Buying A Truck....

"Paper truckin" I love it. I just see the guy sitting in his JB hunt truck scribbling all these numbers down its funny. I know I did it I remember telling my x wife "if i run an xtra load on saturday we will be making so much money" To bad there wasnt enough to run during the week after the work went south

 

best of luck to you really.. I want you to make it.. But I would of put that 2k somewhere else Like say A slot machine

 

Good luck,...I really do hope it works out,........Keep us posted on how it goes,....I hope I don't have to say I told you so,...

 

Five posts and 9 hours of nothing...

Seriously everyone, with all respect for how hard all of you work because I work just as hard, this is all nonsense.

It has nothing to do with an examination of my B/E assumptions..

It has nothing to do with my acceptance of Waterloo's startup costs.

It has nothing to do with a discussion of the rates I found for flatbed loads within five minutes on a load board that I don't even belong to during what is being characterized, right or wrong, as the worst time to be a trucker, EVER...

Discuss my post. It will at least give your post clarity and purpose. Please, help me before I make a mistake I might regret. Tear me apart, for God's sake!! But, don't insult my hour long posts by coming on here with simple "I told you so's."

 

My thoughts,

If you are solo, those 3 jobs and deadheads really seem to be 10 days of work. So under your optimal numbers with no upsets, you're looking at about $140 a day. That's really not great, but you probably won't go under and hopefully freight will pick back up.

I think if your deadhead miles are 1/3 like that all the time you're really going to feel it.

I'm trying to figure about 15% deadhead with all other expenses. I'm coming out to about $1.22 a mile in overhead (and I'm sure I'm missing some things), and $1.75 a mile if I want to try for 40k with 75,000 miles a year.

I don't think you'll find 3000 miles per week, and your cost per mile is going to go up considerably at less than that due to the fixed expenses.

You should run them again at 1500 and 2000 miles per week.

I recreated the cpm figurer on excel just now if you want it to play around with it.

 

Thank you for the thoughtful response Pharm..

A couple thoughts:

Why would I not be able to run at least 2,500 miles a week if I could pick and choose my loads? I average about 2,650 loaded miles/week now, and I can't even optimize my loads by choosing those that I get. I'm in a perpetual competition for first in/first out with 1,200 other drivers. Shouldn't this improve with your own authority by the simple fact that you would be able to choose those loads that you want to run?

Also, I guess 1,500 mile/week would be ok. I could leave out by Monday and be back by Wednesday, lol. But, why would I do that if I could run 3,000, or even 3,500 for that matter? I just don't see the limitation here. I still think the best argument is either against my B/E numbers, which I don't think are wrong, or against the rates for loads that I continue to find while simply fooling around with the loadboards.

On a sidenote, the Baltic Dry Shipping Rate (the rate charged by shippers of dry bulk freight by sea) has increased recently. You can check it out here: Baltic Exchange Dry Index (BDI) & Freight Rates. Companies like Excel Maritime and Genco Shipping (EXM & GNK) are bouncing off of their lows as well. I don't know if this is a trend, but I think it gives further evidence that the worst of the recession may be behind us - although I do believe the hangover will last a lot longer than people think. If you want an investment tip, btw, invest in NUE, POT, FCX, RIO, PBR, COP, TC, AA, and NEM. You'll have just about every good commodity play there with some very good companies. Commodities will be where the money is to be made over the next 10 to 20 years as the Western countries print their way out of this mess in order to re-inflate their economies and the Eastern and emerging markets, like Brazil, Russia, India, and China (over 2.5 billion people, btw), continue to grow. I mean, think about it. The United States is 4.5% of the world's population at 300,000,000 people. But, we consume 25% of the world's resources because of our free market. Capitalism won the cold war. We have taught the world to play capitalism. It stands to reason that as we move forward, there will be increased demand for the same resources. The increase in commodity prices should be accelerated by the decrease that is currently happening on the supply side with all of the smaller companies going out of business and the projects of the major companies being put on hold because of lessening demand and also by the basic fact that the U.S. is 10 trillion dollars in debt and about to print its way out of a deflationary death-spiral. Look at the charts for these companies. 75% of them have doubled over the past 3 months since the depths of the recession last Nov. 20th. I'm not the one who created basic economic theory. It's common sense, really.

Thank me in 20 years and invite me to your island.

In the meantime, please try to take apart my assumptions from my previous posts on B/E or rates.

 

The ''old'' rule of thumb is that ''you'' the driver makes a profit for yourself 30-33%..after everything is deducted out.And i mean everything..

 

That is a good cost per mile you got..But you left some things out that are very important..and again i say ''to the pennie''