How much can an INTELLIGENT owner-operator make?

that was my point exactly rollin

 

I'm not trying to pick on anyone in particular, but a few guys mentioned what they grossed at this carrier or that carrier. Does that number mean anything ? I mean if one guy says he grossed 120,000 with carrier X, and another guy said he grossed 150,000 with carrier Z would I have any way to decide which carrier was better ? You have to at least say how many miles, still we don't know what area you ran, tolls, number of stops, weight, etc... We don't know if it was 4 busy months and slow the rest of the year or steady. But at least if you give gross and miles we would have something to go off of. IDK, personally I try to totally put the gross out of my mind. Per the example given if I was looking at a 1000 mile load paying $2000 I don't think of that as a $2000 load, I always subtract the miles. I try to forget $2000 and think of it as a $1000 load from the beginning. the $1500 load would be $1200. My expenses are actually over $1/mile but my goal is to get them close to $1/mile and it is simply easier to do the math this way for comparing loads on the fly. Forget about gross, it's meaningless.

 

It's not meaningless with qualifying information. Like pretax net, something I provided. I agree that, alone, it does't signify much.

I know guys that grossed much more than me, and guys that grossed less. Irrelevant. What you have after expenses, pretax, is more of the operative number. For me, I made my money working much less than I had when I was leased to another carrier - and worked much less than when I was a company driver.

 

Just from my own personal experience...

i am currently running two trucks. One of them I have been able to run coast to coast (pretty much at least) since Janurary. The other one tends to do the LTL and short runs (under 1000 miles) again since Janurary. Now, a lot of people say that the shorter runs pay more, but my experience has been different. The truck doing the long hauls really brings in a lot more money. I only haul off the load boards at this point, so no direct freight. As you know, you never know what you are going to get from the load board on any given day.

The KW with a stepdeck pulled down $34,000 on just over 12000 miles last month. The Freightliner during the 30 day period did $22,000 on just over 10,000 miles. The KW only had a couple of loads that were over over 30,000 pounds, one was like 44,000. Whereas the Freightliner never hauled more than like 18,000 pounds.

I don't think that there is a "formula" for making the best money. There are just too many variables. I think that you just have to find your "groove" gain momentum and don't stop.

 

The whole point is not how much you can make but how much you end up keeping doing as little work as possible.

You can make tons of cash but just be a conduit for money to flow through and end up with very little.

And education does not increase intelligence, it only decreases ignorance.

 

And this my friend is what i am all about most weeeks.This is also what the SLAVE MASTERS in the USA don't want us to do..They want to enslave us and keep us trapped so they can enjoy there elite status..