Starting a small fleet

Does that prostar have a maxxforce?

 

You don't wanna hear the best way for them to make you money. It's simply selling them. About the only way you will not loose money on them.

 

Unfortunately you are fighting an uphill battle. Without having the 2years of experience to lease on with a good carrier to at least have 1 truck rolling with you driving.
If you can flip the trucks for a profit do that and in 14month buy a single truck for yourself. Save yourself from losing alot of money.

 

My advice is to sell the trucks.

You bought blind, there is no means to turn a profit and finding drivers will be hard not to fact that you need capital to make it all work.

I am betting that you over paid for these trucks.

 

This will turn into a major headache in short order. Sell the trucks and don't look back.

 

Hmmmmmm......this is interesting. You got a good deal on the trucks. Low risk. You could sell them and get instant profit, but since you're thinking small fleet here goes. Profit margin is relatively thin when operating trucks. I saw a stat where the avg owner operator has a take home of around $60000 after expenses, and there are a lot of them. Starting out, business is gonna be slow. You'll have to prove yourself to get good rates because brokers have drivers they're familiar with and want to deal with. They've built relationships over time. If Swift will let you lease the trucks on, use them to gain more knowledge and experience about the industry. It's low risk since you won't have a truck payment. See what all the costs are, try with one truck. If you start to turn profit, then put a driver in the other one. Patience is going to the key here

 

Hardly low risk... 500,000+ miles on these trucks, we are into the major repair region . They get rid of them for a reason, and he never stated which motors he has. One break down and it will be all over. Let a dealer get a hold of one of these trucks, new turbo, new EGR Cooler, all sorts of cool stuff they can sell this new inexperienced owner and never fix the problem. Or worse yet, an inexperienced driver that puts the electrical tape over the red check engine light. Sell the trucks.

 

Good advice is and your not going to like it... Flip those trucks, save your money, and get some solid experience under your belt. I had 10 years under my belt when I went and bought my truck and got insurance so it was a piece of pie... work 5 years for a company and then go do the O/O thing.

 

Just not only that, repo trucks need to be checked out more so than any other purchase. I've seen repos run into the ground because of the owner knows it will be gone and he wants to ruin it for the bank/lender.

when ever anyone says they pass inspections, I cringe and hope they are not that naive. The least to be done is a dyno/blow by ... 500 miles or 500,000 miles, this is a must do.

Negotiation the price?

Those are par $8k trucks, at best.

I've bought a set of repo's for $6k each in the past, they were low mileage trucks and four served me well, one was a dog and was scrapped out after putting a rod through the crankcase.