Texas Owner Op

in my opinion not a good idea unless you have some serious cash behind you.. once you buy the truck you need your authorization..plates...permits...2290...insurance...ifta...workers comp...maintaince account for repairs...then you better be getting high paying loads ($2.25 Min per mile if you have a driver hired on for your truck)... Then you will have to keep all fuel reciepts and logs for DOT audits...Next you will have to decide if your choice is van reefer or flatbed... I can go on and on..but read some other post....

 

Contact the Texas DOT for the paperwork you need.

Use the SEARCH function here and you'll get a ton of answers as this has been asked many times before.

Good luck to you.

 

Well you use to get away with just having TXDOT# but with every other thing they changed it now you have to have USDOT# and all TXDOT is $225 for two years than your $300 for your DOT#s

 

Good luck making money doing that.

It's hard enough making money driving it yourself, the wrong driver and you'll be in a hole too deep to climb out of.

 

I have a good driver in my second truck that I've know for many years and have been barely able to clear $300-600 a month after expenses and have lost money a few months due to repairs. I've decided to sell it - too much hassle for the return on my investment. I think Bayou may have mentioned in a previous post - it's very difficult to run a second truck while driving one. I think I'd do better if I stayed home and "managed" but that's not in the cards financially.

 

I would have to say that you would be better off to start out driving it yourself at least untill you get the hang of things and get all the bugs worked out of the trucks. We just started about 7 months ago now and there have been a couple weeks when I have not paid myself a wage because repairs took that weeks profits, I couldnt get away with that if I was paying a driver. On the other hand almost everytime I cut myself a check I take some of that money and reinvest it into the company just to help the company grow faster another thing you can't do with a paid driver. To top it all off we have already realized that we want the ability to put on two more trucks before the extra overhead will be spread out enough to make any decent money. That in and of itself should tell you something.

 

We used to have 9 and are down to 5 and only operate 4. I could easily stick a driver in the 5th, even have several trailers sitting but it's just not worth the headache. Out of the 4 we do run only one of those is a hired driver (rest are family) and he's been with us for 25+yrs.

Funny how some people think if they make say $100,000 per year as an O/O they can make $200,000 with a 2nd truck. In reality you'd be better off selling the 2nd truck and taking the cash to Vegas, odds of success are better and it comes with free drinks.

 

Someone once told me 2 trucks are bad but 3 was alright. Some BS about odd numbers. Could be a Vegas thing but the guy kept going on about odd numbers.

 

I'm at 4 trucks now and only have two drivers I know longer drive there is know way to profit with one truck because that driver will not book his own loads and invoice everything the guys I have can't even fill out a BOL and that's trucking 101 I spend all my weekends working on trucks and paper work and only make 30% of what the trucks gross
I'm hoping to get back in the truck one day the only reason I ended up getting a 2nd truck is because I had to do some body work to my truck and would be with out a truck for 5 weeks so I got a truck to run while mine was down than after that I found a deal on a 2nd trailer that I liked better than mine so than I had a good freind of mine get laid off from work and use to drive but what happen was I too busy taking care of him and I was not getting half of what I use to do done so I ended up with a driver in mine and couldn't make enough money to pay my bills than so I ended up with a 3rd truck and so on now I'm a full time dispatcher and can't stand it my truck is parked with another truck and can't find drivers just had one truck out the shop from a driver trashing it
So don't think your going to make a bus load off this truck it will not happen also I have alote of my own customers I do not haul just off load boards and do alote of $3 a mile loads and it's still hard for me to make money......