I would really appreciate some help on the trucking industry

It depends on who you ask. Some drivers rent trailers from Ryder, Penske, Ervin, Premier, DTS and others. Other truckers outright buy them. Sometimes they get em brand new, or they buy them from other companies that have purchased new equipment so they sell of the old equipment. Some truckers have the same routes and others have irregular routes. I work for a company that has a series of dedicated routes.

 

Before you ask these questions, you have to understand what is a trucker is. It can be an owner, owner operator or driver. There is a level of control and financial independence to each to make decisions.

To answer your second question, I’ve tried the ad wrap trailer thing. It wasn’t profitable in the long run. I won’t get into it but let’s say the revenue per mile needs to be a lot more for the downtime involved to install and remove the wrap.

 

Sounds like your looking to do advertising on trailers...??

If this is the case then you'll need to look at companies/ owner operators that run local (same state/states all the time)

 

We went the other way, using vinyl on the sides of the trailers we purchsed used advertising our company.

The local sign guy was able to purchase a larger printer as we put the billboard logo on around 30% of our small fleet.

It hid a lot of imperfections making our 'best' look real sharp.

Trucking is a truly diverse world, vast numbers of leased trailers are out there but so are a variety of owned equipment including a lot of specialty [purpose built] units.

Op could visit all the truckers in a square mile and each one will be a variety of answers; when customer demand increased we would lease a few additional trailers, some times long term, to do the additional work.

 

Welcome aboard, when it comes to advice, we're all Vikings here. Trucking 101:
There are generally 2 kinds of truck drivers, company drivers and owner/operators. Company is pretty self explanatory, and has no legal recourse whatsoever, except to show up for work, and operate the truck safely. An O/O however, is anything but a company driver. EVERYTHING is on the owner, registration, taxes, repairs, and the biggie, insurance. Insurance will kill you if the repairs don't.
Most owners today pull someone elses trailers, usually the companies that gave up the trucking part, and your own trailer doesn't gain much today. Used to be, there was so much freight, you could literally land a load with your own wagon anywhere. Doesn't work like that today. Advertising, or "billboards" used to be common, but now it seems preferred to be just a generic white trailer.
Company drivers tend to do the same routes, almost to the point of boredom and OTR drivers, you never know, or should care.
You have more questions, lay them on us, brother( or sister?), that's what we're here for, even seemingly stupid questions. You came to the right place.

 

Yes they have their own trailers. Reefers get swapped out every 10 years, and dry vans can go a little longer. I didn't know until recently that reefers were supposed to be swapped out by law tho.

I was just in Murfreesboro last week visiting other family. Chattanooga is gorgeous man. You'll love the rock climbing there.