Advice Needed From 3 to 5 Truck Fleet Owners

The best thing I can tell you David after being an owner operator and a small fleet owner for several years now is finding the right comodity to haul....dont set your goals to having just 3 to 5 trucks...it took me several years to figure out that my goals were too small to live comfortably and live the life your dreaming of.....i make about 110,000 a year after taxes.....i drive one of my own trucks and have 9 other trucks running 5 days a week.....i do profit more.. but, I always put alot back into my company because I want to keep myself and my drivers living comfortably for a long time...so here's what I did.. I basicly went door to door around home at every business with my portfolio of my ideas and found a local business in need of my services and have dedicated my entire fleet to hauling just their product....that cut out having to deal with brokets and my drivers couldnt be any happier.....i have dedicated my life to this company and .im reaping the rewards for it..it takes hard work and long days sometimes ...but, iys definately worth it....i have 15 employees that work around the clock with me to ensure that the business is always well takin care of..so, ..i suggest a long scale plan to start out with..dont plan on just sittin at home with the wife and taking a vacation every other week....be very positive and above all eles,,Take Good care of your drivers.....i hope this helps. And remember, Sled said so

 

Great post , Sir!

 

I enjoyed this thread a bunch, interesting to see how it spans 2 years how the advise hasn't changed from time to time or from poster to poster. I myself have a small fleet of 3 trucks and I can tell you that I surely wouldn't make it if I wasn't driving one of them. The biggest thing in my opinion that can mean the difference between success and failure is CASH, CASH, AND MORE CASH. Whether you have it in your savings or access it through a line of cheap credit (less than 5%) cash is what will save your butt. One year I went through almost $25,000 just trying to keep the truck running, with out that cash the truck would have been finished. 2 years later I had a hood break which took almost a month to repair. Since it was down a month I also did an in frame at the same time because the engine was getting older and I was planning on doing it in 2 months anyway. No way I could have been able to multitask like I did without the access to cash to pay for it all and to live on during the down time, but saving a month of down time by doing it all at the same time really paid for it self because 1 month of wheels not rolling = $15,000 to $25,000 dollars of lost gross revenue, ( I said gross, normally my cut after expenses but before taxes is about 1/3 of that).
The next biggest thing that I could think of cuts across not only as fleet owners, but all owner operators, which is the cost of maintenance. This is an expense that can be more easily controlled than any of the other operating expenses. For the most part you will choose where you do your maintenance and who does it. It's always cheaper to do it yourself so long as you know what you're doing. figure an overhaul at a dealership costs about $11,000 - $12,000. My shop charged me about $2000 in labor and I supplied parts that I found from various sources and had a complete inframe done (with cylinder head) for $6000 out the door. I also went through a couple of radiators but there is no way in hell I'm gonna pay someone $1200 labor in addition to $1500 bucks for parts for a radiator job. I rent a fork truck and do it my self and I can do a radiator job in under 8 hours. Essentially I save myself $1000 dollars when I gotta do them kinda jobs. Same thing with heater cores or blower motors and such, I'll never pay the volvo dealer $115 and hour unless I need their computer system for diagnosis and the volvo on my fleet is 9 years old, I've owned it for 6 years now, and I still haven't paid those greedy ######## their outrageous hourly fees. I also enjoyed it when I was looking to buy 2 more trucks they showed me 2009's for $53,500 and told me the great deal they were at 10% apr. two weeks later I needed parts for my volvo and I brought my newer 2010 prostar with 100K fewer miles that I bought for 55,500 with 5% apr. to show the salesman. I enjoyed even more when I thought he was gonna cry when I told him I bought 2 of them for the same price and financing deals when he realized he lost 2 potential truck sales over the fact they had them over priced and they blew me off when I wanted to haggle with them.
I digress, I've gotten off track, I guess what I was meaning to say is you have to constantly look for advantages and be able to take advantage of them when they present themselves.

 

I'm 26 years old, running a trucking company office in a mini fleet of 2 trucks

I've been working in the trucking industry probably a whole of 10 months.. I started dispatching (booking loads) for a carrier with about 45 trucks. This allowed me to get a first hand look at how the industry worked as I very quickly moved around and moved up in departments. I did safety, accounting, driver dispatch (dispatching loads to drivers and giving directions, ordering repairs) which allowed me to see what costs were for repairs over the road or at least get a general idea.

The simple volume of trucks we dealt with gave me alot of problems to deal with and overcome. These problems/lessons came from both man and machine. Drivers are a very diverse and interesting group of people, alot come from different backgrounds and have different outlooks on life. This can make things easy or hard on you depending on your on interpersonal skills.

The company I worked for originally also allowed me to get familiar with freight broker/dispatcher jargon and negotioation tactics involved with booking loads as well as rates being paid to carriers. Also I built a personal relationship with brokers looking for trucks as I dealt with them so frequently for new loads and updates on existing loads. This put me on a "whats up dude" basis with brokers who pay good money.

I worked closely with maintenance to make sure drivers didn't get into broken trucks, and did my best to act as a liason between people who didnt get along with certain drivers.

I realize this is probably a bit late to help you in your situation but I hope it may help another who wishes to become an owner operator, freight dispatcher employed by an owner operator(even help them start their own fleet which is what i did), or even own your own fleet. What you need is real experience. I would suggest working in every possible position for a local trucking company and see how it runs before you even consider sending one truck out. You may get stuck for weeks, drive for free, or even worse...lose your business.


Mike Craig
rrtruckingservices@gmail.com

 

what a great thread! my darn neck is stiff from reading every post ROFL thanks to all who contributed! woop woop! ~B~

 

If money is all you're after and you have a good clean driving record and dont mind being away from a lot for a few years oilfield frac sand hauling is the way to go in my opinion. O/O are bringing home 5k - 10k a week in the west texas area. Another good thing is you wont be burning much fuel. You'll run 2 - 3 loads a day driving anywhere from 25 - 150 miles usually staying on the lower side. Now with that being said that's about the only upside. The downsides are stacked.

For starts you're away from for weeks at a time. You're truck is going to be put through hell. The roads are #### and mostly dirt that have heavy equipment running up and down them all day they are narrow and dangerously slick after rain. The cost of FR clothing an h2s monitor a respirator and all of the certificates needed can get into the thousands pretty quickly. Then theres the sand. That #### gets everywhere and will cause problems for you and your truck weekly cleanings are recommended. Then theres the idiots you'll come across. I cant even begin to describe how stupid some of these people are. But even then theres the biggest downside over all. It's the oilfield. Yoi can be working everyday for a month then be jobless when you wake up the next day (although probably not going to happen in the Permian basin any time soon).

But if money and getting a small company started is what your looking frac sand has some of the best pay I've found.

 

10 year old thread

 

Hi, I’ve looked at financial records from J.B. Hunt and ODFL extensively and if you combine their investment activities and net income they both average out to around 80k a year per truck with a driver. Why does everyone else say profit with a driver is around 12,000 annually?