Is anybody really making enough profit?

Actually I have my equipment up for sale. I would like to be able to put more than half down for a new tractor and buy a flatbed outright. Selling used equipment is a little slow and no one wants to offer a fair price right now. So it looks like I'll get a new trailer (I have the cash for that) and run the Pete until it sells along with the ten wheeler and the low-side.

 

I know there are some that will. I don't recall them off the top of my head, but if you keep searching you will find them. Do a search on this site on the subject. I think there are some posts covering that issue.

 

It's been a long day. I'll check this tread again tomorrow night. Good night

 

Well, I have to question some of the initial numbers here. If he is making 7380 per month gross, and is getting 1.65 per mile, that only works out to 4472 miles each month, or 1100 miles per week. If he is geting loads at a higher pay per mile, then the truck is turning even less miles, since the mileage would be lower for the same amount of income. Based on that number, the income looks okay to me. About 2000 a month in income from the truck based on low miles seems acceptable. If the truck is only running about 53-54k miles a year, then you cannot expect it to produce the same amount of income as the average truck running 120k miles per year. Unless you can bump up the revenue per mile significantly, the income is right in line with what you would expect from a truck running on what is essentially a part time basis. If you spend 4-5 hours a day driving to get in the 225 miles the truck averages each day, unless he is spending an inordinate amount of time sitting and waiting unpaid to make up a full workday.

I don't see how a truck turning that low of miles could eat up 840 a year in oil changes, especially with the owner doing the work.

There are a lot of your numbers that don't seem to make a lot of sense to me as I sit here reading them. Your cell phone costs are too high, you said nothing about if you are collecting a fuel surcharge at all, and factoring out your income is usually seen as a sign that a business is in trouble. You give away almost 4500 dollars a year in that area alone. It may only be 5% of the gross, but it's close to 1/6 of your profit each year.

You need to get some trucking related courses and training and find some ways to bump up your profits. No one should have to factor their money away just to have cash in hand. Get the trucks income up higher, get more mileage out of it, and a lot of your costs per mile will drop. Right now your insurance cost per mile is better than twice the average because of the short miles.

As for the truck, sounds like it is doing well, since very few flatbed haulers manage to get 7.5 mpg with the variations in dimension on flatbed loads. If he is getting that, he's doing very well in that one area.

 

I agree the numbers are off. It appears to me he is running half the miles that is the norm so you can't expect him to make the norm for income. The bad part is if he has not been home in three months and is only drivng that much thenhe has more expense then you'd expect from those miles.
the cell phone is what I pay for two phones on one line and my cellular internet.
I take it you have your own authority and he's just out on his own. Does he have any exerience in this? sound like he just doesn't know what he is doing.

Look into a bypass oil filter sytem like the gulf coast bypass filter. you change the filters every 15k miles and send off an oil sample at that time and don't change the oil untill the sample says it needs changing. Eskimo is getting 200k miles on an oil change like this with a good synthetic oil.

 

She did say:

So it could be more miles, taking into account he ran into some cheap freight?

 

normal would be 10k t 12k miles a month for OTR.

If he or you can't find loads to keep him moving then you need to lease him on somewhere. There is companies out there who will take on an older truck you just have to look harder. I've done the work, my truck is an 86. So if you'd like you can PM me and I'll give ya a few companies to check out if I can