Authority

First of all, before you spend the money to get your own authority, you need to have some business nailed down first. This pretty much comes down to relationships that you have with other business people, if you can come up with a commitment for some business, then run the numbers and see if it will sustain you, and also, you need to develope a plan that you can fall back on in case the person you were doing business with changes jobs. A lot of business comes and goes when the person behind the desk changes for any given reason. In the current business climate, I would nail down a contract before spending a dime on authority, insurance, incorporation, etc. etc. Just within the last year you would have been hardpressed to find a shipper that would even talk to you, let alone give you business, from late 08 to late 11 it was nearly impossible to keep a shipper on the phone. Do your research, and when it comes to crunching the numbers for a trucking business plan, you should use the worst case scenario in all instances, it is better to be pleasantly surprised than shot out of the saddle for figuring your business model on the best case scenario. Due your homework before you make up your mind to commit.

 

I am in the final stages of getting my own show started. My authority just went active, and today I got my NY HUT, KYU, and NM permits. Tomorrow I am getting the lettering done for the truck, then its go time.

In my mind it is totally worth the money to have a service help you with your authority. To me it calculates out at a fixed cost to sit while waiting for authority to go active of about $142/day. That covers truck payment, trailer payment, insurance payment. How many extra days will it cost you, unless you REALLY know the steps and everything to do get it going? Also for their fees they will let you know when things need renewed. It's the same answer as why would you do your own accounting ...

 

It should not take more than about an hour to apply for your authority. Everything can be done online. You can call or check online to see when your authority is active or wait until you receive confirmation in the mail. I can't see paying anyone to apply for authority. It isn't really all that complicated. With all of those states you just fill in the blanks. You provide all the needed information to any of the services, so why not just do it yourself and save the money?! You can get your authority for a $300 filing fee by doing it yourself.