Is it a good time to be an owner operator?

You need to have a business mindset. Whoever you’ll be hauling for is your customer. If they ask you to haul a load, the answer is always yes. Unless there is a safety problem involved.
You’ll be married to the truck. If the business winds up being a Monday to Friday affair, Saturday is never a day off. It’s for maintenance and repairs. Sunday might be a day off, but you’ll probably have to head out on the road before supper time.

 

A thought, for a person starting out, dont buy in the spring or summer. Buy in the fall. If your ac sucks or is nonexistent at least you can get by till it warms up and establish some cashflow before messing with that bs.

 

How do you find your customers if you open a restaurant? A pizza shop? A hardware store ? An online clothing store ? A consulting business? Trucking is a business just like all the above... find your customers first , then go into business once you know how to solve their problems.

 

#### that is harsh. I never read the rules and still have not. I guess I am an outlaw forum writer! Ha Ha

 

#### and I am sure that load was 45K as well. I always dead head unless snow or wind on those roads around there. If either I will bite the bullet just to leave.

 

Do

Don't buy a old used up truck and you can take those weekends off and enjoy that time!

 

When I joined way back, I spent approximately 2 days reading posts/threads on Cat engines using the “Search” feature”. Haney and other guru’s had priceless 411.

 

You may consider dry van bottled water loads to south Florida. Deadhead to Maine for some plywood to Denver. Then reload in Denver to get back to the water loads. Run a triangle.

 

The Supply & Demand factors is something to seriously look at before becoming an Owner Operator. Back a few years ago, things were booming with a greater demand for Freight being shipped, so Larger Carriers, Owner Operators etc. were jumping on board, obtaining great rates per mile, equating to more money. Things began showing signs of changes on the poles around mid-2022 and now in 2023, the Trucking market is over-saturated with trucks and less freight its become a dogfight. Rates per mile went from avg, $3.50 cpm to $1.80 (in most cases), some obtaining $2 per mile on average. Leasing onto a Carrier (with caution because most will give you a great song & dance on how they can get you still $3.60 average per mile, but in most cases, those are their top guys who have weather multiple storms with them, so they're not going to give you their best-paid loads right away). Unless you know the Shipper's personality and can obtain a 2-year minimum contract with them to haul their freight directly, I'd suggest waiting to see how things fair out by 2024. Fuel is beginning to slowly creep up and with everything going on in the economy things don't look the best currently.

 

I did use the search button a lot when I first started using as well. I was wanting to be an O/O and wanted to get into car hauling. I talked myself out of the car hauling because the market was flat at that time. I kind of wished I would had went ahead and gone that route. Maybe one day I may get into it still.