Double Yellow's Company Driver to Independent Thread

Yup, just not doing anything special trucking-wise. Went back to my roots running long hauls at fair rates and enjoying being a semi-paid tourist. Even rented a car a few times to explore:

Checking out the Maine foliage & lighthouses in a BMW X5:




A few weeks later, rented a Ram 1500 4x4 and went to check out the Standing Rock protests. Had my fill of hippies, so I drove 600 miles to Mt. Rushmore:





As for trucking? meh, running about $1.65 on 10,000ish miles/month after accessorials. But I'm putting up with a whole lot less #### which makes life so much more pleasant...

 

Just window shopping from the internet while freight is decent -- I hope interest rates don't shoot up before jan 20...

 

Laziness? I prefer to rationalize my 2016 as an embodiment of the Pareto Principle -- the notion that 80% of your reward comes from 20% of your work (or, conversely, that 80% of your work yields only 20% of your rewards). The reality is I kinda fell into it by accident: With long-haul rates dropping to around $1 in early 2016, I wanted to quit but couldn't find a buyer willing to pay what I thought my truck & trailer were worth. So I renewed my insurance for another year, slashed discretionary spending to the bone (e.g. only 1 $35 load board), and worked only when long-haul van freight was paying >$1.60

Miles: 54,500 (I spent less than 5 months on the road)
Revenue: $92,250 ($1.69/all miles -- LOTS of "F-it, I'm going home" deadhead)
Fuel: $14,650 ($0.27/mi)
Maintenance: $9,300 ($0.17/mi)
Truck Insurance: $6,600
Plates/permits/fees: $2,800
Office (load board, cell, etc): $1,900
Misc (tolls, memberships, showers, straps, etc): $1,800
----
Net: $55,100 (pretax)

Operating cost per mile: 27cpm fuel, 17cpm maintenance, 24cpm fixed = $0.68/mi (excluding driver wage or a Return On Assets for the equipment)


I managed to net a liveable wage working less than half the year ( @rollin coal has long been a proponent of this strategy, but it took me a while to catch on). In fact, I could do almost as well working even less: nearly $60,000 (gross) was earned in just 3 months: June, November, & December. Add in the 2nd part of May, be a little more selective with my freight, and I could gross ~$75,000 in 16 weeks, driving <40,000 miles and netting >$45,000 -- and I'd still have 36 weeks/year to do whatever else I fancied.

Of course those numbers assume a 0% return on the money I invested in the truck & trailer, which I've railed against as fooling yourself. But that cost is sunk & my maintenance spending should be adequate to keep things on the road indefinitely... Besides, I'm pretty well burned out on trucking, but can't really think of anything else I'd rather do, so I might as well do as little as possible, right?