Can anyone explain how to operate at 1.75 a mile and stay in business!?

^^^ THIS ^^^

I think this post is spot on, except for "Sorry for the long post". No apologies required. You have worked hard to get where you are and know what you know. The OP should read through your thread completely, as well as @blairandgretchen and @double yellow. Plenty of learning curve in each situation, different goals and equipment, but all of you learning to negotiate and how to play the game.

 

So IF I had to pay 2500K per month for insurance ( with financing even more) + 2500 a new truck + 600 for new trailer ---- $5600. Insane! No way this is would be doable for me when relying on a loadboard.

As a comparison, if paid monthly, my insurance would be 1200 + 0 (paid off truck) + 600 new trailer = $1800.
I am sure that I have to add 10-15K for maintenance but this is not a fixed cost, besides a new equipment must have some maintenance and downtime too. So if I am one of the many, and there are people with even less costs, how can someone with that overhead compete at all. I mean, you are talking about making a weekly profit of about 1K more if we are to work at the same level.

 

Yes. his thread should be studied on how to interact with brokers, and what rates to expect at given place and time.
The latest political rants are polluting good staff. IMO LOL

 

This is going to offend everyone, especially the OP.

The OP did do everything wrong and should go back to being a company driver.

To me there is no hope for a real recovery right now from the sketchy info given to us.

I know this may be blunt and offensive to the OP and others who are optimistic but it really does look bad.

Here is what I see, in general and random thoughts.

First thing is the OP needs to stop blaming others for his problems, like the commercial loan broker who he blames for his use of credit cards to buy a truck (that is the dumbest thing you can do).

This is further a problem with this comment - "the shipper made me late getting started and the broker "forgot" to reschedule my appointment." You are the boss, not the broker, you have to stay on this crap or lose out. This to me tells me the OP is still thinking like a company driver.

AND he blamed the "government" for his delay in getting his authority which to me compounds the blame game.

Tackle the blame game by looking at yourself for it, no one forced you to quit, no one forced you to take on more debt, no one forced you to be late.

Second is funding, he started with $27k in debt (personal I assume and I will get to that later), so that alone is a huge red flag. He should have been positive about $30k before he considered getting into the game as an owner, and properly structuring his business (again I will get into that later).

His use of credit cards is downright dumb, sorry OP but it is. The same goes for the stupidity of using equity in a home to fund a trucking business. In other jobs, I had to look at risk and mitigation of that risk, as an owner and driver, you put those assets in risk if something happens to you or the load or you cause something to happen. People think insurance covers everything but it doesn't.

Third is the OP's inability to divide up personal obligations and commercial ones. A problem with many of you guys have is you lump it altogether and then having to deal with paying bills out of the general fund. It is great for someone like me who can buy a truck or company for pennies on a dollar because they mismanaged the funds.

One thing I tell others to do is to get a corp formed (not an LLC), there are a lot of reasons I say this but one is that you are forced into dividing your finances up, personal and company from separate bank accounts to cutting payroll checks for yourself. It is a way of protecting yourself from yourself and bad habits.

His car got stolen, has nothing to do with the truck, his $27k in debt has nothing to do with the truck, it doesn't matter because the truck comes first, the truck needs to be fed and taken care of before the car or before paying the electric bill if you want to keep everything financially together.

Fourth is something rather stupid. With all the resources available to anyone who wants to learn, especially here on TTR, why would anyone think rates will go up or that they need $1.75 a mile to make a living.

Fifth, and rather agreeable is the advice given here that varies which is a good learning tool. This thread has a lot, I mean a lot of good realistic information from almost everyone that can be used to make a good living from trucking, even if you are leased to another company.

Here is an example, I run my company by letting the driver decide what they do but I don't do this blindly. I have my manager or myself go through the different ideas on how to make money, like short runs vs. long runs and single long runs vs. multiple loads. There is no excuse to use a truck exclusive for a single shipper if you have the real estate to haul most than one load and I have drivers who actually double their rate with little added expense for their week. Too many of you think in a box. The same goes for cheaper freight added on to the entire load (meaning if you are doing some dedicated work, and have a way to make a trip back covered by a back haul for half the rate, then grab it).

I won't tell people how that's all done because of the work that went into experimenting through trial and error, but the idea that someone can do it should inspire people to learn how to use the real estate in the trailer or the truck itself by experimenting.

So to the OP, you have either a lot of work to do or to liquidate what you have and rebuild your finances.

I have to stress this again I hate failure, I see it all the time and most of the time it is caused by the person owning the company or truck. I bought out a few companies that were run right into the ground because of piss poor money management and bought them for a lot less than half of what the assets were worth. I just wish people would take the time and learn about this industry, it is a huge industry which people make a lot of money in a month where other industries it takes years.

 

LOL. Just got off the phone with my insurance provider and they told me some guy's policies are $80,000 a year due to faulty CSA scores and accidents, tickets, etc.

I got into business because $800-1600 a day sounds better than $62-150 a day... plus getting to be in control of when I'm home and when I'm on the road and which roads I drive sounds better too.

 

Honestly, does that even make sense???

If a policy is 80K a year, that means $6K+ monthly payment, or $950/week or $238/day payment.

I dont even think this is on a 1-truck owner operator. That makes ABSOLUTELY no sense. I think your agent/insurance is yanking your chain.

You need to compare apples-to-apples.

That 80K may be for an outfit with multiple trucks, not a 1-truck MC like you.

Are you honestly this gullible?????.............??????..........???????

 

Who's your insurance company if you don't mind me asking?

PM me both of your insurance companies if you don't mind... you might save me almost $18,000 a year... I'll give you 20% of savings. Haha

My physical damage is $20,600/year on a $30,000 truck with a $1 million liability policy...

They told me I need 3 years in business with a perfect record before they'll drop my premium, even though I have 7 years driving history with no accidents and 1 minor left turn ticket that probably doesn't even show up anymore on an MVR & certainly isn't on my H6 report.

 

7 years driving total, not 7 years driving a cmv.

I have 20 years driving, but only 7 in a cmv. My truck insurance would only look at my truck driving experience.

With less than 100k miles you are very much a new driver. New drivers are risky, hence your rate. There are reasons why smaller companies tend to avoid hiring someone with less than 2 years experience and why the mega can get away with their pay rated. A big reason is the insurance factor.

 

They said they don't care about me as a driver, it has nothing to do with the policy, it has to do with my CSA score and company credit score.

They want to know if I take care of my truck or not, apparently.

Also, I just dropped my 2nd trailer insurance so now I have a $26,000 a year policy instead of a $30,000 a year policy. Still costs $2,400 a month x 11 ,months.

 

Sell your truck and pay back your friend the 20k. Or if you do keep going, drop your insurance down to liability only and save that almost $21,000/yr. just a thought.