I need your help - Thinking of buying a tractor

I think you should run the truck yourself for a year or two and get an understanding of the intricacies of the job.
If you expect to hire an employee to do a job that you don't have a solid understanding of, the likelihood of failure is extremely high. The employee will call you regularly with issues with shippers, receivers the truck and equipment and you'll need to immediately access the situation and make a call or tell him to run it. Not having any real world experience will undoubtedly cost you a fortune.

In my opinion you're better off either running the truck yourself or looking for a business partner rather than employee.

 

How do you plan on finding a driver?
The driver shortage is getting real.
Google driver shortage, then tell us how you can get a good driver.

 

Pretty hard to answer any of those questions if you don't tell us some things. Like where do you live? What type of work do you want to do with the truck? Can you buy a used daycab with under 300k mile for 30k in this market?

 

Yall may have brusted his burbble

 

How are you going to find the loads?
Brokers and load boards have all the leftover freight that the big mega companies didn’t keep for themselves .

What’s your plan to recruit an experienced driver away from the good job he already has ?

David McGill has some videos on YouTube with a lot of info on how he started his trucking biz without driving himself. But he is an accountant and knows how businesses work.

buying a truck and paying the truck payment and insurance and maintenance and fuel and driver .

there isn’t any meal left on the bone for you.
The profit margins are just too thin. Unless you have a friend in a shipping department at a factory or something that can steer some good paying loads your way and bypass the brokers who will skim all the profit off the top.

 

Or get a couple sleeper trucks and lease on to a regional trucking company

 

Take the money that you are going to invest in something you have no clue about and invest it in establish/expand into you own profession.

 

I know a guy who started as a driver, bought a truck, leased it to a place with some good freight, ended up building a fleet of several trucks, then built a 6 bay shop to service his fleet which is also open to the public.

Nowadays all his trucks are teams, ten new trucks all on dedicated weekly team runs, home every weekend. The trucks get sold and replaced with new every 4 years. The shop is fully staffed and packed with jobs big and small. Calling ahead a couple days ensures a bay is available when you arrive. He has his own authority, and his loads are mostly booked thru his own brokerage too. The shop building is a duplex - half is his shop and the other half is the leased headquarters and yard of another trucking company doing day cab work. So he's got his own trucks, his own brokerage, his own shop, and the rental income from his tenant covers the cost of the whole facility. A solid setup.

So now I'm wondering, is it easier to become a truck driver with a fleet and a shop, than to become a mechanic with a shop and a fleet?

 

Do you have experience as a CDLA driver?

Do you have experience as a small business owner?

If you can answer yes to both questions, than your idea might not be a bad one.

If you answer no to one or both questions, then I would advise you delay your plans until you can answer yes to both questions.

It is extremely difficult to manage and understand what employees do when you do not have experience doing what they do. Driving a truck can be rough in some urban areas, but it's nowhere near the whole job.

Starting your first company can also be a nightmare, and trying to do so with an employee you know nothing about, who is doing a critical part of the work (driving) is a recipe for pain and suffering.

I don't like raining on parades, but I do not want to encourage people to take risks unless I am reasonably confident they are ready.

 

Thanks for this. Very inspiring.

Ive thought about starting a shop out of part of my little warehouse but hadn’t been able to find a good mechanic to help get us going. Maybe I need to try harder. Otherwise, have the new trucks and brokerage. Lots of opportunity in this industry.