Sitting cost per mile.

Easy. If you sit today, today's fixed cost must be paid by the load you get tomorrow, along with tomorrows fixed cost. If you sit long enough for that great rate, you'll end up with something that diminishes to the cheap rate you passed up in the first place.

Rates expressed in dollars per mile are nice for comparison, and feeling good about yourself. The reality is that you pay your bills on a monthly or weekly basis - so thinking in terms of dollars per day of gross revenue to reach those monetary goals is a more realistic approach.

 

That's why I don't see the point in wasting time/effort keeping up with this kind of figure, it's meaningless. I've never sat around anywhere more than a day and a half waiting for something better. Time to move on if nothing's happening. Of course it is foolish to wait 4 or 5 days for a "good load" and I have to ask who in their right mind out there really does that? You have to go with your gut sometimes out here. All this academic stuff breaking down little details about losing a day here and there eating into revenue is pointless. It's going to happen. If your bills are paid monthly you need to look at the bigger picture of a month's time frame and driving for 25 cents a mile less because you are impatient is a trap that will cost more than it gains in the long term.

 

Rollin Coal,

Reading what you wrote, business wise, you actually do exactly that. It may not be in your "budget" per se, but you are doing it.

You set your threshold at 36 hours for a load. Same place I put mine.

My banker asked for that number out of my business plan. I gave him pretty much the answer you did. He was happy with that answer too.

Just so long as it was an addressed cost and was managed and not ignored.

 

It's pretty simple for me. Fixed cost on a truck is about $100 a day. Opportunity cost on revenue is around another $700 average. A year of experience tells me my real cost of sitting is around $300-400 a day, without building a NASA-quality spreadsheet model to figure it out to the penny.

DH costs a little over a buck a mile. Do the math and know your market. When the DH loss is cheaper than the daily rate to sit, move the hell on. Some places I'll let a driver sit a day while I shop, before moving out. Other places I don't even wait longer than five minutes because I know 5 more days won't cause a miracle.

Unfortunately it's something you just have to learn by doing. If you don't figure it out after a few bad decisions, you'll be going out of business anyway.

Maintenance and repair breakdowns you just have to try to plan ahead and don't get cheap with it, or just suck it up if it's totally unexpected. Any cost model ought to have at least 3-5 weeks of downtime built in, and that assumes the driver never takes scheduled time off. Get hooked up with a good shop and give them your business and they'll pay it back with fast service as long as you don't abuse it. It took me 8 months to find a good one, and they aren't the cheapest in town. But when I come in, they know I'll quickly approve and pay for work without trying to chisel down their prices, and set a sensible deadline and work around their schedule as much as I can.