truck and reefer. can you make money with a employee and 1 truck trailer?

IMO. It's not worth the hassle. When I had my trucks the margins were so thin that it wasn't worth it anymore. To pay a driver a decent wage and benifits, can't see how you can run in the profit margin.

 

There are plenty of owner operators and small companies running to the USA and back to Canada hauling produce 'or even sign on with one of the larger companies pulling your own trailer '

 

You might be able to make some extra cash at it, but for what you would make with your own authority doing it, and doing payroll for the driver, all of the regulatory burden, it would take away from your oilfield time also, which is likely worth much more to you ...

Also considering your location, SK is very hard to get freight out of, anything you can put in a reefer usually pays so low it's like why even do it. So you can hope to hit a grand slam on the inbound? The freight you might be able to even load is likely mostly tied up by contracts with whichever larger carriers run the area. Come to think of it, does anything even get produced in SK, that is reefer or even van freight? Potatoes? Peat moss? Don't think there is much meat going on there if any at all ... grain goes in B trains or on the rail ...

Might be better to see what your inbound rates typically look like, and see if you could make a multiple leg trip out of it, but then again, you will be eating up much of your time which is likely more valuable spent on your oil stuff.

 

Out of Sk southbound to USA west coast is either peat moss , scrap paper/cardboard or lentils/oats. That's all I ever hauled out of Sk south bound when I ran reefer. It all pays F$&@ All ! Produce back from Cali/Arizona for Loblaws/Co-Op/Safeway etc. lots of competition. Also if your going into California you had better read up on the latest CARB rules and requirements for reefer units and tractors.
i did it for a year and a half with my own truck and I can tell you without a doubt that it's not going to make you money and may well just send you out the back door.
Sell that reefer trailer and put the $ towards something that will make you money.

 

To give an idea of the lack of money in it just google any of the reefer companies in mb and Sk , trappers trans, agritel , Turk etc. look at what they pay the driver. It's peanuts compared to any other type of trucking. There's a reason they pay so low to the drivers!

 

Yeah I kinda figured SK was like that ...

Only way I could see it working would be to take the peat moss or whatever you can get to get south, hopefully close to something paying good money, either meat or produce, take that to Ontario or Montreal, find something good out of there ... no matter what way you cut it, can't make any decent profit at it until you can score that very high paying load that finals out in SK, THEN ... you can go home ... and start it all over again for the next round ....

 

Loblaws western dc is in Regina. Co-op has a dc in Saskatoon. Nothing out of Montreal is ever any good. Unless you're doing a 4-10 pick Sysco load. Then it's just the picks that pay. Lots coming out of there is tridem loads. You will have a tandem , reduces available loads even more. Plus your now in competition with the domestic Canadian fly-by-night companies that are hauling all those loads for a buck a mile. They are also mostly Team Driven loads. Believe me it's not worth the hassle, especially not to a guy already established in the oil patch.

 

Yeah that is true for Montreal. Toronto however has steady freight going west that pays decent (I do ab and bc) ... so MTL to TOR to alberta or bc would be an option ... however Montreal directly west pays less than Toronto to west and it is more distance? Go figure ...

 

I'm in the patch now as a driver and I'm making more in my pocket here driving than I did running my own truck hauling a reefer! I wouldn't go haul a reefer again even if someone held a gun to my head!