The journey begins - purchased a truck.

A quick reference to double yellows meticulous maintenance history records.

They gave us an average of 8 cents per mile for repairs.

but they started at 500 thousand and ten years ago.

You can see from DYs records how repair cost s increased through the years and miles.

Maintenance cost to operate between miles:

600,000 - 850,000: 9.0 cpm
650,000 - 900,000: 10.2 cpm
700,000 - 950,000: 9.9 cpm
750,000 - 1,000,000: 5.6 cpm (inframe no longer in costs)
800,000 - 1,050,000: 5.3 cpm
850,000 - 1,100,000: 6.2 cpm
900,000 - 1,150,000: 7.3 cpm
950,000 - 1,200,000: 7.5 cpm
1,000,000 - 1,250,000: 7.5 cpm
1,050,000 - 1,300,000: 8.2 cpm
1,100,000 - 1,350,000: 7.9 cpm
1,150,000 - 1,400,000: 6.6 cpm
1,200,000 - 1,450,000: 7.8 cpm

Any trucks i have been looking at buying are already over a million and from what I can gather yours is near that also.

10 years ago truck parts were 40 percent less and labor was quite a bit less also so you have that adjustment.

Also maintaining a million mile truck will cost more than starting with a half a million mile truck I believe.

I think to duplicate Double Yellows repair history starting with a million mile truck with today's prices you would be at 12 to 13 CPM.

Sorry for the Hijack once again just something I thought was interesting.

 

tommymonza, IMHO that post is DEFINITELY not a hijack. It speaks to the core of what any new O/O needs to consider and what DY and B&G are going through:

"How much do I need to have in reserve for maintenance and at what rate should I feed the maintenance account to assure I minimize downtime?"

That's the core of it, at least for me.

Once I get back into my brother's truck I'm sure he'll want me to build another spreadsheet for his taxes that will include all his maintenance receipts. Once I finish that I'll publish it so other folks can be edified. He purchased the '03 KW T2000 with 750K miles on it out of auction for $12K (with about 1.3 million miles on it today), and I'm sure that by now he's put in much closer to the total rate of $0.206 per mile that B&G noted a few posts ago.

If I end up purchasing that truck from my brother I'll be budgeting at least $0.20 per mile for maintenance AND will likely want to budget somewhere in the neighborhood of $0.20 per mile for REPLACEMENT of the truck (to build the ability to pay CASH or have a HEFTY down payment for another truck within a few years).

 

If you save.20 and .20 and say at the end of the year you have around $40,000 less maintain for that year you will have to give the government about 30 percent of what you saved for taxes. Until you spend it it is income. Just something else to complicate your planning.

 

Blair. Don't know a brand but most trailer dealers have them. You want a gauge that reads to 100 and big enough to read more than 5 lb increments. You should have no problem finding one in Joplin

 

Is that another reason why some buy new trucks every 3-4 years ? Spend it on a new truck instead of paying it in taxes?

 

If you take all the depreciation in 4 years and trade a truck in with 500000 that is going to start needing work. yes

So now you have a new truck again that will need very little in repairs for another 4 years. In Double Yellows thread we were able to get very close to narrowing the cost difference of buying a new truck every 4 years and keeping and repairing one instead.

The actual difference after insurance and taxes saved was surprisingly very little.

 

But if you have a good truck and trailer that is paid for and only run 60 - 70 thousand miles and makes good living why obligate yourself to a new truck. It would cost me 300,000 plus to replace my truck and trailer with new. I'll deal with repairs and taxes befor I work hard enough to pay for a new truck. You have no idea what can happen to the economy during the life of your loan. Only cost me about $100 a week when I don't work.(which is a lot of weeks)

 

you can do that or keep 70 seventy percent of every dollar you would spend on a new truck. There are other was to save on taxes, like a company pickup, retirement accounts, I paid my daughter a salary and she paid for 13 years of private school.

why spend 140,000 and borrow 120,000 of it to save 30,000 in taxes?

 

Trucking was there before the oil boom, and will be there long after. Trucking companies will either go where the freight is, or sit on their hands and hope. Either way......capitalism has it's own way of sorting out the weak.