Hill Brothers: The latest info. request

they do have a riders policy and the cost is minimal. we get a discount on fuel if you fuel on our network. Pilots/flying J usually. the price break is usually $.02-$.20. you can fuel anywhere you want but will only get the break at their stops. we use Comchek cards.

weekly basis is fine. everything is deducted on your weekly settlement and after all deductions the rest is yours. Its automatically deposited into your checking account on Tuesday. your bills must be in the office by Thursday morning. we use trippak. no scanning. My fixed costs each week are about $650. Take your miles, multiply by mileage pay ($.90) and fuel surcharge (right now $.28 You will have a maintenance escrow. This is $.05 per mile per week til you reach $5000. I would recommend $.08 however til you get a balance built up. figure all that up and subtract your diesel and that will be your pay before taxes. taxes are your responsibility. what you make is dependent on how much you drive and how much FUEL you buy. Fuel is huge. JR OTR i think only runs about 60mph and you can see it in his fuel costs. Me, I only run as fast as i need to to get there. running slow and making everything fit into the electronic logs is tough at times. Do you run faster to try to save time for your logbook for later in the week? or do you run slow and try to save $ in fuel costs?

Right now i figure if i run 3000 miles a week and get 6.5 mpg i will take home, before taxes, $1300

 

Ouch... I prefer to run 60 MPH and about 2,450 miles a week for $50 less net... but you have that big ole D16 to feed too I suppose.

Jim

 

electronic logs has put a crimp on how I do things. lifetime average on ecm is 6.54. on paper its less. i run super singles and synthetic oil. so what kind of fuel mileage do you get?

 

Just under 8.0 MPG according to the trip computer, and just over 13 CPM for my fuel after FSC adjustment.

Jim

 

He makes more per mile then I do. Just doesn't drive as many miles. If he ran my miles he would blow me out of the water. MPG is everything. I'm working on getting my mpg up but I have a bigger motor and prefer to run west. I also keep track of my mpg on paper and he relies on the trip computer(I think) which is not as accurate. Lifetime on the ecm is 6.54 for me and for the last 20,000 miles since my last service its showing 6.9

I have been here 19 years. Hill Bros works for me. I've been looking at some different companies but have yet to find one that will work as well for me. Landstar is interesting because of the ability of selecting your own loads and planning well ahead but didn't like the idea of worrying about rates.

 

do they have any thing other than a volvo

 

Stevieg had the good short answer, basically I concentrate more on efficiency while most drivers concentrate on miles. I post all of my financials on my website so you can see the gross, net, per mile, 2010 numbers, fiscal year numbers, weekly average and all that junk on one spreadsheet.

The reason why the basic math of "why doesn't 550 miles more per week equal lots more money?" is that ALL of the other miles that driver drives per week are less efficient (eg more expensive) than the ones I drive. In other words, your assumption is that we both drive 2,450 per week at the exact same cost then Stevieg goes and drives 550 more and thus should make some percent more. This is the fallacy many drivers fall into.

The better way to think of it is to think of both of us at 2,450 miles on that mythical average week but he's about, oh, $400 behind me on net income. He does indeed make more gross by doing all that extra work but it is only sufficient to bring his net total slightly above mine. This is actually a mirage as well, in the long run, because those extra miles lower his truck's value, get him out of warranty faster, etc.

In my first year as a L/O my truck averaged 1.26 CPM for all miles driven, and I netted 51 CPM of that to my bank account. This left 75 CPM as my expense. Say just for the sake of argument that Stevieg has 15 CPM more expense and less net, he would expect to net (2,450 x .36 = $882) on those first miles to match me, whereas I would expect to net (2,450 x .51 = $1,249.5) over the same number of miles. He would then drive an extra 550 miles, just as you calculated, and his net might just beat mine.

Jim

 

Actually, if I wanted to average your miles on a week I couldn't do so as efficiently as I do so I really wouldn't make that much more. Company driver pay is linear (miles x CPM = pay) but when you're paying for all the expenses there is an expense curve that comes up after a certain point that doesn't make it economical to push any harder.

The 8.0 I mentioned came from the truck ECM printout, but I don't actually track mpg anyway... what I want to know is fuel CPM -- how many pennies does it cost me to drive one mile down the road. At the moment it is about 13.1 CPM after FSC adjustment, which I've been striving forever to try to get down to 12.5 without much luck.

Jim

 

About 75% of the fleet is Volvo 780, the other quarter being a mixture of T-600, prostars, and a wide variety of o/o and l/o trucks of pretty much every make out there. We've been told that they have 30 or 50 new prostar+ trucks on order that will be leased out but they haven't shown up yet.

Jim