BD69: The Owner Operator Chronicles

Well, it's a beautiful day in my neighborhood. Nice & quiet sunny Saturday morning. Doing some paper work and trying to recover from this nasty bronchial crap. All the fed & state forms for S-Corp filing were finally uploaded online. Sent my returns off electronically yesterday. Nice to have all that behind me now, for another year at least

 

Yeah, it's frustrating. We all know that there is no panacea in trucking, sheat happens. However, that's the two-edged sword of hauling contract vs spot market or a balanced combination of the two.

When you lease onto a company like that, there are no real other options when the bleep hits the fan. You're stuck doing whatever it takes to service the leasing companies customers.

 

Here ya go. I get offers like this in my inbox every week. The trucking industry has been subsidizing the lumber industry for years and years.

Take a look at these dry van numbers divided by the miles, and remember most of the carriers who take these loads aren't starting from the shipper location either. They're usually deadheading down from Portland/Salem/Eugene, etc. Add the deadhead miles in and it makes you want to throw up.

Now to be fair, if the carriers who take these loads are getting $4.00 plus per mile loads up and then take these loads down, I could say I get it. But reality is, they are not.

 

While I'm at it! LOL

This will be a good exercise for the guys lurking here who are considering becoming lease operators.

I ran this simple spreadsheet for one of these leaser guys I know on the numbers he gave me and that I happen to know are correct. I was generous with the all miles (includes deadhead) round-trip rate of $1.70 per mile.

On 10,000 miles per month, his take is $0.54 a mile. That's right, he assumes ALL the liability, including taxes, benefits etc for $0.54 a mile.

But he is driving a shiny newer KWT680 though

 

Now what usually happens in this kind of scenario is the lease/op guy has to increase his average monthly miles in order to balance out the monthly fixed costs. Thus, becoming a slave to the truck.

No thanks...

 

$900 a month trailer rent, holy crap! Is he leasing his own trailer or is the company he signed on with charging him?

 

That's what he pays to rent the trailer, trailer usage fee.

 

If I were paying $900 a month on anything I’d be building equity but I guess there’s no difference than paying a truck lease/rental payment and never getting a title. Good post Scooter!

 

True. Some guys are content just paying the rate with no consideration of ownership.

I bought a new 53' van a cpl of years ago for 30k. My payments are $476 a month.

I am responsible for maintenance, however, tires and lube is about it. I could write a check and pay it off right now if I wanted to. Seems to me I could at least get 10k out of it at the end of 5 years.

 

Exactly my point $900 is crazy compared to an outright buy.