Hello, I am new here and really am not the type to post online, but I have questions that are hard to find the answers to. I am currently a company driver who doesn't mind driving and staying out for long periods of time. I have been searching for trucks and I found a 2012 KW T700 truck that has everything I want, looks really nice, and costs $67,000. Then I stop to think... wait a second, sure I can afford that payment now with my income as a company driver, but how will I know how much money I will make starting out with Landstar pulling their dry van? I see some people say that there are cheap loads and that it takes time to learn the loadboard, so how do I know the $67k truck won't bankrupt me in the first couple of months along with the other expenses if no one will say how much money I could make starting out? I have low personal finances and I am single without kids so I could live on $900 per month but want to make sure I make enough money at Landstar to afford to survive. My original plan was to save up a lot of money as a cushion but due to a lot of reasons I would like to leave my company asap and become an o/o. Thank you for reading.
just a tip(doing the same research) buy a starter truck (20-30k) run that for a few years save up to buy that nice new shiney 60k+ truck. should be able to pay off and make profit on a 20-30k truck in 1 year. payments would be lower cant say anything about ins,reg,ifta,2290,etc
if you haven't developed a business plan based on your cost is no time to be buying any truck I drove a 2011 KW700 that would have bankrupted me if I had owned it double yellow has a thread breaks all this down on becoming an O/O
You hit the nail on the head cranky yankee, with no business plan or general idea of operating costs etc...it's not a good idea. Not to be rude or ignorant but it smells of failure.
Naw, have to disagree unless he's gonna run like a dog. I brought a truck for $40K and is constantly replacing stuff over the last year in a half.
Hi OO, if I can talk someone out of going O/O these days, I'm going to try my darndest, even though many do make a go of it. The truck itself doesn't sound too bad, but I'm sure it has a half a million miles on it already, so repairs are around the corner. I became an O/O with 15 years experience in trucking, and was totally unprepared for what lie ahead. There are just so many costs that surface, taxes being my biggest downfall, as I did a lot of repairs myself, but again, those were older trucks that you could do that, not like today. It's totally natural for a company driver to think, hey, why am I making Mr. Bossman (or Bosswoman) rich, when I can do this myself. After 5 years I went back to a company job, and aside from losing my cool Pete (below) I never looked back again. Many of the successful O/O's today have accounts that they've had for a while, and a new guy gets all the crap that's leftover. Best of luck, I'd stay where you're at. Remember, it's a lot easier getting into it, than getting out of it.
