Leasing at Prime

IP, not sure where the hostility towards me is coming from on this or at least it feels like hostility on this end and I could be missunderstanding your message completely. No where did I say that $15/week is a big financial deal to me. All I was doing is pointing out why what you pay for accounting services is $22/week vs. what beardedfreak stated that CPA was $7/week. For me personally, I don't see the purpose of spending $15/week, $780/year for a statement that I can produce myself and with more accuracy for how I run my business. Because I do 90% off network or "Cash" fueling the statement doesn't do me any good in tracking my fuel costs/mile. Right now it shows my fuel cost/mile is $0.05/mile and we know that is accurate. With that number being wrong it also messes up the bottom line number that tells you how much profit per mile you are making.

I agree, information is power and the lifeblood of knowing if your compnay is dieing or thriving. I very much treat this as a business. I use accounting software that I have set up to work for running my business. I can track all of my exspenses down to the penny, I can tell which items from which trips I haven't been reiumbursed for, currently my FM owes me $1,256.32 in reiumbursements for various trips and because I have each trip broken down I can send him the invoice for each trip along with the aged ballance report showing how much is missing from each trip (my FM actually likes that I can do that, makes his job and payroll's job that much easier). I very much plan on succeeding as a lease operator and that is why I look at the items I am spending money on each week and see where I can save. That $15/week is more money I can use towards my emergency fund, savings fund for buying the truck at the end of lease, or towards my maintenance fund. It's not breaking me but why spend money on a statement that doesn't give me accurate information.

I value my time very much. I tend to have a lot of it sitting at shippers and recievers on a daily basis. Because I have diciplined myself to enter everything into my accounting system (it's a web based system so I can access it anywhere I have internet, I would gladly show you the system if it's something of interst to you) as it happens or by the end of the day at least, it takes me very little time to do my accounting and keep track of how my business is doing.

When I get my statement thursday morning, I print it off in my truck and spend about 30-60 minutes entering what data I didn't have or editing data I have already put in (usually the revenue numbers the qc est revenue message gives me for each load is on the low side of what I actually get) and reconciling all the itmes I should have been reiumbursed for making sure I was. I don't know how much time it takes you to do your bookkeeping each week or day, but I feel my time is very well spent and it usually takes less then an hour.

From that I can pull a profit and loss statement and drill down each exspense categorey. I can compare it to my YTD numbers, last months numbers, or even what I have set up in my budget/projections to see how I'm doing. As of Friday's settlement statement, my total profit this year is $6,154.52. That includes the full amount of the week 1's deffered lease payment and the 2 new drive tires already accounted for in my system as outstanding liabilities. Most of our busines is on a cash basis, but certain things like using Prime's fuel network or national accounts for maintenance and parts are more like acrural type of accounting. I agree with you that the average lease operator needs these numbers at a minimum to begin to be successful as a business owner and not a company driver on steriods just being a place for a problem to happen.

I plan on making it to the end of my lease and being one of the 1 in 5 guys that actually completely the lease successfully. That is why I have taken the time to learn, read, ask questions, read some more, listen to what the wise ones who have gone before (like yourself IP) have to say, and still continue to learn everyday how I can improve my business and be more successful (yes grammer nazi's I just said that).

IP, I value your words of wisdome and try to follow in your foot steps. I am sorry if I came across in this post or my prior post as confrontational and trying to say you don't need to spend that $15/week for the operating statement. My point was to explain the breakdown of the $22/week you spend vs. what the other guy said was $7/week.

Good Luck! Keep the shiney side up,

Redoctober

 

numbers are good...........

 

Some feel the same way about driving 57mph in a 70 zone to save $40 in fuel a day .........

 

You forgot to figure your prime fuel discount in......

And you can't have mpg figures on your truck cruising at 70 mph.

 

Just an assumption on my part but if fuel prices and fuel surcharge have dropped, I would think that running faster would generate more revenue. Yeah, maintenance will increase at a faster rate but maintenance would stay consistent with the mileage at any speed. But if you figure maintenance costs per mile and you run 57 or 70, the maintenance per mile should stay consistent, the increase would come in frequency of the maintenance due to the increased mileage since you are running faster. But running faster also allows you to run more loads, hence increasing revenue to the truck. Fuel costs would increase due to mpg but that logically seems to be the only increase in cost.

 

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