Double Yellow's Company Driver to Independent Thread

@Accidental Trucker touched on it -- but basically yes, your business should earn a return on the money it invested. For example, my business has locked-up:

$15,000 (15 year-old tractor)
$20,000 (2-year old trailer)
$15,000 (cash reserves)
----
$50,000

That's money I own, but can't use elsewhere. Now if I could earn a 10% return by investing (for example, in stocks, bonds, a rental home, loaning money to another small business, etc), then it costs me $5,000 every year in lost opportunity to tie that money up in my business. So instead of saying I netted $55K, I should really say I netted $50K in my trucking business and maintained the $5K return on that $50K investment I could have earned elsewhere (income I would have earned doing no work).

Worse, equipment usually is worth less with age. My tractor is pretty well depreciated, but my trailer will probably lose at least ~$2,000 in value over each of the next few years. So the money my business earned goes from $55K, to $50K, and now to $48K.

And even that isn't fair -- because I'm not separating the cost of my labor from my business profits. In my mind, a business "profits" only what the owner could earn doing very little actual work. For instance, If I hired a driver to work those 5 months, it would have cost at least $25K. So now my business profit is $23K.

My bank account still grew by $55K because I'm the one who earned that $5K interest, the $25K in driver wages, the $23K in business profit, and because I paid that $2K in depreciation upfront when I purchased the trailer.

Yeah, that F2F debacle set you back this year, but its good to see you and @mp4694330 find a good home & switch trailers to move more consistent freight. Early on @RedForeman tried to teach me the wisdom of the reefer -- that is, people always have to eat -- but I'm stubborn and pick up things slowly.

I do think spot market van guys waste a lot of their year spinning their wheels. For instance, if I wanted to go back to work today, I'd be looking at $1.21 to get back to the midwest which is a lot of work for no real gain. I mean look at the road conditions on Donner -- I'd literally be spinning my wheels:


But rates are nearly doubled during the peak 3-1/2 months. If that isn't enough work, the last week of the month always seems to have a decent rate spike too. I just need to find something productive to do with all that time off.

I'll get there one of these days. But for now, I take some comfort in the fact I tarped just a little less than you

 

I have and I do often run the same loads out of and into Reno, NV. But I'm not willing to commit to a defined schedule (that sounds too much like a job to me). And I'm prevented by CARB rules (and my unwillingness to become compliant) from doing more than 1000 miles/year in my home state.

I have taken some time to look for property around Eastern Tennessee (Knoxville to Bristol), but my enthusiasm for the area was dampened when I discovered how bicycle-unfriendly most of the surface streets are and that they still have blue laws (can't buy that smooth Tennessee whiskey on a Sunday?!).

The State of Jefferson movement has also been picking up speed -- today all but 2 counties in the northern 1/3 of the state have formally declared their desire to leave California: