Alliance Estimator for Income/Exp

Hello All,

I am currently scheduled to attend the Alliance Business class at the end of the month as I have been in the Pre-Alliance fleet for a few months now. As I have throughout this entire adventure I have done as much research as possible before embarking into a new phase. Part of my research has always been putting information out there for the opinions of others because I don't pretend to be all knowing.

I created a spreadsheet based off of an example that I was giving will in Grad Class by the Alliance recruiter which was used to illustrate what I "could" have made as an Alliance driver.

Essentially it is a basic income vs expenses sheet. I have run a series of numbers today and I have to say that I am concerned about what I am seeing for results.

Let me provide you the baseline for my calculations as I have attached it in pdf form.

- FSC is only paid on "Loaded Miles" not "Empty Miles" so I set 15% of total miles to be considered Empty (I think that is a conservative number to be honest)
- I used 7.0 as my mpg number as that is pretty close to what I have been tracking on the road
- I used 3.87 as the cost per gallon for fuel (yes it changes daily but the FSC stays in proportion so I believe it is a reasonable number)
- I used .45 as the FSC number (again paid only on loaded miles)
- Lease payments range from 540-680 so I chose 600 as the avg
- All other fixed expenses were listed as they were on my example
- Time off Acct I chose to .05/mil as this is only $100/wk and again very conservative
- I did not include tolls/scales...etc as they zero out on reimbursement

Key Factors:

- Net income shown is really "Net before any taxes paid or health insurance premiums" so that will still be a significant deduction coming out

After reading some recent discussions and reviewing my own records I chose to use 2500 miles/wk as an average. In doing the results showed a "Net" income of $522 (no tax/ins). That was an eye opener for me. Those same 2500 miles paid at my lowly .26/mile gross 650 and usually is about 575 after taxes and deductions and will increase with a small raise soon.

Since I am not a trainer and not a team driver I don't see a major uptick in the miles, yes tweaks can be made but I don't realistically see getting substantially more the 7 mpg which is the big sales point.

My personal goal was to become Alliance for two years and be able to take those monthly Profit/Loss statements and have them help me with financing for my own truck from private sources down the line and also to gain self employed experience with some level of cover and support. I want to be realistic as well and am not sure that the benefit of that will be worth the effort. Lastly, I don't really want to sit on the yard for two weeks making no money at all waiting to come to the same decision if these numbers are truly accurate reflections. I don't put a value on the "name on the door" or "taking the truck home freedom".

Again...one more time just let me say these are my numbers based of estimates nothing "official" has been provided so please take them with that disclaimer.

Looking forward to some input from you guys.

Thanks

J

 

No worries. Been going along pretty well so far. I have no real complaints. Life as a solo is immeasurably better then when with a trainer/teammate. Miles have been pretty steady and truck has been running pretty strong other then the last week where there have been some minor issues...but that's trucking. I won't lie...I got "Jill'd" last week down a goat trail in Southern Arizona which resulted in some unhappiness that I will be talking to Safety about this week when I hit the yard. Nobody died and the tree branch will grow back...lol.