Help needed with bidding on a dedicated route

700 Kilometers converts to 434 miles.

6 miles to the gallon works out to.... 72 gallons driving burned. At 3.00 per gallon... $216.
Fleet average 45 mph... 9.6, call it 9.5 hours

You say nothing about it being a sleeper truck job, a day cab job. If this is sleeper, you will be better off with a team driver set. Your single driver will run out of hours when he reaches his 70 so you need two drivers. If this is a day cab...

You say it/s a 13 hour day, let's just say 14 hours maxed each day. 9.5 to 10 hours burnt driving and then 4 hours idled.... 1.5 gallons for a Detriot 500 at 1200 RPM... 6 gallons burned. If you crossed one mountain range to deliver, your gallons per hour burned potentially reaches 24 per hour. let's call it 20 for one mountain pulled per day. So your total gallons of fuel is going to be driving, idle, mountain crossing. 72, plus 6 plus 20 98. Let's call it a even 100 gallons burned for the 14 hour work day.

If you are in a single driver, sleeper situation for sleeping time, call it 1.5 gallons per hour idle for 10 hours that's 15 gallons. 115 gallons total for the 24 hour period. $3.00 Diesel = 345 dollars fuel bill for the work day.

Here is something that will bend your mind.

If this is a day cab, going out 200 miles to do the run and then returning to your Ternimal for the night with engine off, then youre going to dispose of teh sleeper idle time, but add in one more mountain fuel hour burn crossing for a total of roughly 120 gallons. x 3.00 = 360 dollars for the day.

Throw in 50 gallons for the Reefer truck. Call it 425 dollars for the day. I forget exactly how long it takes for a reefer to slurp a 100 gallon tank, I think it's 3 days and 3 nights. If that. Probably less in the summer and not so fast in winter.

Your driver will want to be paid... *Pulls number from hat... .50 a mile.... x434 miles... 217 dollars per day for the 434 miles driven. Forget the stop pay, you cannot afford it... see more later...

Assuming you prefer to pay by percentage... 25% of gross to the driver... then you probably are going to want to do the job at... 2.00 per mile which is going to be around 869 dollars per day..... 1.50 revenue to you, .50 to the driver.

5 days a work week... probably a bid of $4340 to maybe a max of $4750 Per week. based on 5 work days per week. Grossing you about $19000 per month... Driver gets $4500 for the mileage or 25% of gross. Fuel is 2250 a week. 9000 for the month. leaving you with approx 5500 Net.

If you demand and receive 200 dollars per stop for the contract for the day's work, you can now go ahead and pay 25% to the driver... making him a very loyal, well paid employee and you 150 more per day. Times 5 days = 750 or 3000 per month to you.

So... one day's contract bid will be around 4750 + 250 = 5000 per week, 1000 dollars per day to the truck gross.

Seeing you are doing only 434 miles, traditional Drayage rates for freight not more than 500 miles or even 750 miles overnight is about a 1000 dollars or a bit more overnight.

After all that... My bid for one truck per week stands at 5000 dollars flat. The driver will have to get 25%, and 25% of the stop pay. You get the rest. That's going to be around 20,000 per month. MINUS FUEL, Taxes and MINUS your truck payment.

Now I don't know how much it costs for insurance each month, and I don't know the truck payments, in my day when I bought my precious 41,000 dollar Midroof... (It's better to have bought, loved and lost rather than to have bought at all... 25 years ago...) I was looking at 1500 dollar nut for the truck payment which stood to pay it off in a few years time, faster than that if the payroll to the truck was decent.

I imagine today's 150,000 KW Studio or similar mint retail will be around 5000 dollars per month.

You did not say anything other than requiring three trucks. So... your contract bid for that work will be three trucks, three drivers, three reefer trailers worth of work... based on 434 miles per day of my figures at 25% paid to the driver stands at a bid of around...

60,000 per month flat. Your three truck payments will probably be 15000 dollars, fuel somewhere up there and your driver gets 25% of that. Taxes and so forth will consume a percentage.

Everything else you put into the business will be a part of those costs. Im not in a position to determine all of that.

If your shipper and recievers have a toll between them such as the GW bridge... you will need to add those dollars into your contract bid. Anything else like turnpike tolls... add them in too.


That is my answer... one truck. one driver. 20,000 per month, 5 day work week, 1000 dollars per day. If you have other expenses besides driver, fuel such as tolls. add in another 250 per day per truck. Call it 1250 per day if you had to cross the GW in addition to running the Maryland, Jersey and delaware toll roads...

Three trucks... just multiply by three. If 5 keep going up with bigger numbers.

There is a certain amount of courage necessary to do trucking as a big business should your shipper and reciever demand sleeper services, team JIT services and say... 10 trucks per day to ship his product. You say Reefers. That's going to give me a pretty good idea. If your shipper has enough to keep you and ten trucks, drivers and trailers busy every day... then you are going to go into prosperity as long you don't get stupid, silly or foolish with the revenue that might approach 200,000 gross per month. You are now a multi million dollar fleet with the needs of same, Shop, oil changes, possibly your own storage tank and fuel pump, permits for that, pallets? A dispatch office or a minimum night watcher dispatcher, Satelltie fees.... Permits in all the states you run? Perhaps you haul beer? Alcohol permits. someone to handle the permit books on your one, three, 10 or even 100 trucks?

You will want OSD, over shorts and damage. You will have expenses hiring and insuring drivers.

You will want to pay a office person to answer the phone, read the daily mail, half of which is junk mail etc.

Should your shipper now ask for 10 trucks, 50 trucks, 100? You are now going to need to consider leasing instead of purchasing, you are going to put on a certain amount of miles on each truck per year. All trucks will need a set of fresh tires prior to first ice each winter. You will want a set of chains for each one, you will want a Carrier, Transicold or Thermocool contract to help doctor your ailing reefer when necessary and so on etc etc etc.

If I totally confused you and you need to take a few drinks and try to sort me out, I apologize. I relish big numbers, data and input information. The more precise the more better I will be. Otherwise there is a chance all of this is just a fantasy I should be laughed off the planet.

Who knows? This is the internet? Ask a question, get 500 different responses.. ultimately it's your problem.

 

Wow, too complicated for me.

Seeing you know this run and the details, it is really simple to figure out. I would take your actual operating cost (oc) for that run and add in your margin into it then discount it by say 4% because it is reoccurring revenue <<< the discount is based on your margin %.

Both myself and my manager do this often, so we tend to keep it simple.

Scaling it up won't be an issue. You can price out a lease for the additional trucks, adjust the oc to include the lease costs and put the bid together. If you want to scale up with your own equipment (purchased), get a bank quote for payments and add that in.