Need advice

What have you seen with your own eyes that confirms you would make more money if you bought a truck? The way this usually goes (90%) is someone without enough experience to know they are being lied to believes the lie, hands over a lot of cash, and finds out the truth isn't what was being told to him. Being desperate isn't enough to justify taking such a big risk. YOU ASSUME ALL RISK and are hoping, but not guaranteed, a big payoff. If it was so profitable the company would use their own money to get trucks and keep all of the profit.

 

Being an owner-operator is often 3 times the work of a company driver for 10 times the risk of bankruptcy and 25% more pay. A paycheck is all profit. Be a company driver.

 

At one point I looked into this.

Those 40 ft trailers, I've watched them.

They're expensive to buy. The non-cdl 40' is around $15,000 new or something like that, old used ones for 7 to 10,000.

They seem like used ones are very difficult to sell. So if you're going to get one make sure you need it because it may be hard to just get rid of it.

There are plenty of guys that go into that business, they lease on to someone and run their rear ends off for a year or two, and then they realize they didn't make any money.

Cash flow can be deceiving, and plenty of people see money coming in and they just keep working.

If you find one of them going out of business you might find a deal on a trailer.

Your area in Texas I would imagine is probably like THE area for that.

I'm sure there are some guys that do that that make money, but with my own authority it seemed like the loads really paid nothing. Although I'm in Pennsylvania.

But that's probably most freight right now.

If you want to go into that business, what you need to know is what it actually cost you to operate, and you have to have loads to pay you beyond that.

You have a truck that's pretty new right now, but you take that truck and criss cross the country a bunch of times you're going to wear it out, eventually.

You don't want to do that and have nothing to show for it.

You have to have the money to be able to repair yours and then buy another one, and those trucks are crazy expensive.

@Lite bug is in that part of the industry.

Maybe he can shed some light on things.

 

Not until at least til you get more capital, experience and knowledge about the industry.

 

Yes.
Listen to comrade.
At Super Ego, you choose you truck.
You self dispatch off load board and get home when you want.
You make money!
You happy, wife happy, kids happy.
Please call Ivan or Natasha now!
Спасибо (thank you)

Seriously tho, I wouldn't even entertain the thought of being an O/O right now.
I can show you freight rates that would make you wonder how anyone could make a profit unless diesel was $1, the load was 7k lbs, and flat land all the way. You can say no to cheap freight, but flip flop will haul it and those rates will never change.
And while I've never driven for Swift, you shouldn't blow them off. Check out their website...depending on where you live, they have local and dedicated runs. As does Knight, Werner, JB Hunt, and others.
Plenty of great advice on here so I won't ramble on...

 

At this point, I must ask you: is this post a gag?
Hotshot? You really want to sleep in the back seat of a pickup most nights? Hotshots are a scam enticing people (like you) who don't have enough money to by a 'real' truck. Of course, only a 'real' truck will make 'real' money. A little rig makes little money. It's really that simple.

 

The Hotshot, as people say is something that the originates from the oilfield well; needless to say, that's where the money is for hotshots. There is another hotshot, but that is from the US Forest Service, you know that the most profitable is actually less than truckload? Especially nowadays, unless you specialize in over-size or something else, the dry van is so saturated from megas, it really hurts anyone else with current rates.

The only real time you make a lot is in a time of crisis and for some reason its perfectly safe to be exempt from HOS. Still, otherwise, it's not safe I love how there's the double standard from our own government though FMCSA was designed to regulate nothing else they don't care who they hurt in the process. Hotshot drivers and truckers all have a similar start they started out as less in the cabs and smaller because they would send you to do a load you would come back and take time off my grandpa after WW2 would tell me trucking OTR was just a small area sleep and no one stayed in them long you did the load came back to the yard and take a day or two off after each load to enjoy with your family and go back out. Nowadays people are full-time living in them and that's not what trucking looked anything like when trucking started the same could be said for hotshots; they were designed to take from one ranch to another ranch in the oil field.

 

Well, I must remind you, this site is all asking questions about the unknown, this person came to us and "fishing" to see what might work. With companies not willing to send a full size semi to Bugtussle Heights, smaller rigs, like a hotshot, may indeed be popular. I guess I do feel like you, drive a "real" truck since they came this far.

 

When you own the truck, trailer. You pay all repairs. I bought truck/trailer bit over month back. Still picking up gear. Just doing my own hauling. It’s the timing I hope to pay for the truck/trailers, expenses over hiring.
I would wait before buying.