Should we become Owner Op team?

Hi,

My husband and I are company team drivers (have been for four years, husband been driving solo since 2002). We are toying with the idea of becoming Owner operators and have a number of questions. We are just starting out in exploring the Owner Operator route so I understand my questions may seem basic. We would not even consider buying a truck until next spring and would spend the next few months doing as much research as possible.

As a company team we currently drive 7300 per week on a dedicated route (and take off about 10 weeks per year). We earn $140,000 - $150,000-ish. We know we are lucky but we do work our butts off and our company recently got sold so things are changing (new company not wanting to maintain vehicles to same standard etc which has directly affected our ability to drive such high weekly mileage). We are really hard workers and we have the cash to buy a truck outright, no finance. Just based on those figures, do you think we are better suffering through and staying as company drivers at 7300 miles a week or would we make much better net pay (after all expenses) as an owner op team? Like I said, we are not scared of hard work and we have experience running a small, successful business and dealing with taxes, paperwork etc so that side of things doesn't scare us.
We are only looking at driving for max 3 more years doing the run we currently do (Its incredibly tiring!) But if we were making decent money as an Owner Op team we would consider driving longer (but not looking at 10+ years).

We would like to earn at least 80,000$ each after all costs, fuel, expenses, etc. Is this a realistic figure to aim for if we were to buy a new truck and are happy to work high miles most of the year?

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

 

Hi, we are not necessarily looking for a dedicated run as an Owner Operator, that's just what we do now as company drivers. We would look at buying a truck outright then leasing onto a company, not running as an Authority (not sure if that's phrased correctly but I'm sure you get my drift!)

 

Id be really interested in what @blairandgretchen and @BoyWander think? I have been following some of your threads regarding becoming Owner Ops and team driving, and we are in a similar situation to Boy wander (no house/kids etc and looking at starting with a New volvo 760 or 780). Thanks!

 

We re currently running 285,000 approx per year. So your saying that the only way to make money as an Owner Op team is too get a dedicated run? I thought (especially due to the prevelance of E-logs) that owner op teams were sought after and that not running a dedicated route could still be very profitable?

I understand what your saying, but, again Im new to this so I apologize if I'm misunderstanding but I thought lots of Owner ops leased onto a company such as Landstar, Mercer, F2F etc. Why would this be such a bad thing? We are not asking for the impossible here as far as I'm aware. We are aiming for decent time off a year and $80,000 each after all expenses - maybe this is impossible, I don't know?