Need advice

Ok, I know ONE guy that has made a living hauling one car, he has been doing it for over 15 years and hauls almost entirely vintage and antique cars, he belongs to SEVERAL different clubs and when a member wants a cherry ride picked up he is the first person they call.

But even at that he has told me there are times when he is busy and sometimes goes a month without a haul, this is after 15 years, just saying.

 

I’m going to go out on a limb and assume you have basic math skills. As mentioned it’s almost impossible to make $ hauling one car. If it’s ‘I just want to get out of the house’ project, you’ll be financing it. Forget UShip, it’s bogus. Central and other load boards, you may break even once in a blue moon.

Sometimes if you change your perspective it looks better. So let’s change from job perspective to a long term business perspective and assume you can afford to run at a loss for a year to get established even tho you’re not Tesla or Amazon. When do you get the payoff for being established? You’ll have to double your rates, not impossible if you have high end customers. So you’re entire purpose starting out will be to find those high end customers.

Why not start out with the customers before you make a truck investment. As KANSAS TRANSIT mentioned, go to the car meets, the high end sales wherever you find high enders. ‘why do you rob banks?’ ‘because that’s where the $ is!’. The plan being you skip through the losing part of operating while you do the more difficult part of finding profitable customers. Or get a part time back office job hustling customers for some carhaul company that has the same customers you want.

This is much harder than just buying a truck, putting it into the wind and hoping for the best. Before you start trying to walk on water maybe you should figure out where the stumps are.

 

What I will add to this is that these "high end customers" did not get to where they are by blowing money unnecessarily. Two of my customers are multi millionaires, one drives a Ferrari 458, the other has a Veyron, 2 Lamborghinis and a Ferrari. We had discussed me buying a 3 car enclosed to move some cars around to shows and track days occasionally, well it turns out that the guys who haul enclosed for them now are already cheaper than I would care to be. And there's no point in making less money so I will continue to haul open.

So if you think there's customers out there who are ready to blow cash like there's no tomorrow, you're mistaken. Maybe go to parties where NFL or NBA players hang out?

 

I have also seen posts and read on forums where the enclosed guys mention that these guys with 250k and up cars brag about how much their cars are worth and then want them to haul 'em for peanuts! I guess they didn't get rich throwing $$$$ around.

 

I agree with the difficulty with high end cars.

I worked out of Adesa Little Rock as a crew boss for both cars and heavy truck sales with a crew of temps that I would serve as far as teaching how to operate a transmission automatic or manual very quickly so that the trrucks will make it to the sale barn.

We have a Mercedes dealer in Little Rock proper who are pretty insufferable when it comes to "Their cars." a 90,000 dollar retail vehicle does not intimidate me however the sales people cannot stand to have dirty people touch their cars. I used to get a hold of them rather easily and then abuse the tires on them things a little bit. I will tell you some of the cars are quite amazing and probably able to be tossed around the back loit now and then.