Current Choice driver

If you wouldnt mind me jumping on your system some day when you are in town, shoot me an e mail. Im on a bid run this week and am supposed to be home every day, but starting next week Im back on the open board so weekends are the only days I KNOW I will be in town and can meet up with you.

 

Im not sure why you think this is about Landstar. Did you watch it? Its from Apr 2010 about a guy from a low volume area (Near Reno NV) in an old, very fuel inefficient truck (5mpg) that has problems getting home on a regular basis. Has nothing to do with LS, other than he couldnt find loads out of IA (supposedly). According to him, there were under 30 all day that one day they filmed. Just looked on LS overflow board (the one open to the public) and there are over 40 van loads out of IA right now (thats what he had, a van) not counting whats on their Live board, at 6pm central time on Wed. Based on what I saw before, I would guess there are several hundred van/refer loads (which is what I would pull there) right now out of IA.

 

There is no way he should frankly. From the first thing he said: "Im in trucking because I like the sound of the engine and the rattling of the truck"? Ummm, that aint the greatest reason to be an O/O. That truck was at least 15-20 years old (in 2010), and he was making payments on it? That didnt make sense to me. A truck that old should have been cheap enough to pay cash for outright, and if he didnt have the cash for that he certainly doesnt have a cash reserve for if things go bad. He was hoping to get 6mpg off a very light load. I drove a Century back in 2000 that I could get 8.3 out of with 25,000 on it (I hauled airfreight and 25k was HEAVY for air freight) so a decent mileage truck was certainly available in 2010 when that video was made. I got to wonder if that video was made up by the producers with an agenda.

And Wanderer1, thanks. My attitude is fine. You have to have a little bit of business sense to be in business. I have the business sense to know what is and what is not profitable, and I have been either a driver or the son of a driver my entire life, so I do know this business as well. I never even considered being an O/O in the past because I was never in a situation where I had the cash to buy a truck outright plus have enough of a reserve not to mention I never really considered it worth the risk before.

As for the having business sense for example, if the driver in that video had just invested in a more economical truck (one that gets 8mpg vs the one he has at 5mpg) on 10,000 miles a month he saves 750 gals of fuel. At todays prices (of say 2.60 a gal) he would have nearly 2k a month more in his pocket. If you buy a "newer" used truck (say 3 years old) every 3 years, your fuel saving alone would pay for 2 such trucks every 3 years. I dont have to be a math major (which I am btw) to figure that out.

And I dont think I ever said it was easy, although frankly it isnt that hard really. Look at the board. Know what you have to be able to make to do it. If the numbers are there, then you are good to go. If not, you dont go. Pretty simple, and dare I say it, easy. People get in trouble when they haul cheap freight just to have something to get them moving. I dont live hand to mouth, I dont have to take whatever comes along. I dont have to take cheap freight. I have investments in place that pay me dividends in the 80k a year range and over half of them is in a Roth so 45k of it is tax free. Which is why I am in a position now to consider becoming an O/O. Again, because I do have the business sense. The old adage of it takes money to make money is absolutely true.

Which was the whole point to this thread in the first place. I know I can get the numbers I need to get at LS. But would I be better off with Choice? Having never seen their board, I dont know. From what I am hearing, the answer to that is no. And seemingly LS has more loads than Choice as well. But again, I have never seen Choices board so Im going on hearsay on that.

The only real plus I see (from the outside looking in) to Choice vs LS is that at LS I would own my own trailer and thus everything would be live load and unload whereas at Choice it would be drop and hook. But it would also be at a 10% per load cost (LS 75% with refer trailer vs Choice 65%). Frankly if Choice had the same numbers for both loads and revenue then there wouldnt even be a choice to make. LSs 10% advantage wouldnt outweigh (to me) the hook and book option at Choice.