How to become an Owner/Operator

#### good story, especially since it has all seems to be working out FINALLY for you. It may have taken 30yrs, but it's coming back around.... best of luck to you in your adventures. And keep us posted on how it all goes.

 

BigJohn did a great job and glad he reposted that from the other thread. This is a great framework to start with and the next step is to start getting down to numbers based on your operation. And some of the numbers can seem difficult to budget. IRP for example. It is really hard to figure out what they are going to be but when you are running 100,000 miles per year, $1500 difference is $.015/mile. So estimating high on some of these items will provide cushion in you plan.
Bigger factors are location, lanes, type of freight. One poster was talking about wanting to get into this and moving to TX. That is like saying you want to own a snow cone business and starting it in MN in December.
I have talked about attitude. Every contact you make needs to be with the mindset of building relationships. Stay away from negative people. Plenty of unhappy, cranky drivers to go around. When you start as a company driver, you will likely be in a situation that seems very nasty. Be the bright spot in peoples day at that company. In time it will come back to you with help on a payroll issue, maybe a log violation or that great dedicated gig that you are a month short of being eligible for.
What you pull and diversification. I pull a van. Just picked-up a new hopper today and by the end of summer I will have a flatbed. Many of the O/O's that pull flatbed have a van or refer for slow times or when weather is REALLY bad.
But above all at this stage, protect you CDL. Run legal and safe. Don't worry about that SOB that thinks you should be able to blind side back into a tight spot at 20 MPH. He is not going to get fired for hitting that parked truck and delay his dream a year or more.

 

Bill I might just be that poster that was talking about moving to TX or should I say is moving. I went and got my CDL about a week ago (first time perfect pass missed 1 point driving and 0 points on pretrip inspection) and am flying out to TX tomorrow. I must ask though why you say what you do about TX is there something I need to know? Keep in mind I am simply basing out of TX because it is cheaper than CA and I have family I can stay with untill paperwork goes through. After we get the everything legal we will be going where ever the road takes us.

 

I say that as an independent O/O because of rates. I would suggest anyone who lives in TX and wants to be an O/O work hard at getting into specialized something or other. Van and reefer rates suck in general.

 

GREAT thread!

 

Ok that makes sense. Like I said though we are simply basing out of TX because of family and what not so I don't have to pay to live somewhere while waiting on paperwork. Our only other option was CA and I do not want to pay all the extra taxes and go through all the extra emissions crap. Once we get everything set up and are ready to haul we will be living in the truck 99% of the time and only taking maybe a day or two off every couple months so we can pretty much go anywhere we need to go for the money. On a side note I was on getloaded.com the other day and saw a few loads leaving Houston that were paying about 1.80-2.15mile And personally I dont think the high end of that is really to bad (please correct me if I am wrong). I do see what you mean though because I also saw alot of loads leaving there for less than 1.75 which is a bit below my desired minimum and just barely covers costs.

 

Tolls are seperate. My way of handling this is to make sure loads that go through areas with tolls pay enough to cover them. With any extra costs just be sure to factor them in when making the decision to accept the load. If you are leased you just have to look at what is offered and decide if you could do better with a load that won't use toll roads. If you run your own authority, especially if the load pays near the low end of your range, try to negotiate additional revenue to cover tolls.

I think we owner/operators need to constanly try to negotiate more pay on the loads. We especially need to ask for lumper fees, tolls and other fees we incur that are not a part of all loads. By doing this we get shippers and brokers used to hearing that we want to be paid for the extras. We may not get it right away, or even ever, but we sure won't if we don't condition them to expect it.

That was an excellent question. Since it's been awhile for me I don't have a good handle on toll costs. I know it used to be easy to spend $60 - $80 for tolls on the east side. It used to cost $50 to cross the GW bridge.

Think about this. If you take a load 800 miles with $80 in tolls, you spent 10 CPM for tolls. If you got $1.90 per mile you spent 5.3% of your gross for an unbudgeted expense. If your wages are 22% of your gross and you are running at cost of operation, you just gave up about one-fourth of your pay on that load. It's no wonder so many have trouble making it. Make mistakes like this every day and your $50,000 pay for the year comes out to $38,000.

 

First I budget $25 per week for tolls and if I remember I'm a bit over but had a couple runs to pa that will never happen again.
But I love loads that have tolls. It is part of my negotiation banter.
"Oh wait Mr. Broker, what was I thinking. I gave you my bottom rate but I am going to have at least $X in tolls."
Or throw that in at the beginning be as part of the rate justification.

 

If you're running up in the northeast alot, tolls can turn into big $$$$ very quickly.