How are O/O making a living at $1.00 a mile

I agree. Also, it seems when you add in the extra load/unload times, and dead head that can come into play. Reefer and Flatbed I don't feel make anymore money. I can reload near by and be back to making great money.

 

It's sad, cause your right.

 

To make it as a Lease Op at a dollar a mile. The driver has to TRAIN newbies. The truck will be doing 3 to 4 thousand miles a week. On the weeks without a trainee the truck breaks even or is in the hole. Then the first week with trainee it might still be in hole.
Only way to make it pulling cheap freight is to get lots of miles.

 

I am a L/P driver and I do get paid that infamous dollar a mile. I easily clear a thousand to fifteen hundred a week. Why? Because unlike o/o's, I get paid loaded or empty and I get the fsc for both as well, plus we get a .40 cpg discount at loves on fuel. So even though I pay around 1100 or so a week in expenses, I still make a pretty decent profit. Do I make more than a company driver? No, and i'm sure some make more than me, but at the end of my lease I come out with a truck I own, still under warranty and the money to rebuild the engine if needed or just add on to the the price of the truck as a trade in and down payment for another newer truck. So you can keep knocking the l/p all you want, and I will sit over here showing how stupid it is to say all programs are bad. And yes, before you say prove it, I can. Are there bad programs out there, YES, way more bad than good and if you don't have the smarts to figure out the difference before you sign the papers you better find another career. But saying all programs are bad just because they pay a dollar a mile without knowing the facts is just as stupid. And no, I don't nor will I ever train.

 

In my opinion, if you think a truck can't be run under the right circumstances for a dollar a mile, then you have about as much business sense as a toad swimming in a snake pit and probably shouldn't be driving a truck anymore than any of those you are whining about.

 

There are no good or right circumstances. If you're single and have no other at home type expenses you can keep up the appearance that it works but eventually it will take you out. If your wife has a great job with good benefits you might also hang in there playing trucks for free. Otherwise I've tried it before with a paid for truck and know for certain it doesn't work. You won't support a family with it and you most certainly won't grow a business running that way. I lasted about 2 years before I made a change to my operation. It was that or continue on and bleed out to nothing.

 

I think the best questions is: Why would they have to?

I'm paying trucks absurd amounts of money to go places. A lot of people on this board are mad at brokers for going out and finding a truck and making money. How is it not ok for me to make my 10-25% (avg margin is 12.xx% so don't get too butthurt about me doing ok sometimes) but it's ok for a trucking company to get paid 2.50/mile and then turn around and pay the guy who supposedly owns the truck AND drives it 1.00 per mile? And the 2.50 a mile is after I've already taken my cut?

Yeah I guess a fuel discount, insurance, plates, a dispatcher to do your thinking for you, and a steady rate of pay (per mile... your actual paycheck can vary as much as mine can) is worth 60% of the gross revenue on the truck. But I'm the thief. Remember that guys, the real monsters are the brokers who go out into the world and actually do the work of finding the freight AND the trucks. We're bloodsuckers.

 

I remember pay was around 82 cents per mile around 1998 but everything else was a lot cheaper also.....

 

I guess I don't see the point of what you're doing for the same or less pay than a company driver makes.