Yearly Profit After Expenses...

Keep us informed of the good and the bad when you get started.

 

I'm not sure what "GOOD" there will be here....but...

Man...$12k+ a year for insurance. That's insane. In fact thats over 2x what I pay - but as you mentioned, with a crappy driving record one has to expect high rates. At least you didn't have any DUIs.....

My concern is the cheap "around $7k" rig price. That thing will need work. I paid less than 1/2 of what my 99 KW was blue booked at and I cant even tell you the amount of work it needed....Buying the rig (so far) was the cheapest part of the entire operation...

By the way, what are you going to do for work? - If your going to try and lease on to a carrier, they will want to see you have been driving for over a year or been in business for 1-2 years and if your going to run independent, you will run into similar issues when people see your MC number is a fresh as a newborn baby....

Virtually all of the odds are against you here. I think you realize that, or at least I hope you do. No one wishes you ill will around here but with all things considered and ZERO experience, your really better off looking into something else.

Man I still can't believe the cost of your insurance. Here I am having a CDL for 20+ yrs and perfect credit and I was still whining about what they wanted ME to pay!

 

That insurance rate is 3X what i pay.

 

I didn't want to hurt the guy's feelings too much......
so I said over 2x.....

 

jmc: Your sound like my son's best friend that I just about can't stand to be within speaking distance of, but remain cordial to due to the entertainment factor. He surfaces about 2-3x a year asking me for automotive advice, knowing I worked as a pro mechanic for 10 yrs and have a garage full of projects that I do right on my own. Every time he will endlessly challenge my advice with either crap he's read on the internet or heard from some other clown in the bleachers at the dragstrip. So he wastes an hour of my time, proceeds to tell me how I got it all wrong, then goes and does something stupid anyway.

There a difference between arguing against good advice and drilling down on it to make sure you're clear. And you're doing too much arguing.

The point BW9, Krooser, and a few others are making (over and over) is that pushing digits around on a spreadsheet is not equal to wheeling thousands of real US dollars in and out of your bank account. By driving someone else's truck you can compare your plan to some real world operation that you are involved in first-hand and inject reality into your forecast.

The rhborg example that strider quoted is certainly an extreme. I'll give you what I've had to handle in the past week as a great example of something that appears more routine, and far from a $50k catastrophic breakdown. You posted in the "no experience" thread so I know you've already read it, but I'll walk you thru it again with some real-life numbers.

Our truck had a wiring fault that started affecting performance noticeably while deadheading to pick up a load. We ran the load and went directly to the FL dealer. Turns out it was a $120 harness that, after labor and whatnot will run $900 out the door. So before you just slot that into a maintenance value on your spreadsheet, plan this out and tell me how it works.

$900 repair
$200 extra fuel running 450 mi on 5 cylinders
$ 65 hotel for driver waiting
$350 travel to r/t driver home for holiday weekend
$700 week of downtime fixed cost on the truck
$1500 est lost profit (opportunity cost) due to missed loads for a week

So that $120 harness resulted in a total $3,715 impact to my actual bank account in real US dollars. I'm not making this up, it actually is happening right now.

Now I expect that you will now tell everyone how you'd be camping in the truck (near the Memphis airport probably defending yourself with a tire buddy from the local crackheads) eating ramen noodles and fixing the harness yourself and not incurring the exorbitant extra costs I have quoted while hustling the projected, revenue-producing load out at the start of a holiday weekend. Thus proving one more time that you just don't get it.

Or you could surprise everyone by saying "#### I hadn't considered something like that and should make some adjustments" instead of telling me how I got it all wrong or that it would never be that way for you.

 

SPREADSHEETS work to a point , only glitch is they do not know the REAL numbers to put on it, or the variables based on the age of the truck , the miles on it and estimated per year as well as what they will be hauling and where they will operate.

They think the $100.00 part that took 2 days to change is a rip off until they change it themselves ( lost miles , buying tools they needed but did not have , extra parts / material )

Love the no personal exspenses other than CELL and SOAP , he wont be hard to spot REAL CLEAN guy starving while talking on a CELL in the parking lot .

 

"To answer the previous poster I have not drove myself but have been around it a fair chunk of my life alot of my family has drove and some still do."

I lived across from an airport but that didn't make me a pilot....

We are trying to help you man... you sure have a hard head.

 

No matter how well you do your estimates, there will always be unexpected costs along the way. When I am doing estimated costs I will usually take all the costs and add 30%. That will usually come closer to the actual expenses. As a rule of thumb, I over estimate costs or expenses and under estimate revenue or income. One thing many new people do is plan for the best that can happen. In business, it is best to plan for the worst. I had a truck that had an over haul with just over 100,000 miles on the in frame. I dropped a couple of lifters that cost me almost $7,000 to repair. That was after an $18,000 over haul. It had just gotten out of warranty. Without the means to pay for the repairs I would have been out of business.

There are those who make it on a shoe string. If everything goes well then it isn't a problem. If something major happens and you don't have the funds or credit to make the repairs then you are out of business.

I think that you are taking much of what is being said the wrong way. Most only want to help you. No one wants to see you fail.

 

To put it bluntly this situation would suck for me. No I am not going to say that I would fix the truck myself because I have never worked on trucks. My mechanical experience is limited to cars. However I will not be saying that I need to make adjustments as this type of situation has already been considered and is one of the reasons personal expenses are to be kept so low and maintanence fund is set to get almost 20 CPM as well as estimates for oil changes and replacing tires based on average tire wear and replacement costs ect. and any money left over from previously budgeted things that end up costing less. Almost all the money I will be paying myself will go into a personal savings account.

For flatbed food has been acounted for at 300 per month for two people cooking what we can in the truck avoiding fast food and truckstop food.

Krooser I understand and appreciate the help however there is a difference in helping and being a prick. Redforeman here has posted something that is of help and keeps me thinking of possible scenarios and I appreciate that, Bw900 was just being a prick.

G/Man all expenses have been estimated high and revenue has been estimated low. I have ran multiple numbers with worst possible scenarios in mind. Excluding catastrophic engine failure and things of that nature. I have attempting to think of and account for everything and have asked questions to many drivers about things such as these. As for unexpected costs I have accounted for those by alloting roughly 10% to misc.

 

You know, I did not see Blackw900's post that you are complaining about.

However, most of his posts dealing with the business side are on the gruff side and he has the experience to back up his stand. You might want to listen to him.

I think you REALLY need to step back and review what everyone has mentioned here.