Success vs Bankruptcy: Lease From Hell Or O/O The Hard (Smart) Way?

Borntoteez, I just got done typing and read your post. My previous post explains a bit of that for you, but the details? I was actually 100% SSA Disabled with 3 back surgeries. Had been since 1984. Off work for 16 years and getting about $500 a month in SSI payments, I decided that the physical pain of going back to work was no where near the 'pain' I would suffer living and dying so broke all the time. So? I fought with the SSA (Social Security Admin) and won. Fought? Oh yeah! People like me on SSI are their job security, apparently, and darn if they were going to let me go back to work! Ahh! Our government at work...
So, I became a bigger PAIN to them than I was worth, while they continued to send me my SSI checks for the first 6 months of working for Interstate, where we made $85k our first year out! Anyway...
In a nutshell? We had to BORROW $1,000 from some close friends for seed money JUST to go out over the road our first month or 2. THAT is how poor we were... That also gives you a little insight as to why I was so dogmatic to do things right from then on out. I was, let's see? 46 years old at the time and didn't even have a full chance to make it all up. We were simply trying to get, like I said, a little nest egg in the bank, and maybe move out of the little mobile-home park we lived in up in the sticks, 'cuz it was CHEAP...
But also? At the end of 2000, we had made $85k and had pretty much NOTHING to show for it, and THAT freaked me out. That is when I started buying books and reading up on how to become a millionaire... I'm NOT a millionaire, but my thinking was, if I can even get this thing down by a factor of 10%, at least I can look at getting about $100k in the bank which was a LOT to me back then. Now, with all that we have earned and spent, my head and heart have been changed drastically in 2 ways: One, I no longer see $100,000 in stacks and stacks of dollar bills. I see money, no matter how much, or how little, as a responsibility to use it both prudently and with what we here call 'utility.' Seeing $85k go 'poof!' that first year showed me that. Secondly, I see money as nothing but a tool. Its like life's lubricant and the more you have, the smoother things run for you. But use even lubricant wrong and it can be damaging, right? OK, enough metaphors... (-: In simple terms, I can no more make $100,000 last any longer than $1,000 if I am not looking at it correctly...
I could have answered you this: Yes. We were poor. Dirt poor... Broker than a $3 dollar bill... But its not the money, or lack of that was the problem. It was the way we looked at money, thus the books I recommend. Its a mind-set that has to change, but in this debt-ridden society, to even talk this way is borderline blasphemy. And if you are in debt, or even serious debt right now, that can be successfully dealt with also. Again, NEVER lose hope...
So, that should answer that, eh? (-:

Later!

 

PattyJ, I missed what you were asking the first time through... (I was busy being shocked by the cool replies and questions!)
Solo Drivers CAN make the money. Think about it. Solo Drivers make .37 cents a mile, where, correct me if I'm wrong, but my wife and I, though making a double income into a single bank account, only made .21 cents a mile each. (I pulled .37 off the Schneider International website.)
If you run on the west coast, of course your ability to make the miles is diminished, and that is a variable you have to factor in, though still not a deal killer. But if you can handle the 11 hours of running, every day, with your 10 in the sleeper, at .37 a mile would be $236 a day, times 5 days average is $1,180 a week, times 52 weeks is $61,369 a year. Of course, THAT is in a perfect world, but even so, this is where you want to pick a company that keeps you running steady, and for our season of being company drivers, Interstate did that for us. The key to our success in that season was due to the RESEARCH we poured into the potential companies we were interested in. (My wife liked the color green on their trucks was the deciding factor, eh? ha*) VERY scientific... ((-: But the fact of the matter was, there were VERY few companies we would hire on with, which goes back to what I said, was Interstate the best? No... It just wasn't as bad as all the rest! A little levity, a little truth...
I personally know solo drivers that made $50k a year and they were not burned out zombie drivers. As I remember them, they impressed me with their professional attitude and that is the main ingredient. Does this answer your question?

 

