Stepping Out With My Own Numbers

It’s an economics term. Ludwig Von Mises and the Austrian school of economics. My name is a good ol’ mono syllabic American name of Tom.

 

My family is Czech, Irish, and Cajun. Except for the Cajun part, the rest didn’t get here until after WW1.

 

So, awhile back I had a second truck under my authority. It was a T660, “Fleet maintained”, and Cummins. That truck almost put me out of business. I said I’d never do it again, but over the past 10 mos. I’ve had a truck leased on with a carrier and a guy in it and that’s worked out pretty well. It’s a 2015 Volvo, I shift, I bought off a private seller. Low miles and was used to haul office furniture and electronics around Baltimore.
I am now negotiating with a dealer on a 2016 Freightliner with a 6x2 and specs that are perfect for me, with plans to lease it on as well. I have a guy that wants to drive for me. Pay a fixed weekly rate, maximum allowable Per Diem, and reimburse you to 450.00 of their health insurance. Comes out to around 81k a year in total pay.
I’m not in it for the money. My goal is to make 1200-1500 a month on a truck with a driver in it.
So, working on this deal right now and I’ll be at three trucks. I’m not interested in getting beyond that, for now. I really like these Freightliners this guy has though and he has several, all matching units. Only 235,000-240,000 miles on them.
I keep telling myself, don’t do it, but the guys I find, they meet someone on the road and try and recruit them. It’s not something I asked him to do. This guy I’m looking at hiring seems decent and he also lives in AR, which is nice. Have to see how it goes.

 

Well, that was a lot of work. It’s hard filling all the roles when I still have to drive and do everything a driver must do. Now that I have Merge, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. This Carrier I’ve been using is good though. They do dedicated accounts, not the usual OTR stuff. Pull the customer’s trailer, almost all drop and hook. It’s not a bad deal. And the guy gets home every other weekend.

 

A while back I had Bendix eTrac put on my truck, the load transfer system. It works, but mine is a Frankenstein version and not like it comes from factory. This opens up an additional option for me though. A company called Cush makes a lift axle kit, primarily for trailers, to convert an existing axle into a lift axle. I’m working with a guy to put a quote together. I could potentially have a lifting tag axle soon, which will be even better.

 

Monday is going to be fun. I have 6 pallets of moldy blackberries to get rid of. I’m going to have a public dump business I can get in and out of to get rid of it. Berries and tomatoes are the worst, there is always something wrong. 720 trays of them.