I'm going to give some advice and then I'm going to ask for some

I saw a reference to PharmPhail's thread "Instant O/O" and dug it up and spent parts of the last three days reading it. That is an excellent, excellent thread and I think that anyone here who is considering becoming an owner-operator should read it. You'll find it back on page 12 of this forum as of this writing. There is a lot of valuable information there, especially for newbies. I think I'm going to make a donation to the Truckers Report just based on that thread.

I've been a member here for a while, but I have not posted very much. I do more reading here than anything.

I have 14 years of experience hauling dry vans, that's all I've ever hauled. About 4 years ago I decided to do a local job and tried to settle down and possibly start a family. Long story short, that didn't work out. So I bought a truck in June of this year and leased on with a company doing long haul stuff.

I've been doing pretty good, but not exceptionally well. I started out with $14,000 in the bank. Through the cost of getting set up with my truck and some early maintenance issues, my bank account dwindled to about $7000. But I'm coming back and I have it back over $10,000. I bought an old Heartland Express fleet truck. It had about 383,000 miles on it. I paid $35,000 for it and also negotiated about $3000 worth of work to be thrown in as a part of the deal. I still had a lot of problems initially. Nothing that cost over $650 to fix, but just a lot of small stuff. And, of course, there was the loss of income for the down time. I think I've got all of the bugs worked out now. I'm going to need some steer tires pretty soon, but I'm hoping that will be it for a while.

So for those of you thinking about buying a truck, I wouldn't go with an old truck unless you know how to work on them. My truck was only 3.5 years old when I bought it and maintenance is running me about 10 cents a mile for the tractor. I know how to do minor repairs and I have tools and some spare parts with me, but I'm not much of a mechanic. There have been several times when I found myself wishing that I could take some diesel repair courses. I might be able to save myself a lot of money.

I like the company I'm leased to, but something has happened in the last month that I could not get to happen for 3.5 years. I have a girlfriend now. Things are still in the early stages, but I'm thinking ahead a little as to what I might do about being home more. I'm gone most of the time with my current company, and if things progress with me and this woman, I don't think I'm going to be able to keep doing what I'm doing. I just wouldn't feel right.

I'm kicking a few things around. Hire a driver for this truck and go to work for someone else doing local stuff. I guess I could try to sell this truck, but I don't know how long that would take in the current economy unless I took a big hit on it. And, besides, I really like owning a truck. I guess I could try to lease on with a short haul or local carrier. I don't know if I could find decent paying work doing that where I live, though. I'm from Dayton, Ohio and the job market is still really tight here. If you know of a good carrier from this area that can get me home a lot, please let me know.

And, lastly, I could go independent and try to stay close to home, which is what drew me to PharmPhail's thread. But after reading that thread, I think this may be the least wise option. That's the ultimate goal for me, and I wouldn't have to buy anymore equipment to do it with a dry van, but I know very little about rates for dry vans and the availablity of work for them where I live. I'm very close to being able to make it happen, though. Basically, all I need is operating authority and cargo and liability insurance. Maybe some more money in the bank, too.

Any thoughts are welcome as long as you don't talk bad about my girl.

 

Yeah, let me know, Tankergirl. Send me some details in a private message. I'm willing to inquire about anything.