~HELP~ New O-O What Tractor to Buy PRE-1999???? ~HELP~

I'll give you a hot tip for freight. Get yourself a dry bulk pneumatic trailer, and pull from Maine to Honolulu. 80,000# loads of fairy dust for Santa Claus, pays $1/mile, but that's a lot of miles!!!

 

Those are cool looking trucks!

 

Good qustion about insurance. I will be starting work for paving company in march drivong a dump truck with a flatbed trailer. 22 wheel total. He will have to get insurance for me i presume. NH is only 1 of 2 states u dont need car insurance but i doubt this is the same for trucks plus he has new trucks so i bet they are insured. Hopefully me being covered recently will make it a bit less risky for a company to switch me over to them to cover me for going OTR. Ill call a couple insurance companies to get estimations thanks for good advice. Any companies you recommend. I use USAA (Great insurance company! Get a check some years for left over money from there insurance $ that was not used. If you are family is military you can get into it. My parents use usaa so i can. My dad can cause my grandparents are navy and i can cauae my dad is a member. Hypothetically my kids could now join too!) for car but dono if they do trucks or commercial insurance.

As far as logbooks i dont plan on running extra hours becauae i have tons of work i can do at truck stops. BUT if i ever hire a driver i want any competitive advantage i can get to find a driver. When i went to trucking school MANY instructors talked about how they use to use paper log books to work more hours (i think this is why they mandated ELB in first place.). If a driver wants to find a company where he can work extra hours i can offer that to a driver with an older truck. Works for the driver to make more money per day and works for me cAuse my truck is rolling more than otherwise. I personally dont want to drive more than ELB allows but if i hire another drive i wont ask nor care how mang hours they work as long as they are happy ans my trucks moving. Also 90s trucks are good machines so might as well )

Is rust an issue on tractors??? Worth going down south to buy?? Im in new england and start paving in march. Starting at 22 an hour and get benifitS. Not bad i suppose

 

Can I call you Big Bad Jimbo

 

If I was you I would definitely go with a Kenworth or a peterbilt.

There's no way in hell I would ever consider an international.

Although the old Macs were pretty tough trucks they weren't exactly comfortable and the new ones probably aren't much better than a modern international.

Freightliner, I don't even know what to say.

 

$22 an hour? Do that for about a thousand hours and it should about cover your insurance for the first year.

 

I have owned four internationals. Their motors are junk and they ride like tanks but they are stout. We used them off road and beat the crap out of them and they just kept going and going and going. I wouldn’t pick one for an OTR truck but they do have their place.

 

God help us all, this is why I have such an attitude about people hiring drivers and not giving a crap what they do just to make a buck.

 

@Soon2BeOwnerOperator lmao. Good for you. Throw caution to the wind. Too hell with em all. You just do you.

With no risk come no reward.


The hard truth tho, as said so well by many before me. You’re doomed! Sure you can run a business, maybe. Lol. As you said your other ventures have failed as well.

There is no such thing as a pre 99 truck that is not worn slab the funk out. Forget about miles. Lol. They only had 6 digit odo’s in them days. Inframe, huh. Who cares... how many times has that motor been apart? How about the rears? Springs? Bushings? U joints? Starter? Alt? Airlines? Fuel lines? Transmission?how beat up & weak is that 20+ year old steal frame? How about the 30 grand in nickle and dime BullShart items that are not covered by an inframe??? I’m not seaching, but i seem to remember some posts in the resent past of new guys being quoted 40k for insurance. Maybe you better get on that!

And @Ridgeline is 100% on point in his last post.


Lordy i hope your just a troll

 

So much truth in what you said there.