I bill customers. I also plan to have a drop deck or lowboy trailer to move machinery. The 2002 Freightliner my friend has bounced between 4.5 and 5.0 mpg. It's a bit of a dog though, 60 series Detroit and a 10 speed. It will probably be a bit of a trade off as far as what truck I find to get started. Older ones with worse mpg's or newer ones that can do a little bit better. The "good" news is that they all break down just the same, albeit I don't want a truck with a million miles on it.

The company I'm with now has a 2016 Freightliner that will do about 7, I think. We have a 2022 Mack Anthem but I haven't seen any reports on that one. These trucks also are rarely grossing over 80k on 5 axles, so there's that, too.

 

I sold my hopper back in 2021 so I don’t have the slightest clue what the rates are these days. And I’ve never hauled much rock or anything. The local stuff seems to have a lot of competition, I ran DDG out of NE down to SW Kansas then got a short load across to the Wichita area, then I’d load salt back to NE.