Confused on what semi to buy

What's the price of insurance matter if you have bottomless pockets? Just buy your trucks, activate your authority, get your insurance, loadboard account, find a driver and rake in the riches.

 

My insurance was pushing 20k the 1st year, and I had several years of experience with no mishaps/ claims before that. New MC/DOT #’s, insurance companies get worried. Add a driver with zero experience, they will rake you, your liability will eat you alive. Just giving it straight. Any prices you got with ANY info on somebody else’s equipment or license is going to be waaaaaay off what you will be at.

 

I’m glad your doing research, but searching and doing are 2 totally different things

Established guys are paying more then 13k a year for insurance, granted location does matter, but I would think a new entrant would be some where around 40k a year for an unlimited milage policy, that’s just truck, not including health, and workmans comp (which a lot of brokers and customers require) the driver doesn’t matter as long as there’s no dwi or wreckless driving, authority age matters

If you own the truck you are the dispatcher, and you should be able to handle Atleast 5 of them, if you are referring to a dispatcher service, they are nothing but money scams, same as factoring

one truck has enough profit in it for one guy to live comfortably, there’s not enough for 2 alone, if you have a established brokerage and want to start adding trucks then adding one truck at a time to service your customer isn’t a bad idea, (unlike working with family which always is) a brokerage will require its own MC, insurance, and a bond as well.

Taking a week off whenever you feel like it sounds great, but starting out, you probably won’t be able to, unless you want to run the truck in the red, hard expenses don’t change, not saying you can’t take time off, but it requires a little forethought.

I would say be prepared to loose everything you have, but really you could loose so much more when your brother crashes into a bus full of nuns/kids/puppies,

The trucking market goes up and down, like the stock market, it’s a healthy cycle (unhealthy for a lot of mental health), right now the market is heading down to a correction because everyone and their brother/sister/cousin/dog went out and got trucks during the Covid boom, so now with all these trucks, everyone is cutting rates just to keep their trucks moving, you’ll more than likely be out of business by the time you are able to prove to customers that you show up everyday and correctly do the job

there’s no such thing as free money, it’s coming from somewhere..

 

So essentially here we have another want-a-be fleet owner who will end up adding to the mess we already have because the warnings don't matter, all that matters is hearing that his idea is a great one and that it is valid as a great means to make big bucks.

Screw the idea that EXPERIENCE owners know what's really going on at all levels and segments of the industry, forget the idea that they have seen more failures and fewer successes by anyone who IGNORES the facts, advice and reality of what's going on.

 

I have a few questions/things to think about for the op…
And just FYI I’m pretty close to your age
If you’re 30 you’ve most likely had roughly 10 good years of work…if you’re going to live to 90 that’s 60 years meaning at 60k/year you’re going to need 3.6 million. That’s not counting what you can get from investing or what inflation will do, but just simply a number. My question is if you are killing it to the tune of 350k/ year take home why in the hell would you change it? Keep it up for at least 10 more years and then kick back when you’re 40.
my next thought is have you ever tried to hire a driver or for that matter any kind of help…just saying it is hard is an understatement.
Do you love trucks…what’s your motivation for getting into trucking?
How much actual work do you have lined up in writing? In my experience there’s usually more talk than actual work.
I understand what you’re saying about all the negatity towards your plans on here. I hope you can make it work if that’s really what you want for yourself. I ask these questions because they’re pertinent to your success or failure. i have what I have because of the choices I’ve made for better or worse but I can tell you I don’t have nearly what you claim to. I have been working since I was 16 and been in the heavy fabrication/welding/machining buisness for about 10 years and trucking business for roughly 5 years. I have hired 5 different people in the last 2 years and somehow I still work by myself. I did loose a few years to get an engineering degree but didn’t have a penny of debt from that. I don’t regret anything I’ve done but just trying to help you. I might contribute more based on what you do with the thoughts I have given you.

 

Just go buy the truck and leave us alone.

 

They quoted him that because they didn't run his numbers. I was quoted the same thing, but when they run your numbers and it shows that you are new, that quote will jump about 10 grand.

 

That could be about right if your brother has an existing DOT/MC and your dispatcher has a CDL that isn't brand new.

Nobody is going to give you a loan to buy equipment in the first place though as a startup, especially if you live and home with Mommy and Daddy and have no established credit history and no previous track record of financial responsibility, which takes years to establish. So the better question is what kind of truck can you afford to pay cash for to get started. Possibly your brother would have better luck getting a loan if he already operates a transportation business, but if neither one of you even has a CDL or knows how to drive a truck, that's yet another problem. Paying some bozo to trash your investment as a fragile startup is the road to failure from the beginning. So that's a couple of the reasons everybody is laughing at you. You might as well call up NASA and ask for tips on how to make your own spaceship to fly to the moon when you don't even know how to fly an airplane. It's absurd.