O/o costs in Texas

Hello,

My name is Dana and I'm working on a study of Texas truck operating costs. We are doing this research under contract with the Texas Department of Transportation, so that they take trucking needs in to account when designing roads, highways, toll prices, and other factors.

We have been interviewing major truck companies with owned fleets, but we are not adequately representing the owner/operators. Mostly O/o companies like Landstar has been very helpful, but they just don't have the maintenance/accounting records of their operators, or information on their rigs. If you could provide me with some general information, and ballpark estimates of costs, that would be helpful.

• What make/year is your rig?
• What engine does it have?
• Do you operate in Texas? If so, what % of the time?

• About how many miles do you drive a year?
• Do you know about how much it cost per mile to operate your rig?
• How much does insurance cost you a year? Do you pay it, or does your company?
• How much does scheduled maintenance cost you, yearly or per mile?
• What is a ballpark figure of the cost of unexpected repair/breakdown?

• Do you use super singles?
• Do you use retreads? If so, how many, and on which axles?

• Do you have any concerns/suggestions on the design of the transportation infrastructure in Texas?
• Is there any other information you think is relevant?

Thank you for any information you can provide. We should be preparing a more exhaustive survey eventually, which will be distributed to Texan owner operators, but before we did that I wanted to get a feel for the territory.

Dana Ivey

 

There are some important local factors. Shell aggregate in the road composition in the Houston/Coastal East area causes greatly increases tire wear (as much as 30%.) Super singles are not used in Houston dray freight as the 90degree turns common to intersections there lead to more sidewall damage.

They are also trying to find out what operating costs are for trucks to try to get them on the local tollways. If a quicker run over a longer distance + toll fare is cheaper than a low-speed, high cycle run through a congested area, more truckers will use toll roads.

Operating costs are used for policies like lane rental, which tries to keep construction to off-hours when there will be minimum impact. Generally, TxDOT needs operational costs for various planning purposes. We are also working on light vehicle costs, but those are much easier to determine in many ways.

 

So far most of the communication has been with the large fleets- HEB, Greatwide, and others. We have met with Landstar too, but of course they don't keep records on their individual operators' equipment or costs.

Currently I am concerned that we aren't correctly representing the owner/operators. Since they typically operate older vehicles on average, and have different driving/business practices, the operating costs will be significantly different. We don't want the Texas Department of Transportation to only plan for the operation of large corporate fleets, and not for your typical owner/operator.

We are planning to put together a survey for owner-operators which will likely be distributed through one of the owner-operator interest groups. Before that happens, I am trying to get a few ballpark ideas.

Thanks for the input given so far.