Questions for OO

Never let anyone tell you , you can't do it company's are so desperate theses days for drivers anything is possible.....they told me as a starter I would have to go over the road but I didn't , I came out of school straight to a dedicated position....Just get different companies perspective...Good luck

 

You can always get your Authority, have that for one year, and then you can lease on to somebody.

After a year you'll be okay but you have to get through that year and get that insurance paid off and not go broke.

You will probably have to buy a trailer also.

It would be easier to just work for somebody for a year and then go lease on to be honest.

 

Just reading this tells me you don't get what I and others have been saying for a while.

Elogs are not an issue, too many cry about it because they don't get how to use their time, they are thinking like the hos is here to hold them back.

Insurance is different, your daddy's time even if it was ten years ago is gone, insurance is high. Ten years ago I could have had new drivers start within my fleet. But now it cost more than they are worth. You can get insurance through a fleet if you want to lease with them but still it will be higher than it should be.

$25k for a starter truck?

Most likely you will need to put in another $10k making it road worthy, then have $15k in reserve for breakdowns. We have enough junk on the roads and one reason why we deal with dot enforcement like blitz week is we can't stop that junk from being on the road.

 

you can get your own authority and there are brookers out there that will give you loads your not going to be dealing with the better ones but there are many that won't even ask if you know what you are doing

 

You yourself have to do the leg work, none of us can do that for you.

Call some trucking companies and talk to them, call some insurance companies and talk to them as well. What your wanting to do is not exactly impossible, just expensive!

I have my own authority with just one truck. I have put in millions of miles of driving in the last 31 years, in those 31 years I have NEVER EVER EVER had an accident! And it reflects on my insurance, I pay less than $7k annually for my company.

My truck is pre-Elog yes. 1995 W900L Kenworth, I totally rebuilt it with my own 2 hands. And no one helped turn the first #### bolt! My truck is older.... but I'll put it up against any truck out there when it comes to safety, and mechanical condition. Right down to a brand new truck.

Do the leg work!! It's doable, but it's expensive simply because of your experience. None of us are trying to be mean here.... just honest. I wish you luck.

 

Is anybody else tired of seeing posts like this?

“I have zero experience, but I want to go straight to the top and be an O/O. I don’t know anything about HOS but I know that I have to avoid ELDs so I can run as many miles as I can stay awake for. I don’t care what it costs, I can afford it. I don’t care what the loads pay, I just want miles. Etc, etc...”

I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve worked my ### off to get to where I am and I take it personally when someone makes it sound like experience and hard work are worthless. If you’re fresh out of high school you apply to be a cashier at Walmart, not the #### general manager.

 

Yeah I am getting tired of it, some ask questions just to back their plans and get bent out of shape when reality hits them in the face.

I won't post links to some of these threads but I can tell you even in good times, a lot of these guys are failing because they piss money away without understanding it is to be put aside.

I know of one guy that the bank is repo'ing the trucks this week, I got the heads up from the bank to see if I want to purchase them from them. I got info from the assets officer he took a loan out for three trucks, put three drivers in them, ran them for almost a year then stopped paying four months ago when the rates were not covering his "expenses". They tried to help him out, but the asset officer said he was so disorganized, owed the drivers a lot of money and is so much in debt within a year that he could not make it no matter what.

 

Agreed. You can always take solace in the fact that 95 percent of them fail.

 

We can't really blame them for trying to become independent. Most people want to be their own boss at some point in their lives, but the desire to be something generally isn't enough to become what you want to be. It takes hard work to be successful at anything, and if buying a truck and hauling freight on your own was simple, everybody would be doing it and shipping rates would average .75 cents per mile because there would be more drivers available than loads.

 

Agreed. The way I see it though is if one isn't willing to spend countless hours scouring every possible informational avenue available to them they already show weakness. Simply posting a thread asking for a job lead with no verifiable experience isn't very bright. This place has more than enough information to answer nearly any possible question a person could conceivably need an answer to. Just have to be dedicated enough to really want to find it. Running a transportation business successfully requires much more dedication than a simple website query.