How much experience do you think is needed before becoming an O/O?

You are missing the point. When you become an o/o you can learn more stuff in two months, than you would learn in 10 years being a company driver.

 

Ha Ha at 16 I was a better driver than I am now. I had already drove for 5 years at that point. At 15 I learned book experience / Driving Laws. Learned to drive Dads 1969 F100 4 speed at 11.

 

On the business side you are correct. Wont learn much to help you as an owner as a company driver. Wont go so far as to say wont learn anything, but not much.

But on the operator side of things, not so much.
Heres an example for you. About 6 months into my driving career I blew a radiator hose (clamp rusted out) in North Carolina in July (85, no cell phones). Sat on the side of the road for a few hours until someone showed up to fix it. Learned to keep a spare clamp or 2 with me, coolant, not to mention some basic tools including 2 or 3 vice grips. Couple of years later, blew out a hose in Iowa in Jan during a blizzard. Was rolling in about 20 mins enough to get to a truck stop and avoid dying...

A good o-o knows how to keep his (or her) truck rolling. And until you have experienced all of the little problems that trucks have or can have, you will be at a disadvantage. Now I will grant you that in todays world of hand held computers and cell phones, ect. It is easier. MUCH easier than it was once upon a time. But probably the number 1 cause of o-os going out of business is because of BREAKDOWNS and the more experience you have dealing with this problem, the better off you will be.

You going to argue that point?

 

If you’re leasing to a company that is going to dispatch you in all honesty it’s not much different than a company job. Only difference is managing your money and maintaining the truck. You can buy a truck and lease on running their fuel card and not much capital is needed, you’ll be getting checks after two weeks. Other than saving up a down payment there’s really no need to stretch out the timeframe. There’s no use putting it off for years wasting time being a company driver if you can get a truck and make the leap.

 

Yep, if you’re a company driver and don’t study market trends, commodities, networking/good communication, costs, and ways cut them,- your only learning how to drive.

 

The failure rate for any type of business venture is pretty high so trucking in terms of a business the failure rate should also be high. What percentage of those were 10+ year veteran truckers vs a fairly new guy failing I don't know. The same general conditions apply, you can be a good painter, or a good plumber but try running a painting or plumbing business and you will find out fast that the business needs allot more done than painting or plumbing and that is the same with company drivers vs an owner operator or even more so a small fleet owner. I went to an SBA seminar a few years back and the main take away I got from the seminar is the more cash reserves you have the more likely you will make it as a small business. By far the #1 failure point the SBA could point to is that many of the small business that fail would have made it to a stable profitability level if they had enough cash reserves to last longer. Keep in mind the SBA considers anything under a 150 employees to be a small business so that is about 95% of them. Even something as basic as an additional 6 or 9 months of cash reserve would cut the failure down by more than half. So as a non owner operator the best piece of advice I can give someone thinking of becoming an owner operator is save as much cash as you can and then when you think you have enough STOP and wait until you have another 6 to 9 months of reserve. This will improve your odds of success hugely.

 

The saving for months is thinking like a company driver. You’re not just saving for you not working. You are saving for rejected loads, lawsuits, fines, repairs, predatory tow, accidents, rentals, etc… It’s more of a fixed dollar amount rather than a time period of money. But absolutely, need working capital!

leasing onto a carrier with your own power is not has less risks, as long as you have money for the equipment and the outfit your leased on brings in the money for you.

I leased onto a carrier when I started out. Compared to now, while different world. Now I’m setting up to worry about other peoples success and not just my own.

 

So it took you 6 months to learn to carry some tools and how to be able to survive. It took me a few days on this forum to learn to bring tools and extra little parts to fix easy stuff on the road. So I learned before I even got in a truck. I spent a year or more on here studying all about trucking. Was gonna do car hauling but decided to not do that based on the rates at the time. Went into dry van instead and was a better idea since we had a big bump in freight and the car hauling market went down at that time. Also now we have the internet thing that we can look up lots and lots of stuff including trouble shooting problems. Hell we even have this thing on the internet that you can watch self taught videos. I think they call it YouTube or something like that. It will show you just about anything. No need to drive all those years.

 

Yeah, when I owned the printing company I had 28 employees. Learned a lesson there too. Now its just a 1 man shop. If I screw something up, Im the only one that pays for it and dont have to worry about someone else screwing things up for me. Asked my kid when I bought my 2nd truck if I decided to make a real company out of it would he want to take it over when I die or give it up (he was a mechanic in the army - battlefield artillery recovery specialist). Nope.

Good enough.

 

Everyone can bicker about how long is enough, but only you will know. Make the right decisions for you, and don't worry what anyone else thinks.

Business savvy is something you can only learn in business.

Good luck