Company Driver to IC

It's been my goal since the first day of CDL school that I would own and operate a truck. After 3 years of driving a company truck I have found and purchased my first truck.
Today officially begins my transition from company to IC. For anyone thinking of doing the same just know that you will have to re-apply and do the physical etc as if you were a new employee.

Originally, my plan was to buy a brand new truck and I had specced out a WS 5700xe. Unfortunately the cost was just too much and I opted instead to find a much less expensive used truck. I found a very well running 2004 WS 4900 FA, pictured below, at Daigle and Houghton of Bangor, ME.

It's powered by a Series 60 14L w/EGR, 10 speed meritor, 4:11 gears, 24.5" tires. Cruises nicely 65mph@1500rpm. It has 900,600 on the odometer and drives smoother than my Mack with 1/10th that.

I had a lot of work done to it, including the pump/compressor/pto install which brought the total price up to $45,400 with a payment of $1177/mo after 20% down.

My Business plan calls for $14,000/mo gross before any expenses, fuel at $.40 per mile, and 10,000 miles per month. Total expenses estimated at $6,500/mo for a pre-tax profit of $7,500. My conservative yearly net after tax puts me about 20% higher than what I net in 2015 as a company driver. I budgeted this way because I wanted to make sure that this was a viable alternative to being on the payroll with Superior.

 

Cont...

Pay is percentage based
62% linehaul
100% fuel surcharge*
38% Tolls
62% demurrage* and most accessorials

About that 100% fuel surcharge....it's actually not 100% of the BILLED fsc but 100% of the COMPUTED fsc. The formula in the contract is:
LH rev billed + fsc billed = combined rev billed
fsc % from index (DOE or PADD)
Rev Billed / (100% + FSC %) = Computed LH billed
Rev Billed - Computed LH = Computed FSC billed
Computed LH * 62%
Computed FSC * 100%

So lets say you had a $900 billed LH and $100 billed FSC to the shipper. DOE fsc is 10%.
With the contract formula you would get LH rev 62% of $909.09 = $563.63, and FSC rev 100% of $90.09
The difference works out to about $5 total (658 vs 653.72), I'm not sure why they do this but at least they don't hide it.

Demurrage you only get if they actually collect it, and some shippers have contracts that state no demurrage payout until 3 hours of wait. As a company driver you get paid after 2 hours regardless.

 

That is the plan, but will have to wait for a bit. Pricing that out doing it right looks to be around $8 - 9k (manifold, turbos, programming, etc).

Thanks, I took it up to the truck stop to fill it with my first tank of fuel and had two people come up and say how nice it looked. Not sure what you mean about the mudflaps.