An addendum on Solo Driving: Loneliness

I have been married to my one and only, my best friend and awesomely smart business partner, all in one and then some, for nigh on 39 years now, and i can tell you that I would begin to miss her sitting up front talking with me when she was only 3' away, sleeping in the bunk as we 'toured' the USA. In other words, LONELINESS is a killer for Solo drivers, that I know for sure. In fact, way back when (winter of '84) I drove solo hauling apples out of Wenatchee WA to the Bay Area and LA for one winter. I had hauled logs, cows, rock and equipment before that, but that 8 months or so of solo without my bride made me hate trucking. I was thankful to be injured and knocked out of work at the time and swore that I would never drive again.
It wasn't driving that I hated. It was the loneliness. And so I have this to say about that:
This goes back to the plan, the vision if you will. You have to look ahead and have a plan to use trucking for a season to get ahead, and then get out of it eventually.
There is a story about a young gal that tried to swim the English Channel. She was only about a 1/2 mile off shore from the finish line when she gave up. It was dark, and foggy, and she couldn't see the shore. The next day, when a reporter asked her why she gave up when she was so close, she said she wouldn't have had she been able to see the docks!
If you don't have a vision, something to shoot for, at least some kind of goal or mile marker in life, you will not only get discouraged, but you will allow the purchase of useless plastic objects and even big ticket items (cars, pickup trucks, Harleys and the like) to interrupt, and oftentimes ruin or even kill your vision, if you ever even had one. I am trying to make a very strong point here... Without a vision, the people perish...
For solos, and teams alike for that matter, driving a truck should be a short to medium length season to get ahead, and then do something else. What else? We raised 2 awesome daughters and I always told them to do something that they would do for free, because there are billionaires out there blowing their brains out because when they finally arrived, 'it' wasn't at all what they had expected at all... Truly, ITS NOT THE MONEY...
I'll touch on this for a second. WHAT Other jobs are there? Have you EVER thought of working at a hospital? You would NOT believe how many good paying jobs are available, and the turn over is equal to most hospital's incredible complexity of departments! You don't have to do this, but it helps: With a little money saved up, you can apply for the low end, like a 'Monitor Tech' with a few online $75 classes (ECG Reading and Medical Terminology. Don't freak. They are easy, simple, entry level courses.) Or, you can go with the $3,000 class and become a Fleb drawing blood. The kicker is, our daughter works as a Fleb, (I can't spell flebotomous or whatever... ha*) and she makes about $20 an hour now, and 3 days a week says she is making plenty to help raise a family, buy a very nice house and own 2 paid for nice vehicles.
Need I say more? As I myself retire, as trucking has plumb wore me out, its actually what my wife is doing even as I type, taking her online class for the Monitor Tech job, with benefits! yay! I think its around $18 an hr, which is cool...
But back to the point: Have a plan, especially if you are solo and hate the loneliness, have an exit strategy! Unless you are like the very few who could live on the moon 24/7 all by themselves and never care if they talked to another person ever again. THAT is the perfect solo driver! If you don't fit that mode, then listen to what I am saying.
Am I trying to tell people what to do with their lives? Not at all. Like I say, "I Got Mine." I was poor, now I'm not. I am content with life and no longer have the kind of severe struggles to stay alive, pay to have the car fixed and worry when the 'fridge makes those funny gurgling noises. But I am different than most.
I like seeing others learn from their mistakes, or like me, learn from simply not knowing as much as I wish I had when I started out with a wife, then kids, and so on and so forth. Life had caught up with us also, and only by doing what I did, WE did, did we get out of the RUT. Experience is the best teacher, only it doesn't have to be YOUR experience!
I so completely sympathize with Solo drivers and what I call the Loneliness Factor that I am passionate about seeing them rise up out of the trucking industry mire and do something different, do something Better! Especially for you gals, the hospital job gig is awesome! (Sorry guys, but I am surround by a wife and daughters and have a prejustice in favor of the gals... ha*)
On the hospital job thing, I'm not talking bed-pan-city either. CNA's, bless their hearts, are much needed, but its not what you want to shoot for. A CNA is like, well, a CR England driver I once knew. LOVED trucking but hated his job... (-: THINK ABOUT IT: Most people are lazy, so if you pay for and take a few online course, you are already in the top nth percentile of job applicants for the more plush, (spelled EASY) positions at the hospital. Trust me... Go to your local hospital HR dept and ask to 'Shadow' a monitor tech for a few hours, or a Fleb as they go around drawing blood, or whatever fires your rocket. But you will be amazed at the available jobs that are much more sane than driving.
So, there's my heart for the evening... Later!

 

Ah! The ripe old age of 37 is a good time to slow down, 'cuz if you don't? Just wait just a few more years, and LIFE will slow you down... ha* When I hit 40, it was like someone threw a switch! No kidding! Its too bad that long marriages aren't the norm, because I have to tell ya, this time in life with my bride is awesome. Nice and slow, grand kids all around, doesn't get much better as far as I am concerned... I relate marriage to the gears in a transmission. Not exactly 'Love Poem' material, but it gets the point across. When we were first going together, it was like first gear, WAY powerful and oftentimes spinning the tires and out of control. 2nd and 3rd weren't much better, but sure loved that power and the speed and thrill of it all....
But now? Its like we are in 5th over-drive. Its not so powerful as to lose traction or turn us sideways, but at the same time its the perfect kind of gearing for the long haul, pardon the pun... (-:
Keep that #37 on the front burner and don't let ANYTHING get in the way, though life itself will deliver you some bumps in your plan no doubt, eh?
Later

 

Lepton1, amen and amen! J.D. Rockefeller, the old man, was asked in an interview way back when what it took to make a rich man happy. His reply? "A little more than he's already got..." We are all like that, though most of us normal folk have a beer budgets and champagne tastes, right? I can't explain it in words really, but when we slowly, brutally, crawled step by step out of that horribly depressing PIT called Debt, and finally paid off and then cut up 98% of those pretty colored credit cards, using only one to easily track our business and life's expenses, there was something 'spiritual', if you will, waking up without their hold over us. Its like when we paid off the ranch. The dirt between our toes just felt, well, different, and good! Credit Cards, in and of themselves, are not evil. But if a person has proved to themselves that they have no control over the way they are used, it would be wise not to use them at all, or better yet, educate themselves in the ways of the world's financial system (and how the psychologists that the advertising agencies pay millions to every year to better get inside your head!) because we are surrounded by their influence 24/7...