Leasing at Prime

heavychevy · Jan 29, 2013

I would imagine enough for emergencies like repairs, hotels for if and when you breakdown, maintenance, etc.

DragonTamerBrat · Jan 29, 2013

YES! At LEAST enough for 1 - 2 weeks of fixed costs.

ironpony · Jan 30, 2013

cl8936 said: ↑

So... Emergency Fund. Yes/No, how much? Not sure if I need this.
Click to expand...

Go read post no. 1 in this thread, and keep going until you get to no. 230. Only 2 out of 5 get to the finish here... and a big reason is they don't have around $3000 (minimum) set back as a business operating fund. For emergencies, for the weeks that you have a short settlement and need some cash to pay your driver (you) - this is a business, not employment on steriods, and you have to start thinking and operating like a businessman to make it through!

cl8936 · Jan 30, 2013

I've read this entire thread, I'm just trying to decide if I need to set up the emergency fund through payroll deduction at Prime.

ironpony · Jan 30, 2013

It puts some money aside in case you need it... its also less tempting to acess for your next spending spree. Its harder to get at. My emergency fund should still be intact at the end of my lease, and will have enough for a downpayment on a truck.

cl8936 · Jan 30, 2013

How much did you put in to get that much saved up? Was it set amount per wk, cents per mi or a percentage?

ironpony · Jan 31, 2013

After all expenses, mileage escrow and tire fund are subtracted from your gross revenue and reimbursements - if that's positive, then they take the emergency fund contribution out. It's a fixed amount that you authorize... talk to your FM, and he can get you the form.

You have complete control over the fund... any amount can be used to offset any expenses on your settlement, or loaded on your card. It's also an interest bearing account, like a savings account. I've been putting back $100 each week since about the 4th month of my lease. I've never touched it - all of my maintenance expenses have been covered by current cash flow.

jayhawker_1012 · Jan 31, 2013

I started my emergency fund at my lease inception. I currently put aside $200 a week. IP is correct in the fact the deduction is something you don't see or touch so I don't miss it being part of your weekly gross. It is almost more exciting to watch that account grow on a weekly basis as it is to get my weekly settlement

silverfox28 · Feb 3, 2013

ironpony said: ↑

View attachment 42031

Here's a screenshot of the basic weekly data capture page I use - its set up for a month. Hopefully you can read it... its a bit blurry when you zoom in. Basically the flow is set up to be exactly as I encounter the numbers in my settlement "Statement of Income and Expense." That's what I pay the $21.75 for.

I don't try to enter every number, just those that interest me. For example at the top, I enter the different fuel surcharge categories... but I'm not totaling anything to come up with the "Variable Expense" entry. The places where you see a zero in this shot is a location that does have a calculation entered. Everything that is blank is a field that would be data for one of the calculations. When I've entered the basic data from my settlement I do calculate the "Cash Flow" number... its basically Gross Revenue less Variable Costs plus Fixed Costs. That needs to be the same as my settlement - its a basic sanity check.

In lines 26 through 30 I do capture anything that I paid for using cash or a credit card - that won't appear in my settlement. That does effect the "Total Variable Cost" entry which is those expenses PLUS the Variable Cost entry from my settlement. I enter these numbers at this point, because that does affect the cash flow of the business.

From line 50 on down, I'm calculating business statistics. The most important is the operating ratio - it's your total costs (fixed and variable) divided by your gross revenue. Anything above 1.0 for any length of time, and you need to be considering throwing in the towel. Big companies shoot for 0.9 - in other words, they're keeping 10 cents out of every dollar as net profit before taxes. We want to be as far below 0.8 as possible... and 0.8 is about where you make what you would as a company driver.

Next is a metric that they teach in ACE-II, fuel cost per mile. Take the pump cost for fuel, and deduct all discounts, surcharges, etc., and divide by the miles run for the week. It tells you how you're doing both running the truck and buying fuel. Negative means your making money off of the fuel surcharge. When I started, 10cpm was considered excellent.

Everything else is pretty much self explanitory... just keeping track of my expenses, related to how the week went. Most things are measured in cost per mile in trucking. Just because you spent a lot in one category doesn't mean that you did poorly... it depends on how much trucking you did during the week. I total the categories across the sheet to come up with monthly totals as well. Again, it's a sanity check, and useful in other reports I generate. This is a page set for one month that may or may not have five weeks in it. We get paid on Fridays, so these "weeks" may cross proper months - what's important is WHEN you received the money. That first week in January may also include days from the previous year... again, we do cash accounting. It's WHEN the dead presidents arrived in your hand.

I have a worksheet in the same spread sheet for each month. Each one is set up the same way. My monthly and quarterly sheets are also set up this way so that everything for a year is in the same file. I link the weekly data out to the monthly and quarterly sheets so that I'm only doing data entry once, right here on these worksheets. For folks from tanker or flatbed divisions, obviously you'll have different things your interested in, and folks in reefer division may decide they want to track other stuff. One thing I don't show here are the lines I entered to track tolls... there's a weekly entry in my variable costs for EzPass tolls that I don't add into my Total Variable Costs, and a metric Toll Cost per Mile so I can track it.

All of this is peanuts compared to fuel. It's the 800-pound gorilla in the room.
Click to expand...

Hey just wondering, when you do these weekly, monthly, and quarterly calculations on this spreadsheet, how long does it take you. couple hours? or less?
Also, is this a spreadsheet you made yourself, or can you find a template like it somewhere?

ironpony · Feb 3, 2013

How long? 10 minutes maybe. Each cell in a spreadsheet may contain text, data (numeric or text) or a mathematical formula that references data in other cells or even other pages or files. Outside of entering one or two dozen figures off of my settlement, the process is automated.

It's something I cobbled together. If you're going to use one of these, you need to understand how they work, and how to program them. It's easy to get errors in them if you don't understand what's going on.

If you look back a few pages, I posted some suggestions for this along with links to where you can go for them. You might try that.

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