Is this worth tryin?

Our advice may be good or not. Only you can figure if it will work for you.

A suggestion....figure all your miles for last year then figure your gross income for last year. Then see how much you grossed per mile and compare it to what you are looking at doing. Make sure you figure the actual miles in both cases.

It's also a good idea to know your fixed and variable cost so you will know what you need to make a profit.

I strongly advise DO NOT post your figures. I don't care how good they are there will be some that will ridicule you.

Good luck.

 

Also consider fuel mileage. Since you are doing a shorter haul, and depending on your set up you can slow down a bit to boost youre mpg. If you have kids having that kind of time off can be worth more to u than the money.

 

Stage your truck at the shipper and only bring it to the house when necessary to change oil or other maintinence. Grease it in their parking lot. But still, while this is a decent one way rate it will break your butt deadheading back empty. You say "about $800" so what is it? Is it exactly 236 miles? If you deadhead back every time and it was $800 that is a $1.69 a mile, that will break your butt real fast running so cheap, not profitable at all. You need to find a workable reload coming back every time to make this work and good luck with that. I would at least try to figure out a reload coming back. Failing that I would pass completely on this deal and look at other local options which are always there if you look hard enough.

 

At 6 mpg you would run just under 80 gallons a day - 80 @ $4.00 = $320 but just use your $350 figure to be safe. You may get more mpg coming back light but just be conservative in your estimates. See if you can get $50 extra bucks a run out of the shipper, first? As already mentioned leave the truck at the shipper as much as possible and drive your personal car to it. Try and find the occasional backhaul that you can work into the schedule to offset the d/h.

 

Taxes .. if you want to work for $25 a day go for it

 

You are pushing it going across scales..

 

How much potential this has a lot to do with what kind of loading hours they offer, if they have a yard truck, etc... I mean, if they want you to load at 8 am every day and have no yard truck (no chance for drop trailer) It may be difficult to find backhauls you can deliver and still be back there at 8 am the next morning.

If they have a yard truck and would let you drop a trailer there, then maybe you could start running it and beat the bushes for workable backhauls.
If they would be happy with loading the drop trailer and letting you pick it up last thing every day, go to the house, and deliver first thing the next day that would give you a good chance to pick up and deliver backhaul, then go pick up your trailer loaded for the next day.

 

I wouldn't do it for $800. This is a dedicated run, they need to pay the fair rate back and forth. $1.69/mi is not a fair rate.

Also, what happens if diesel goes up 40 cents? Is your price stuck, or will it scale up?