Company driver or o/o?

If you added all of your real expenses from running a truck. All of landstar fees. Put away for a replacement truck and repairs// tow/?etc. Now deduct that from landstar double brokered freight…. What do you have left? 500 bucks a week or - 500 a week. There is a reason why landstar drivers have been dropping off. It’s not because of success. Do what you wish, but when about every trucking org and media group claims that market as bad for carriers.. Why would you succeed? Potentially you could. There are folks that do well in tough times. But, hauling for landstar is not thinking further outside the box away from competition. Example on reefer side…More load posts on spot market this year than last for last week About 19%. Good. Well, not if you count the added capacity from the foreign carriers. Rates are almost unchanged last week from 2024.

 

Don't mean to be an ******, but stay the hell where you are at. You have vested years of working there, the company sounds like it is a good one run properly and you are making good coin.

It would be stupid - yes stupid - to move from your present position into a high risk/high failure position in this industry, risking everything you worked for.

 

most o/op I've known paid themselves a salary not much more than a company driver.

granted it wasn't bottom feeder wages, but it was also very volatile.
something big breaks and you're out of your tractor for 2 weeks well there goes your nice cushion.

I've thought about it many, many times, but like a dependable paycheck

 

No one likes to be told they can’t succeed. Especially by others who are at least somewhat successful. Not many Drivers make 106k yr. It’s not a question of whether you’ll succeed. Only yourself to support? No real expenses? 22 yrs experience? You can do just as good as anyone else. It’s not Rocket Science. The question is why? Being a leased O/O is basically the same as an employee. Maybe a choice of when to work, and where to run. You’ll probably work harder and it will be hard to make much more than now. The benefits you’ll lose make it even less attractive. But if you want go for it, go for it. Think long and hard about it first. If you’re miserable with your current job, go for it. May not be happy with your new venture. It’s still a JOB. There’s many other ways to make money passively while keeping your current job. Probably be more lucrative than buying a Truck and dedicating just about all your time to running it. It never ends. Even when off duty at home. The what ifs never leave you alone. Makes it hard to relax. The freedom is really a perception at best, an illusion at worst. Succeeding becomes an obsession. The smart ones stay busy, saving for the inevitable rainy day. There will be plenty of those.

 

You should do it. Don't forget to hire a dispatcher and a bunch of companies to handle all your compliance needs. Sign up with TQL, CHR and JB Hunt so you can throw all your savings away hauling for them. The industry loves guys like you. They make all the money while you end up paying for it all.

 

Probably not. Definitely not for the first few years. It will be a learning curve and education is expensive

 

I think the thing that maybe is misunderstood here is that most company drivers have a better job than owner operators will ever have.

I don't know if you're single or married, but have you priced health insurance? You might pay $600-$1,000 a month for yourself.

See people fall in one way or the other in this business.

Some people wanted to have their own truck, you can call it Freedom you can call it whatever you want to call it.

They bought it and survived and rode through the good and bad times.

And if you suggesting when you say are you doing it for fun, a lot of owner operators sort of are.

And that's because many people that are owner operators are living a certain lifestyle, and that lifestyle is not about riches.

Most people have traded a certain sense of Independence for the security and benefits and money and stability that you have in a good job.

There's a certain point in life where you can go either way, but once you find the good job with the good benefits with the amount of money you're making, I'm sorry to inform you that you're going to work five times harder with your own truck certainly for less money than what you're making.

The headaches that you would trade from just having a good job to go into this business with these abysmal bottom of the barrel crappy rates...

If you want a reality check, ask somebody what some of these lanes are paying that you're thinking about running.

No, owner operators are not doing it because it's the path to riches.

Money can be made, but unless you're a mechanic and you have a place and you have a truck that you can fix yourself, and even at that, is that really how you want to spend all of your time even if you could?

You go to work and you come home and you can do anything you want and you make a ton of money and have great benefits.

Being an owner operator is the absolute 1,000% complete total opposite of what you're doing.

Unless you're insanely going out of your mind, it's certainly not a good Financial move in any way shape or form.

 

Just an FYI, 5 out of 100 people survive their first year as an owner-operator.

On the second year, 4 out of those five give up.

It used to be 15 out of 100 but this industry has two nasty things going on, one is the FMCSA doesn't give a crap about regulating carriers and enforcing laws about drivers which has led to the other bad thing - we have too many drivers and with too ****** much capacity.