Truck and Trailer monthly payment $5200 too much?

Most would disagree but I'd say zero.

 

He's making as much if not less than a company driver plus the headaches maitnance etc. Tell him to burn it all down and collect insurance and try again.

 

Poor guy. Probably hanging by his throat trying to cover those payments. A direct shipper won't make a difference to this guy lol. Probably would offer him a slice more than what the borkers would. I'm having anxiety just by thinking about it.

 

I think what Wooly's friend, the professor, is saying is that you can break down the pay into segments. Driving will get you the rate for driving. If you arrange for your own freight you get paid for the broker/sales portion. If you do your own paperwork you get paid the bookkeeping/compliance portion. If you own your own equipment you get a market return on your capital. If after all these are combined together you have excess return that is called an economic (not accounting) profit.

 

lol I second that I hope he started out with decent savings in the bank.

 

When Wife and I were a team, our 2001 Century's Fuel bill is a range between 85,000 for the year depending on pricing ranging from 1.60 all the way to 6.00 plus on 9-11. for the 10 months we had that tractor that works out to 8500 a month in fuel. Driver pay worked out to just about 65,000 on top of that. So.. truckpayment 5200, fuel 8500, average monthly driver pay 5500 more or less depending on situation with two drivers. Ranging from roughly 8000 in salary gross for me down to 1500 gross for trainee together. Call it 10,000 a month for several months. Then back down to normal payroll.

Tows? twice, repairs roughly 3000 dollars for the wrecker call, repairs related to the tow (Transmission Automatic bricking because never was shut off, rockwell to clear the stack buffer.) three alternators, two sets of batteries, two complete premium sets of tractor tires for two winters. (Tires were about 300 plus each call it 7000 per year on them. So worth it versus ice. Property damage accidents claims reached approximately 15,000 dollars easily written off by the store manager who was found at fault for failing to control traffic around delivery of his load in his hired 18 wheeler (That's us) with his staff and so on. That was a bad day but it's something that we just wrote off and moved on. And a couple of small time parking weight tickets etc that really does not impact costs that much.

Costs? Why certainly. Horse FIrst, Then Saddle, then yourself... AFTER your Soldier Friends are taken care of first before yourself. And when you finally have something for yourself, drink 10 dollars of it and hand over the rest to the Wife.

 

Yes - we've seen some arrogance in brokers lately. But things change.

I agree with @m16ty - ideally a zero equipment payment.

Me?

Truck - 0.
Trailer 1 - 0.
Trailer 2 - $510/month

Insurance (leased to a carrier) $600/month for physical damage on all, work comp, UL/bobtail.

The way I see it - it at least gives me the ability to turn my nose up at cheap heavy freight, as I did on Friday, and go home. I was told " If you're going to go broke - do it at the house, not running down the road."

That poor guy sounds like TQL and CHR's go to man for hauling their "So, what would you do it for" freight.

 

In a begger's guise Ghalib
Spectacle of generocity, I see ​