Looking to hire an owner operator

For only one load a day, equaling ~60 miles, you'll probably need to flat-rate the job, or maybe consider buying a truck / trailer, and not outsourcing the freight transportation. Also check with some LTL (less than truckload) carriers in your area and ask about dedicated local service with a "casual" driver. Just my opinion, and we know about those.

Edit: If you don't find anyone with tanks locally, try Craigslist. You might find an owner with equipment sitting still not making any money willing to run it for you especially if it was a fair price and offered long term, steady runs. If you decide on buying your own equipment, put it to work while not running your 30 mile run. Pay your driver to run the rest of the workday hooked to a can or a flat or something. Monetize it.

 

For the daily run, if you don't wish to purchase a truck and hire a driver, you can outsource to a company to have it done. You're looking at round trip prices of probably around $400-550. It sounds high, but you have to think it's going to take the driver time to drive to the site, fill up, drive to your plant and deliver the water, wash out the tanker before and after and that's not counting sitting in between. That will easily take up a driver's entire day and with operating costs it's going to take at least that for that driver to turn a profit and make a living.

 

why not check with one of the people that haul swimming pool water in your area

 

For drinking water you will need a smooth bore stainless steel tank. This means no baffles. You will need a testing procedure for bacteria. The fittings will need to be sprayed every hookup, and a potable water quality hose will have to be used also.

When the bacteria level starts to rise, the tanker and all fittings will have to be Kosher washed at a tank cleaning facility. Nothing else can be hauled in this tank. It will be hard finding someone to purchase the type of equipment to do this unless you offer a long term contract and pay enough to cover the truck and trailer.

If you cut corners, someone will get sick, and you will be sued. I hauled spring water for several years. I did 6650 gallons at a time. About 55,600 lbs per load.

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Tanker is very specialized, and there aren't just o/o tanker lines waiting for you to call. They are all in the oilfields right now. Long term, You would be far better off buying your own tank and probably your own truck as well. As stated already, that tank will be dedicated to you, so you might as well own it to save any markup, and reduce contamination risk by unscrupulous operators. I have a friend that did this, however he already owned a trucking company, and built the bottling plant next to the spring. Are you establishing a brand, or are you going to be a private label bottler?

IMO, you have two options unless you have a tanker outfit near by.
1. Buy a tank and hire an o/o to pull it. He'll take care of the compliance issues, however they are going to charge you for a minimum 1/2 day or even a full day rate depending on the local work in your area. You will also need to regulary check the o/o CSA score to make sure they are a safe carrier (www.safersys.org), as you can be sued for hiring an unsafe carrier.

2. Buy a truck and trailer, and hire an employee that also has a CDL A with TANKER EXPERIENCE to do the run when needed. Believe it or not, this will be your least expensive route in the long run. When the driver isn't busy, he can do other tasks.

As far as outbound finished product, owner ops with dry van trailers are a dime a dozen. You can post your loads on a load board like Internet Truckstop or Get Loaded, and skip the middle man that a freight broker would provide. It doesn't take long to figure out what loads will move for, a few phone calls and posting load prices will do it. If you have very short runs, in most cases it will be much cheaper to have your tanker driver hook to a dry van and go deliver vs bring in an outside carrier at a minimum load rate.

 

Lots of good info here

 

Another thing to look for is a place to sell your product near the plant you pick up your bottles from. It might not be as drastic if you're picking up the inflatable type of bottles, but if you're bringing in full size bottles, you'll probably get 2.? outbound trucks to every 53' inbound load of bottles, and that will add up quick. My buddies plant was 200ish miles from the Ball plant that provided his bottles, and we would try and bring outbound product or products from his farm nearby and haul the bottles back. You'll need pallets as well. When you start adding up all the trucking involved, you can easily keep a guy busy doing it, saying its all local, whether they are an o/o or company driver.