how much does a new authority cost?

Not paying $30k or more for insurance is a big plus.

 

Letting your authority mature is not really common these days. When you pay 24k for the insurance, you want to use your authority. Leasing on you would be getting a percentage of the load via 100% while still paying for your insurance for the MC. Given that most brokerages will work with you pretty quickly, either lease on or go all in. Starting with 10k is not enough funds for a MC, shoot I don’t think 10k covered my chicken light bill my first year!

A reason to have your own authority is you can pave your own way. You can work on getting your own customer base and building something. Leasing on is a job. MC is a business.

 

I went through a 100k when I started last April. That included all down payments for insurance, truck & trailer. And all the other BS.
I blew through 15k in 2 months on minor repairs and downtime.
I blew my engine 2 months later. It cost 42k and 2 months to replace.
Commercial equipment loans are very hard to obtain for startups, and come with a hefty interest rate. Doesn’t matter if you have perfect credit and 100k in the bank trust me.

Im not trying to discourage you in anyway as I like to see people succeed. However, take your time and do plenty plenty of research. I thought I knew what I was doing and I’ve been in trucking my entire life but I was definitely not prepared at all.


IMO you better have a stack of cash and work lined up.

 

It’s a 2019 with 400k. I wanted one with less miles but the price of trucks being sky high at that time and along with me being a startup I had to put down 30% which would have killed my budget. I chose a less expensive option and put down 35k vs 75k.
I bought it from Freightliner and added the warranty which saved me the 42k for the new engine. But the amount of downtime waiting on the dealer to fix it is crippling.

Example my EGR cooler went out this week, it’s covered under warranty. However, the parts are on national back order with no eta. So now I had to replace it with an aftermarket one or get it repaired. So I’m out $2500 and a week downtime.

 

First of all ask yourself if you’re gonna run California. If yes 60-100k in the bank after all expenses. Those def trucks are like the modern women.


If no. Then 40-70k in the bank. Pre egr and pre def truck. Older but cheaper to run and fix.