is it still worth getting your own authority these days in the dying industry ?

That would be too risky for Me. Reason being, too many things rely on others actions. Trying to coordinate Driver, Truck maintenance and repairs, deal with everyone involved, while working a job. Sounds like a potential mess, to Me.

 

Bigger profit margin?

I think they are lucky to make 4%.

 

Thanks for the reply sir.What I was thinking 1.the lease would be a brand new truck
2.I would get an account from a major LTL (they're always running Ads. to get people to lease straight trucks through them and get work through them)
3They would also take care of the paper work I would just provide driver,take care of fuel and worry about the maintenance.does this make any sense at all ?

 

Best I could tell, guy I used to work for had 150 trucks, his profit margin was like 3% to 4% on roughly $30,000,000 revenue.

I could live on that...

 

When there's no driver involved that saves a whole lot of money. No drivers pay, no health insurance or other benefits to provide. Less office staff to pay and provide benefits for. It's all good as far as the Mega's are concerned .

 

I know of a guy who does reasonably well at Midland. They seem like one of the better companies.

 

F that! No way I would run 150 trucks on such low margins and for a million bucks per year. Money means nothing when your about to have a heart attack all the time.

I’d rather run a much smaller operation that’s also much more profitable.

Edit: I learned a great lesson early on from my first customer. They were doing 35 million per year gross. We were doing under 500k gross. Who netted more profit? We did. A lot of these companies are like being up on jacks with the wheels spinning. They are turning a ton of miles and getting no where.

 

Yeah, I see your point. However, his company also provides a LOT of side benefits that are written off through the business that go on top of that million, believe me

 

That's a million a year. He probably has people to take care of the headaches. Doesn't matter where you live that is good money and I would take that.

 

You would be scared to death all the time of the market going down or losing a customer and losing it all. No way in hell I’d run on those margins. Or your trucks getting into crashes and being sued for everything or your insurance sky rocketing and once again losing it all.

@Scooter Jones is he still in business to this day?

I’d rather run 20 trucks and have a nice brokerage, on say 15% margins and make my million that way. It would still be a lot of work and worry but much more manageable and low key. Still could have a great team of people handling the day to day work. That’s my idea of ultimate success anyway. That’s exactly what I’m aiming to do and achieve actually. Around 5 mil trucking and around 2.5 mil brokering on 15% is 1 mil per year. Now that I could handle!

It’s not all about the size, but the profitability.