How much was in your maintenance account?

Banks will have lower interest.

What you’re planning on doing will also dictate how much money you need in the bank when you start. Your own numbers, buying your own fuel, money for repairs, and waiting over 30 days for money to come in will mean you’ll need a sizable chunk of money in addition to getting the truck. If you’re leasing on to a carrier then really you don’t need much if you’re provided a fuel card and only have to wait two weeks for a check.

 

Only if you can get a good rate and you plan on paying back quickly. If you are just flat out broke and bad with money credit of any type might not be for you .

 

Depends on what condition the truck is in prior to hitting the road.
For obvious reasons you wouldn’t need much if you’re running a brand new, under warranty truck..
If it’s a piece of junk truck...perhaps enough cash that would have gotten you a brand new one...Lol, simply put, try buying every part to build a truck and see how much that added up to.
This past month alone I spent over 8k on “have no choice but to fix now” and some pro active PM stuff.
Be pro active on keeping your truck meticulously maintained and it will reward you..don’t just wait for things to break. Imagine the things you could have caught and replaced but now you just gave away 1.5k for a tow truck.
For me my repair and maintenance has worked out to almost exactly 10 cents per mile.. Even if you set aside 10k for running a truck like mine, (2014 with 585k at the moment) you still need to set aside a set per mile amount..

Once you start piling debt onto a credit card with no way to pay it off every month, it’s the beginning of the end.

 

When first started leased on to a company and only had about 5ish I think but had a few high limit credit cards for emergencies. It was definitely up and down the first few months but manageable.. . now I keep 10k in a truck account, use some here and there and just tranfer out of another account to get back to the 10k....

 

when i started out i had around 10k cash funds for fuel repairs ect. it got real thin at a few points starting out. now iv got enough set aside for operating expenses i could buy another truck if i needed to..lol

 

You got it going on.......
Your a step up from most of these guys on here-
You dont haul "freight" ....Which allows you to Buy/Lease an out building with space- Big Tools and Big Bills,Keepin her warm in the winter lol..

Freight Haulers make about Half as you guys do- Thats why you see owner-ops with Vans and Flatbeds parking in muddy lots-Truckstops-Walmarts parking lots on their days off...Cant afford a steel building with out space-

Took me a Long Time to get comfortable financially as haul plain Freight on a flat- Too Many people involved.......God Bless you EZ- May your fortunes stay plentiful and you get that 359 project a good success story.

 

Ha, or if you found a 359 to work on!

 

Dealership won't take a credit card for over like $1500.

So don't pin your hope on that, unless you have one that has like a $25K limit, and will give you $12K or $15K in cash on it.

You have to save every penny to begin with. You can build up some cash quickly, but you have to build it.

 

You probably need 15-20k nowadays that sounds like a lot but a bad spell of luck can run that down fast. I wouldn't lower that amount even if you have a brand new truck fully under warranty. Even brand new trucks can walk off the assembly line with problems there are so many systems on these things that all it takes is for one thing to be done incorrectly while the truck's being built and it can cost you several weeks of downtime. Warranty repairs on large $$ items rarely happen fast the manufacturer's has to give approval before a dealership will even order your parts. Sometimes getting that approval may take awhile there may be emails going back and forth between the dealership and the manufacturer's warranty department for a week before they agree to warranty the work and then you may have to wait another week on parts and another week on repairs. In fact anything can cost you several weeks of downtime hit an animal particularly large game moose/elk something walks out in front of you at night you don't see until it's too late, another driver hits you while executing an idiot maneuver at a truckstop, a fourwheeler hits you and it's not even your fault and out of nowhere you're revenue flow is shut off. Body shops around the country are always backed up on work and behind. Call some body shops and ask them what their current time is to get to a big job like that. The average answer you're going to get is 1-3wks just to get you in then you still have to wait on them to go back and forth with the insurance company on the approval of each individual part to be replaced/repaired then you have to wait on parts you could be down for a month.

 

$0. The $1000 I had went straight to Caterpillar, for Rods and Mains, on a C model I bought with 500 k. My version of a warranty.