Become a new O/O or a New Freight Broker?

For the last couple months I have been preparing to become a new O/O after driving OTR for a few years. My company is set up, plenty of money in place, everything is moving ahead slowly but surely. I have a niche market and clients waiting for me to get my truck and I'll be in business. But I keep having this nagging feeling in the back of my head. What if I get injured or sick? I'm 58, and while I'm not over the hill yet, my body is getting old. What if I blow a knee out and can't work? Yes I could hire a driver to run my truck while I couldn't work, but with start up costs being so high (especially insurance), would the company survive if I got hurt or sick in the first couple of years?

I keep going back to freight brokering as an alternative. I already have an office set up at home, and I can use the company and numbers from trucking as a brokerage. The likely hood of getting injured as a broker goes way down, and even if I did get injured, I could still work as a broker. I was a successful insurance broker in a dozen states for 30 years before I was a driver, so I know how to close a deal and market myself. Start-up costs and general overhead are also much lower with a brokerage, although I would need some serious capital in reserve for those first couple years until my credit score increased. I also think about the working years I have left, and how I could work much longer as a broker as opposed to being a driver.

I hate second guessing myself once I have started something, but it's all part of planning and thinking things through before you commit.

Thoughts?

 

Which part sounds reasonable? I know I have a solid plan in place for being an O/O, but as I said I wonder if a brokerage would be a better alternative than driving in the long run? The market I'm entering actually pays much better than spot rates, and I'm thinking that would be a good client base for a brokerage as well.

 

The problem with buying new equipment is that it loses a third of the value the moment you drive off of the lot. So if things turn south in the first year due to my inability to work it would mean some huge losses. Even though I have some good paying clients set up for driving, I will still need other clients to attain the income level I want, and that may take a year or longer, and. the cost of Insurance is the big unknown at the moment. My gut is telling me we're going to have an insurance crisis for small fleets and O/O's in general within the next two years. Kind of like what Obamacare did to the health insurance market. Insurance carriers are pulling out of the market, and prices will be going much higher than they already are. That could bury many small operators by wiping out their margins.

 

Thanks for the input. I've decided to stick with my original plan and stay on the O/O course.