Hiring an employee or a "private contractor" under my authority

So I am considering hiring an employee or contractor to take on some of my jobs. I want them to be able to operate under my authority so besides the obvious of calling my insurance guy and adding my employee and adding his truck to my policy and taking care of adjusting my MCS150 filing and stuff what would I have to do. It won't be on an all the time basis so I'm really weighing my options here because if I can get around having to pay for a workers comp insurance policy on him but I am thinking that I may not be able to get around this since he would be operating under my authority and he is not a business partner. So honestly to me if he is not a full time employee he really won't be making me any real money so I am not going to hire him or contract him and me have to take on extra insurance premiums and headaches to have him take an occasional load (that sounds like a break even type scenario and if I am going to break even I will stay where I am).

Any thoughts on this? Can anyone help shed some light on this for me?

Thanks
Smitty

 

Thanks for the reply... I had a feeling that this is the way some of it would work. Taxes I can deal with that is what my main concern really came down to is operating under my authority which he would be under my #'s for everything. I am not certain on the workers comp exemption laws here (I am in Maryland) but I think I may have read something somewhere along the way that MD is not one of those exemption states.

I am starting to feel that if I can't have a full time employee or at least running more than a load on his own time I am not taking on the added expense and exposures for marginal financial gains. The risk to reward ratio just isn't there unless I can hire someone who is operating under their own authority and at that point I may have to file as a broker as well since he would be an independant contractor at that point.

Smitty

 

I'm going to have to dig deeper in MD laws regarding this to see. Then figure out if it is actually going to be worth ot at this point or just keep doing what I'm doing by myself and not get greedy.

 

I'm not sure how much I would like having the less control part of brokering loads. I guess it would depend on the load that I am moving. I am mostly hauling boats of all sizes these days for boat brokers and private customers and I have been priding myself on the quality of service so I need someone who knows what they are doing because one mishap with a customer's investment like that really doesn't look good on me or my company name. I guess either way it all comes down to selecting the right people for the job at hand, it is just a lot to think and worry about which is why I have been doing it the way I have been doing it and trying to keep small and personal. If I was running common freight all the time I wouldn't really care but some of these boats I am moving if someone doesn't know what they are doing it can cause some serious and costly damage, not just to the boat but also to my operation.

Ideally I'm waiting for my father to figure out if he is going to retire from his company within the next year or 2 so that I can put him on the road. I will add him as a business partner to my LLC and avoid a lot of the workers comp and other BS. I can trust him to take care of business and I figure he could take my mother with him on a few long hauls and they can get a mini vacation out of it as long as the job gets done. He is killing me with his going to retire and work for me then change his mind and says he can't retire routine.

Smitty