Hello OOs, I am a current company driver looking to interview YOU.

I would rather have an older "cheap" truck than one of these new ones, they are all machines and can and will have problems, the older stuff is less likely to leave you on the side of the road, there is just less going on with them compared to their newer counterparts. Repairing an older truck is also cheaper than a newer one, for the same reasons. A paid for truck also has another savings that most never seem to want to calculate, that is the cost of servicing a loan (interest paid) on one that the money is borrowed against.

This is when someone like yourself would recommend buying a truck that still has warranty, and I would partially agree with you on that. But, there is no warranty from a manufacturer or otherwise that I am aware of (that is worth the paper it is written on) that will pay you for down time. Down time can and likely will cost you more in the long run than the repair itself.

First of all, I have NEVER had anyone tell me that if I had a newer truck that they would be able to offer me better paying loads, why would they? In fact, it should be the opposite, I should get more money because I drive something a little older, something that is proven to not have the down time that most newer trucks seem to be burdened with.

You buy a $50-60K truck, I'll buy a $15-20k truck, we'll both run them for 4-5 years and see who looses more when it comes time to resale them. You'll loose more in the first 1-1/2 years on yours than I paid for mine.

Your right it doesn't make sense to use a factoring company, but why do most that use them do it? Because they themselves are underfunded right from the get go.

This is company driver mentality, not that of a TRUE business minded individual. Using the numbers that you provided here, I can guarantee you that the truck pulling the lower mile higher rate freight will NET more than the other. Gross income doesn't mean anything, it seems to be some type of bragging rights in this industry and has no direct correlation to net. Most people cannot fathom this, but until you have done it, or at the least done an HONEST assessment of the two, you will not see it.

This something that I have struggled with for many years, then from advice I had read here, I applied it to my own business, and the numbers do not lie.

So what is much less than $3pm? Because you pointed out that you would rather work for $2.50pm, for me, .50cpm is definitely much less than $3pm.

I would think that its safe to assume that less than 1% of all O/O's make that kind of money, let alone in the first two years.




Please don't perceive any of this as any type of a personal attack, that is not my intentions here. My only intention is to bring out what I BELEIVE are the flaws in your way of thinking.

 

$3- 4 a mile on a oversize 400 mile run aint a great rate either

 

leases are not all that bad. You should consider it if there is a good deal.