New authority...and were rolling

Wanted to put a note on here and say thank you to all the experienced owner operators on here. I've trolled the threads for months now, knowing I was going to start my own thing, and have learned a great deal and have had read a lot of good advice from owners who have been successful and know what they are doing. So thank you!!!

Between this site, other research and the resource of OOIDA I have received my operating authority and have been going for almost a month now. I've made some mistakes and I'm sure I will have a lot more but because of resources I've been able to avoid a lot of them.

My back ground....I have a lot of family members in the trucking business. I have never worked in the industry but have been around it and have successful people I get advice from. I had an opportunity to buy a truck and flatbed a year ago from someone I know that was retiring. Its an older truck but was reliable and I got a good price. I hired my dad who had been driving for as long as I've been alive. I leased the truck to my uncles company. He has a small fleet and has been in business for about fifteen years. I kept track of all the numbers for a year and decided I wanted to try it on my own. With the support of my Uncle who I was leased to and my dad driving I finally started my own authority about a month ago. I work another job but have time to do this business. My wife stays home with the kids and with her professional background she is helping do everything from dispatching to the paper work.

It cost me about $5,500 to get everything switched over to my truck. After doing all the research it was close to what we budgeted for . I did all the filing myself. This cost included everything from a fax service, permits, Arizona base plates, authority, insurance and every other thing the government nickle and dimes you for to get started.

Insurance cost about $2200 down and $850.00/mo. for a ten month term for a year of insurance. This was the best coverage for the price that I found. Could have been a little cheaper but I elected for some extra coverage's. OOIDA was A LOT CHEAPER but some of the brokers I was planning on using would not accept them. Being a new company definitely had an impact on the insurance cost. Hopefully in a year it will come down a little.

Signed up for ITS and OOIDA's load boards. They have been great. We have used them both but are still undecided if it is worth paying for both. ITS has more options. We are using a factoring company for the cash flow to get started. The fee is just a little higher than I liked but they have no minimum and we can bill on our own if we want. It won't be long before we can bill most invoices ourselves but I think sometimes its worth factoring some invoices just to make sure you get paid. We have factored half of our invoices with the factoring company, a third we factored for 2% for ten day pay with the broker and a third we have invoiced ourselves. With all our expenses, including fuel, star up cost and payroll, we were almost $11,000 down before we got our first pay. If anyone was to start on their own I would recommend having access to about $15,000 cash to make it through the start up. Once the money started coming in it balanced out quickly.

We have been able to stay busy and keep our truck moving. I'm learning quickly, with the help of experienced people, where to go and not to go and the rate we need to go into bad freight areas. We have been able to exceed our goal as far as pay per mile goes. We took advice from this board and have turned down cheap freight that didn't meet our minimum and it has worked out so far. I know this winter will be a good test to our business plan when things slow down.

I'm always looking to learn new things and open to any advice anyone has. Thanks to everyone on here that has good advice and are willing to share.