I'm thinking of buying my own tractor, what will I need in order get my own authority?

Before jumping into buying your truck. You need to ask yourself several questions.
1. What are you looking to do?
2. What kinda experience do have?
3. What will you be pulling? Dry Van? Flatbed? RGN? Reefer?
After answering those questions. Then you need a business plan to figure out how your run this operation. Right now your the beginning of your journey. You need to read some of the experiences (posting) on this forum.

Here are a couple: Double Yellow: Company Driver to Independent Thread, The Journey Begins - purchased a truck. Those threads will give important info that you can use and answer a lot of your questions. Have fun, it's a journey

 

With the question you asked as mentioned above you need more experience trucking and learning the busiess end of trucking,.Best to haul for shippers,,brokers like being leased to a carrier take a commission , a percentage of the gross revenuse for the load
Cost for you authority $300 to the government,,about $5-6K for your liability
ins, $500 to $1,000 for your cargo ins and $2,000 to $2500 for you state IRP registration the first year.
Then once all this is in place you need enough money in the bank to run your company, pay for all your expenses, fuel,tolls ,payments, you personal travel expenses and all you personal home bills for 60 to 90 days,,more is better. It will take an average of 45 day once you book and haul then deliver a load until you get paid.,If you plan to factor your freight invoices to start you better not buy a truck until you have enough capital to run with your own money, other wise you will most likely make less than a company driver.

 

Here is another thread that you can read up on, I keep this one bookmarked along with the Double Yellow thread:
So you want to "own" your own company

 

I bought a 5 year old Freightliner, DD60 14L, had 725K, ran well, drove well. I have had some expenses, sure, but I'm making more than I'm spending, so I guess it's OK. I have one year left on my 3 year commercial note. Drove it 250K in 2 years, never missed a pickup or delivery. To date.

Then, there's new. Say $165K, higher monthly cash requirements, higher insurance, so on. The warranty will protect your investment, but if your truck is in the shop, you'll be in truckers prison. New trucks aren't any less likely to need some love, either. In fact, some new trucks are just not good. All in all, it's a gamble either way. Of course, new trucks are easier to live in, and they smell better.
Best. J

 

The search feature on here will get you HOURS of reading material on what you need.

Brokers are better; direct shippers BEST.

 

Brokers make their money by taking part of what the shipper is paying to move the load. Say load pays $1000. Broker will keep as much of that as he can get by with. Probably a minimum of $100 but could be as much as $400-$500. Depending on how bad a trucker wants it.

If you deal directly with the shipper you get the whole $1000.

That's how it works. Which would you rather have. $500-$900 or the full $1000?

You will do the same amount of paper work dealing with the broker as with the shipper. You have nothing to gain by dealing with the broker unless you are not able to deal direct with the shipper.

Some companies, especially the larger ones will not deal directly with a one truck operator. Some will.

I get e-mails from several shippers daily. I look on the load board and see brokers listing the same loads as they also get the e-mails from the shipper.

I have called the brokers at times just to see what they were paying. Even on the cheaper loads the brokers will take at least $75-$100. There may be some instances where they take less but rarely.

You need to use shippers direct when loading in your home area if possible. Then use a broker to get back to your home area if necessary.

 

A little misleading to say that direct you will always get 100% of what the broker would take. Things are not so clear cut out here. Granted most everything from brokers is cheap garbage until it needs to move cause it will move for nothing more often than not. A lot of your shippers out here that will work with anyone know just as well as brokers do that trucks are cheap. You're dreaming if you think you're going to command the same rate as an agent that covers 100 loads a week for a shipper. Not going to happen. You're getting 100% direct but you have no idea what other carriers or brokers are getting. If everyone does know what rates everyone else is getting it's probably because everyone knows that's where to go direct and so the customer has the luxury of setting rates - until they can't find and really need a truck. Probably when a load at a shipper like that has to go the broker would pay you more than you could ever get direct. Now you might find a small shipper looking for great, dependable service that prefers working direct with small carriers and pays great. But good direct is exactly like good brokered, very difficult to come by. You're competing direct with every other tom, dick, and harry out here same as spot.

 

this is off topic but I don't think is worth making a new threat, I was delivering new Hyundai trailers from the rails to the dealers this whole week, I was shocked of how bad they ride at first I thought is was my truck but then I realized it was the trailer what a big piece of garbage I don't always say this but if I ever leave the intermodal side I will never EVER go back to dryvans specially if I got to haul a Hyundai trailer