Being an O/O under a Carrier's Authority

The head hauls are not anything to get excited about. You will never be disappointed with low expectations that's for sure.

 

Pretty cool thread. Not commenting whether this is a great deal or not. Interesting because its a fairly common starting point for many O/O's. It appears you are being real honest about your numbers so far. Keep building your cash funds. You have not had a major repair yet. How many miles are on your truck?

The negativity your seeing is the frustration of veterans seeing your company (carrier) low balling the freight market. It is a never ending battle. Symptomatic of a competitive market place. Personally I have seen rates falling from brokers. Hard to keep good rates for my O/O once I get them away from my main customer. As a leased O/O you have little you can do about the rates. Only card you have is to sit (turn down load) (there is a cost to that also). Do they give you much choice on turning down loads? If so that could be a two edge sword if they have committed to the load. Do they get your approval before taking the load? This would really slow things down and could cost them the load.

Good paying loads go really fast off the boards these days. Even marginal loads don't last long. Trucking companies have little bargaining power these days. Seems to me when it comes to broker freight.

Just as a example in 2005 just starting out doing partials, I could get 1.50 PM from a broker for 14' of deck space weighing 4-6K going from Mi to the Northeast all the time. Had Brokers calling me.

Can't imagine what the Truck Load guys got then......

PS. take the negative comments as a challenge to work on your revenue side of the equation. Don't just concentrate on costs. You can only make modest gains on your costs. Even in this tight market you can eventually make much larger gains on the revenue side. To many don't try at all on the revenue side.

 

It's not a bad plan. That's how I started out. At a low paying carrier with the goal to move upwards and onwards to better things. Just don't get in the mindset that this is as good as things are. They can always be better. Rates can be much better too. Or worse. Everything is in cycles. Nobody will give you anything. You have to learn if you want to earn.

 

Save for a trailer. Having your own trailer will help on the revenue side. Always keep a eye out for a great opportunity. Some guys have found great gigs, mostly after they started. No way to know when it will come along.


Use the time now to gather information. Talk to other drivers especially ones pulling different trailers from yours. Lots of different kinds of freight with different revenue potentials. So learn on this companies dime so to speak. They don't sound terrible, so you have time to plan your next step. Also prepare for a slow period. Since your new to them. Do you expect things to be slow with them at some point in time? Prepare for it.

 

If those are the rates your friend is getting the way I see it puts him at liberty to go try something else without fear of losing anything. I noticed that you put in your original post that you were s corping curious did your cpa tell you what the depreciation schedule would be in percentage? I become an o/o recently too and my cpa just told me that I have to take 50% this year and its screwing me because I can't s corp until next year taking that much depreciation.