New O/O Advice

Easiest way to make a million dollars in trucking is to start with $3 Million in the bank

 

Why not just get a local job? This whole you gotta go OTR first is a bunch of BS. I know quite a few folks who drive that I don't think have ever even seen the inside of a sleeper before.

 

We leased on with one of the approximately 22 companies that haul DOD sensitive/secure





When you lease on to a company you can own the truck and even trailer while not having all the responsibilities on an owner operator.

We control our schedule and even our loads to a point. Our dispatchers will call and offer us loads that we can take or refuse. We chose to use the company insurance, licensing, permits and a whole lot more to make our lives easy. A true O/O has to worry about all that in addition truck maintenance, loads and driving.

After all expenses except maintenance and repairs we average $12500 a week when we work. We usually work for 3 weeks and take a week off and only worked 1 week last Dec/Jan (WHAT IF IT SNOWED ?!). This requires a team , I drive days , my wife drives nights​

We don’t drive for ATS but they have a few videos that are decent introductions to DOD freight




I’ll DM you my number and give you the same offer I give every Veteran who shows up here. call me and Ill advise you and answer questions.

 

We were hired by an awesome local company who has local and regional drivers. We were trained by local drivers for 6 weeks (3flatbed 3dryvan) picking up or delivering 4-8 loads a day but HOME EVERY night. When we were turned loose to regional they would trip plan with us and then turn us loose telling us to pull over if needed until we were used to OTR. Honestly it didn’t take us long to get used to team.



Eldridge IA, Amhof trucking

 

I think people don’t talk about running team and look at the money and nice truck the most. Running team you will be driving 1,200 miles day/24 hours. That only leave you 2-3 hours a day the truck can actually sit. So you have to fuel and shower and eat. In that 2 hours. If you get stuck in traffic jam or accidents delay you. You still have to make the 1200 miles every 24 hours to keep on schedule. You have fuel the truck. So showers might have to skipped that day. It can be a lot of pressure. Not fun when you trying to keep the schedule and trucks are 3 deep waiting to get fuel and nobody pumping fuel. You’re sitting there losing time.

Every time you stop to use bathroom you lose like 15 minutes and that if your fast. By the time you start slowing down pull into rest are. Go inside and get back out to truck and get rolling and back on the highway you lose like 15 minutes

try running team as company driver and see if you like it and but then you lose control of your home time unless you find regional team drive. I never really hear of that myself.

 

I did team driving back when DHL was kinda big in USA. I was driving company truck and we had dedicated run with DHL. We got loaded every day in Wilmington OH our run was going to Minneapolis. We left Wilmington OH like 3pm and drive to the Petro truck stop in Portage WI. We had to be there by like midnight or something. We meet a solo drive coming from Minneapolis with our trailer back to DHL main airport in Wilmington OH.

we swap trailers, we had be back in Wilmington OH by like 10am so they could unload our truck. The planes would show up about noon every M-F. They would have us reloaded by like 3pm and off we go to Wisconsin to meet the other truck at like midnight. It was overnight air freight. So we did the same run every day day M-F it was a set schedule their could be full trailer or 1 pallet in trailer.

So you might do something like this. The down side is when you home you have to keep you same schedule so you can’t really do anything if your the driver running all night. It was not fun I did not like that job. The money was nice but not worth it in my opinion.

 

Another option could be Roehl Transport. That is a good company to train and get experience. They used to have a 7-on 7-off schedule available, not sure if they still do that or not.

Only downside to that is you have to share the truck with someone. Basically one guy drives while the other is on home time, then flipflop.

If you really like them you could always buy a truck in the future and lease to them if you wanted

Good luck!

 

Big bills on repairs, I don’t have any handy but that lovely paccar engine has an 18k repair bill, the international was 10k.
I got fed up with paccar truck and sold it for $15k, just to get rid of it. Ran it 6-7 months someone offered that and told him to take it.