Friend is setting himself up for failure going L/P

So an old co-driver of mine and I had talked about me going LP and he decided to do it too, but with a different company hauling different freight. I've tried to talk him out of it without outright saying that he won't make it. I studied for the better part of a year about running a truck. Learning the numbers, building a business plan, researching the best LP program for me (flatbed freight, no qualcomm or elogs, can get my own loads). Plus IF I do fail it won't hurt at home since the GF pays all the bills.

Now in his case he left a 43cpm company job averaging 3,000 miles per week. He is the sole income for his household. He got a 2011 pete with a $500/week payment for 82 weeks not counting other fixed expenses. He has no clue what his break even cost per mile is. he got a load from IL to CO I believe, 1050 miles with 7 stops that pays $2,100 over 2 days (he hauls reefer). so about $2/mile which he says is good, then I find out he had a 200mi deadhead which drops the rate to $1.68/mi. He doesn't know what his fuel cost per mile is. It all just seems like a recipe for disaster but he won't take the hint and I'm gonna hate to tell him 'I told you so'. I tried scaring him by running the numbers for him before he did this and it didn't work.

I hope he makes it but I'm not going to hold his hand the whole way, I'm going to have my own truck to run very soon and I'll be pretty busy.

 

Yeah I told him off the top of my head $1.20-$1.30/mile break even. Plus with 7 stops on that load? And they were 12 hours late loading him.

Taxes is another thing I am trying to get through to him. If he takes home $1,000/wk he needs to set aside $300 of that for taxes he has to pay every quarter.

I may be wrong on the year it may be a 2010. Total cost for the truck was right around $55k.

He's real big into chrome and bling, for him it's not about the job but about having a flashy truck. I will drive a $15k turd brown truck if it is mechanically sound and gets decent fuel mileage. When I'm old and grey I can get the flashy truck.