Need Advice on becoming an O/O

I say that because there are haters in here and that comment will likely cause a flurry of whiney, crying pm's to admins.

 

It's best to save and buy a used truck, but in 2015 you'll have to modify the truck to become DOT compliant. Lord knows how much that will cost. So pick your poison. I older and more affordable truck, or a newer and very expensive inexpensive truck lol!

 

DOT compliant how? You talking CARB emissions?

 

everyone says they know how to run a business.

NEWS FLASH.

unless you can predict breakdowns. YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO RUN A BUSINESS.

have you seen how the repair shops operate?

if you can't finance the truck at a reputable bank. you have no business even thinking about the idea.

i've spent 25G on my truck in the last 4 months on repairs. i know someone else that has spent 42G in the last 6 months.

people talk about having at least 10g in the bank for repairs. here's another NEWS FLASH.

try 25G. and even that won't be enough.

and having someone control OR make you set aside so many cents per mile for maintanance. means they will control your bank. and some companies KEEP THAT MONEY.

i'm not saying this to be rude. i'm saying this as someone going down that road. and climbing back out don't seem to want to happen. specially when you're dealing with an engine that no one seems to want to touch.

IT'S A GLORIOUS THING SPENDING $500 FOR NOTHING.

we all want to pay our bills and build a retirement account. but if you don't have the funds to begin with. it's not going to happen for you.

there are posts ALL OVER THIS websight WARNING people to DON'T DO IT.

 

i'm not making you.

i'm telling you the reality of it all.

those repair shops will EAT YOU ALIVE.

they aren't in the business of fixing your truck. they are only in the business of selling you a new truck. PIECE BY PIECE

the way i see it. it's the #1 reason for failure.

the #2 reason for failure. wouild be the constant sitting around looking for a load that pays better then $1 per mile.

i'm not making you.

i'm just saying. it's not pretty out here in your own truck.

 

You bought a lemon snowy didn't you.

 

THANK YOU for being honest. It isn't negativity. It's reality. You can spend months or years talking about $25,000 for example. Or taking a pencil and writing that number down. Or dividing it by 12 in a spreadsheet to produce a monthly budget to plan ahead.

All that will absolutely not prepare you for the moment you're standing there with the service manager silently figuring out just what the heck you're going to do. A five figure repair bill will humble your optimism Right Now.

@MNdriver: Probably not a lemon. Big trucks eventually break big. Snowwy's numbers are not unreasonable. I'd go a little further and say they are pretty average. Just got through with an $11k in-frame that was absolutely impossible to expect, beyond just high mile wear and tear. That is, it wasn't producing excessive blow-by, consuming a lot of oil, or anything of the sort. And I only got to that price by negotiating like Donald Trump and chiseling every last nickel I could from the service dealer.

One day, with no abuse and a fully serviced cooling system, there was a sign of a cracked head or head gasket. Head came off and the liners were too low to just get by with a reman head. The only good news was that it drove to the shop without a tow, and the green paint on the engine probably saved me $10-15k. The bad news was a rocker roller failure two weeks later, adding another $2,300 to the original tab.

Then again, who knows? Maybe your luck will hold out.

Also good to remember that while you're spending all that cheese to get the rig back in service, it is coincidentally not producing any revenue during that time. Double whammy.

I'll get to my point mamamullins: I've got two trucks on the road. When I added #2, I had money in the bank and chose to finance a third of the purchase for a year just to build credit in the company name. The last $842.55 payment will be next month. I thought it would be a piece of cake. It worked out as practically a rounding error on paper. Then reality happened. It was my other truck, the one that I thought to be more reliable and had lower mileage, that got the engine work in July. I'm making those last payments by the skin of my teeth. I cannot even fathom someone seriously considering getting started with a $1500+ truck payment right out the gate. Regardless of the known risks with an equipment lease that hooks you to the carrier.

Sorry for being a downer, but that's a glimpse of what I've dealt with recently.

 

Red,

You are right, his "repairs" are about normal for a truck. My point is, he bought the truck and it seems he's been posting nothing but one major after another with this thing.


If that's so, what kind of a pre-purchase inspection did he do on this thing? It sounds like someone else SAW and knew what was coming and traded their headache off on someone else.

Welcome to the used truck market. you can get lucky and get a really good truck, or you can get one that was a traded in headache for someone else.

So in that outlook, he bought a lemon.