mercer transportation

One benefit of e logs. I won't be getting letters about missing logs cause it took me till March to stop writing 16 down for the year.

Every freaking year its almost summer till i start writing the right year on the date. Over the years I've had a few officers point out my loss was in violation cause of this, but to their credit, they never busted my chops or gave me a ticket for it. Just asked me to fix it before i pulled out.

 

Everything else the same? Same brand? Same general condition? If so I'd get it, assuming the axles are positioned to be legal on the bridge in every state. I think cali is 41 from King pin to rear axle. The beauty of a 48...you are legal every where. In context of axle distance.

Of and fir what is worth. Imo transcraft trailers are absolutely junk. From my personal experience...They don't hold up over time. They airworthiness have bad problems with the frame cracking at the front axle suspension. Keep that in mind while shopping. This may have been addressed and fixed on their newer stuff. The last transcraft flat i owned was a 99.

 

@DezTrucking
My 2 cents aren't worth much but.

If I were looking at 53 flats. I would consider one with a sliding rear axle. Fontaine makes a 53 combo that both axles slide. You can make it a tandem when hauling light loads and save on tire wear. Also can get legal on kingpin law in any state.

 

So... I'm waiting on my over size permits. I should be picking up in the am but they didn't get my permits done.... hmmmmmmm

 

Yes both the same specs on a new Fontaine trailer and the 53 is Cal legal.

 

Yea I looked at them too but it adds about 5k onto the price. I can't justify that big of a jump in price right now unless I had steady freight where it was needed.

 

Anybody else seeing more of these loads posted "driver will be fined $100 for late delivery" "driver will be fined $25 if fax not received within xx hours of delivery" ? Wouldn't have a problem if there was also Driver WILL be paid for EVERY MINUTE over two hours waiting after arrival at shipper/receiver. I can't count the number of times I've heard "well it was only 15/30 minutes over two hours, we can't charge them for that" or "they're a good customer we can't afford to lose them for charging detention". What part of two hours = 120 minutes is hard to understand? Instead of saying detention pay is $75 per hour we need to charge it at $1.25 per minute AND make it retroactive to the time we arrived.

rant off .....

 

FWIW, I put $4800 down on my truck & only had about $3500 left over in the bank. This is not that smart & very risky buy i knew going in that if something happened I could get a job to pay the bills & keep me afloat if need. My clutch went out on my first load. $2800 & an extra 10 days off. Thankfully I was only 100 miles from home & I was able to finish the load then bobtail home to get truck fixed. You can't predict breakdowns do you just have to be prepared for them. I wasn't really ready for this repair but I was able to get it done & back to rolling without sinking. My truck payment on this old truck is cheap enough that it doesn't take long to get all caught up even pulling cheap van freight. Not sure if this will help but it is a real life experience for you to think about.

 

I was similar to @RStewart . I put down $10,000 and had $5,000 left in the bank. In the first week I ended up having to do wheel seals and within 6 weeks a new turbo for $4,000. By then I had saved up a little more. In the first year or so, I've put about $32,000 into a truck I bought for $32,000 and that's without an overhaul so far.

My advice is if you're going to do it on the skinny, take a small paycheck and bank as much as possible. Stuff will breaks and you need to be ready.

Last piece of advice, do NOT buy an extended warranty, it's worthless. That's part of the reason I had to spend so much money, every time I went to file a claim, I was required to take the truck to a dealership, which cost 2-3 x's as much and takes 3x's longer to fix. And they would end up denying the claim, so I got stuck with the bill.

 

Sounds like you got lucky. And I'm glad you made it through that. Sounds like you might have been done if on your next load you lost a turbo. Let's hope nobody has Petes luck.