Starting trucking business in California

It would likely be wise to go to a number of local, small, successful ventures to see how their opening months/years were. Good call, thank you.

 

You forgot one thing, as the owner of the business, you will have to work a minimum of a half day, which 12 hours is up to you.

 

I haven't heard this yet, can you elaborate please? I'm early on in my research so any and all information is greatly appreciated.

 

I think he’s just saying it’s A LOT of work. About insurance I started as a local intra-state company meaning trucks dont leave the state and have 100 mile radius or so. My driving record wasn’t good (Speeding, unsafe lane change, failure to pay, etc I was young! lol) and even though I’d been driving trucks since I was a little kid I didn’t even have a CDL. So, buddy of mine who had been driving dump trucks did some driving for me and we used him as the first driver to get going. Eventually after a few years we went interstate and I hired more drivers during that time and never looked back.

 

So what was your focus when you were intrastate? It seems reasonable to start locally, but in your experience what were the pros and cons? How did you pay your driver starting out & since they only had a 100 mile radius, do you remember what kind of miles they would average daily/weekly? What kind of work did you do with that type of radius?

And when you say you used him as the first driver, does that mean when getting a quote from the insurance company you used his driver record starting out? Thanks again for your response and your consideration.

 

As a business owner, your going to be very busy.
Small business are the backbone of the economy.
Your work days are going to be long, 24/7/365.

Know that it will take time. Might take a long time. Don’t let that slow you down.

Lastly, while it’s good to put a pool of information, ideas and opinions together. When the time comes get the right people for the job. Attorney, CPA, Banker, the people who know what you don’t.

 

Thank you. I think their is great wisdom in gathering the appropriate help for the job. We all have our strengths after all.

 

I started out more as a warehouse and had an old truck and trailer to deliver loads to my customer. That was only like a 25 mile radius but I believe the shortest insurance does is 100. Even if you go out 200 as log as that’s not your norm it’s not a big deal. Intrastate low radius insurance is far more reasonable starting out and I didn’t realize it at the time but it gave us our start with getting insurance history at a more affordable cost.

He was paid hourly and yes he was the one used as our first driver to get insurance. Later on what we did was what I call out and backs. Get a load going say 100 to 150 miles, deliver, reload something coming back home and deliver it. So your loaded both ways and home every night. This sort of depends where you live though and how much freight is available. After a few years we got the full interstate authority and expanded the insurance radius to like 300 miles, then eventually to essentially unlimited radius.

It’s jist kinda how it worked out for me. Baby steps starting small and building from there. I do have to say that the warehouse was the bread and butter at the start and I didn’t even know about DAT lol but once I discovered it was when I started putting the out and backs together and grew from there.

 

Woah, thanks for this insight! Based on the horrendously scary numbers I've seen for insurance quotes for new ventures I'd say that intrastate seems like the most ideal way to do your first two years perhaps. Would you mind explaining how you got to the point where you were basically the warehouse hauling to your first customer? I'm interested in what you mean by "more of a warehouse" and how you reached out and found your first customer. Also, did you have a driver before you made it that far? The first months are the most obscure to me. I've always guessed that it goes 1. Authority 2. Insurance 3. Hire a driver (with no work?) 4. Find a lane - but the last two seem to be at odds with each other.