O/O's

Determine what you need to afford your personal exspenses and pay yourself a salary. For one person that may be $450/wk for another it may be $1200. Remember that alot of exspenses can be paid for by the company thus reducing personal and company taxes. Cell phone, PC, printer, fax, (Jet-ski's boats, 4-wheelers don't count) just about anything that can be used for your work should be bought and paid for by the company and figured in to your business expenses which will determine your break even cost per mile. This too will reduce the amount you will need to pay yourself since the "company" will be supplementing your personal needs. When all is said and done you may be fine with $300/wk.

Taxes should be paid quarterly.

 

here is harbins story:
i jumped in head 1st, financed everything, found a dispacher(75 a week) but he didnt have my best interest in mind, and at the time i had not learned that you MUST SAY NO TO CHEAP FR8. sometimes i hauled for 1.10. keep in mind insurance is 800 mo. so i was playing catchup on my bills, then my tranny began to leak a bit, i couldnt fix it cuz i was trying to get out of debt(stooooooopiddddd) tranny went out. cost 6k foe me to fix, had to go back as a company driver to earn a living. but i had more bills now than ever. couldnt make ends meet. mortgage tgruck paymen trailer payment and other ####. ruined my credit and emptied my 401k to get back on the road, and now playing catch up harder than ever................. to be continued

 

You hit the nail on the head there.....

I have almost a half million invested with 3 rigs. I wish it was only 5K to get started... and no you wont get rich. You may be able to provide a better living but in our current economic crisis it is hard enough to just scrape by. Heard through a reliable source that freight is down industry wide over 38%. Not down in price but down in available freight, now top that terd sandwich with the fact freight rates are down too and just try to guess how much it will cost to start a business. You need enough cash on hand to float the bills for the next 6 months, then if it turns around, it will probably take closer to 2 years to recover your losses during this time. Not trying to be a sour apple, just being very frank. Now is not a good time to start a new trucking venture.

If you are going to go at it by yourself, then I would not recommend getting your own auth. etc. Lease to a good company and they will let you run on theirs. It is not easy at the moment (though no real business ever is) but there are too many things stacked against us at this point in time. If you are looking to do this, I would say at least stay where you are until April. Freight is always slow this time of year but with the other circumstances that are involved, economic crisis, new president with no prior experience in economy, etc. it is just too unstable to take that risk. I thnk the proper phrase your father should have told you is you will never make it big if you dont have something to risk. Being a business owner is not all that grand and the only way to ever make it "rich" in this line of work is to grow. small profit per truck times many trucks makes your profit bigger if you are the sole proprieter. Sure you could get a few lucky breaks and make it hand over fist but that is just temporary as many will tell you on here. My expense that I quoted earlier is money I have invested in decent used equipment, insurance at the tune of 12k X 3, which is up for renewal in May etc. and is my forecast of what I have setaside as well to survive these times. It is something you need to concider very carefully but I will still stick to my opinion that this is not the time to start.