Looking for a mentor

I think you're doing exactly the right thing trying to educate yourself on being a self employed businessman.

The fact it's truck based isn't really relevant, the rules of business apply to everything from a one man band to a corporation.

I reckon an accountant would be a good place to start your quest for knowledge, and if you carry on researching and learning as you are you'll be giving yourself all the tools to succeed.

 

Following.

 

pm me and i'll send you mine

 

You can learn an awful lot about the business side of trucking from reading the financial statements of successful publicly traded companies. For example, Werner's investor relations website lets you download annual reports going back 20 years: Werner Enterprises, Inc. - Financial Information - Annual Reports

If you haven't read these types of documents before, your eyes may glass over after reading a page or two -- that's normal. Take breaks, but keep at it over time and feel free to ask questions about anything you don't understand. Eventually you'll understand what the reports say.

If you're comfortable making a spreadsheet, it is probably worth the intellectual exercise to track their major streams of income/expense have been over the years to see the fluctuations in business cycles so you can plan to survive downturns.

Also ask yourself why they do things certain ways, or what this might mean for your business. For example, in 2016 Werner had ~12,000 workers, of which ~9,000 were drivers. From that we might conclude that ~25% of trucking business happens outside of the truck.

Or you might notice they have 7,000 trucks and 24,000 trailers. That's more than 3 trailers per truck. You might then look at other public trucking companies to see if that ratio is normal and how that might make their business different from yours.

Take a close, hard look at their income statements. Sometimes they don't tell you directly how much they make per mile, but they give you enough information to calculate:

for example:
$3,600 / tractor per week
13% deadhead miles
7,100 tractors

You can then look up the fmcsa to see how many miles they report (950 million in 2015). Adjust that by the 3.2% fewer miles they admit to for 2016 (920 million).

920 million / 7,100 tractors = 129,500 miles/year = 2500 miles/week

2500 miles × 87% loaded miles = 2175 loaded miles/week

$3,600 per week / 2175 miles per week = $1.65 per loaded mile
$3,600 per week / 2500 miles per week = $1.44 per all miles.

Check out their profit margin (8%). That's $290/week profit per tractor

Check out the cash flow statement to see whether what they report as "profit" actually translates into more cash in the bank.

It doesn't. They reported an average of $100 million per year in income over the last 3 years, but the cash flows were -$15 million, +$9 million, & -$1 million -- where is that "profit" going? (answer: they bought a bunch of new property, paid off debt, and distributed dividends to shareholders)

 

Now that’s detailed^^^^^^^ nice work on breaking down the numbers @double yellow.

 

Can I PM you ?

 

Where would I starting finding the info I need to do the same? I want this for myself to see if o/o is worth the effort, and if it is, to raise funds.

 

Are you still helping rookies with this? If so, I'd like to know how I would go about getting your help.

 

you still at transport national?