New Driver with own authority

There’s a plenty of guys that are averaging 13 K a week….It just takes a little extra effort. Put your truck where there is a truck shortage plenty of help out there. Dat and usda. Also depends on what kind of trailer you pull and if you’re doing it for yourself as an owner operator or half stepping and leasing onto a company and letting them run your business. Another thing to think about when taking advice from people here. Some folks started with very little and made it. Some folks started with lots of money and made it very easy. The most started with no money struggled and still struggle or fail. As I told people before I recommend buying the Equipment you need and after all starting expenses have been paid having $50,000 working capital as a bare minimum. It is easier to start with double or triple that, which I did. I’m sure you heard it before, takes money to earn money. I have but respect For the guys that made it struggling. I personally like to go into some thing with this much ammo as possible and not half ####ed.

 

New Authority costs are the same, but most everything else is exponentially higher. Plus you have pesky little things like 2290 to deal with over 55k.

You have already decided which way you are going to go, so I wish you luck and I am not being facetious when I say that.

Do us and the folks that might be entertaining the thought as you are a favor and keep us updated. It will be interesting for you to come back and read all of this in a couple of years to see it any of the advice you have been given was correct.

Recommended reading for you:

@blairandgretchen thread - The Journey Begins - Purchased a New Truck
Also, there was a fella on here that went by Double Yellow I think. Both of these folks, out of generosity and in the interest of making the industry better, have chronicled there experience to include real numbers over a good bit of time.

 

I know when my husband and I were thinking about buying a truck so many drivers at the company we worked for tried to discourage us from buying a truck. They told us the paperwork and stuff was more hassle than it’s worth. Now keep in mind we bought truck in march this year and was attached to the company we drove for before buying. We went ahead and got our authority while attached to the company to let our authority age. We actually left that company late august so I’m totally new at this but it has been the best decision we’ve ever made. Life changing money. We are not big spenders so most of what we’ve made we have saved. With the exception we just bought a flat bed trailer. Myself I would encourage any one wanting to make a great living to get their own authority and do it on your own. You can set your own hours work hard as you want to or as little as you want. Right now with power only loads going for 2.20-2.65 a mile dry van if you can’t make money doing those kind of loads then I guess you can’t make money. I hear the loads are hot right now and eventually prices will come down but we’re getting as much as we can while the market is on fire. Once this dies down we will be flatbedding because we recently bought a flatbed trailer. I hear prices on flatbedding are much greater and do not fluctuate as much as dry van prices do. It’s your money hun, it’s totally up to you.

 

When #### isnt being built, flatbeds go empty. I ran flatbeds and OSL prior to 2008. When 2008 hit everything dried up in flatbed and OSL except heavy going into ports being bought by other countries.

 

I personally don’t think prices are going to go down. I believe inflation is going to go up. So rates will be tongue in cheek to inflation. Just remember about open deck. Open deck might be high now. Open deck will not be high when the Economy goes down. Open deck hauls building materials. Those building materials are in demand when the economy is doing well. They are not when there is a depression. Open deck has ups and downs, so does oil field. Stay away from reefer. Lumpers and produce problems. Just leave those for me, I got it covered.

 

Lol I’ll leave all the refers for you.

 

The beauty of it we can always fall back on power only loads or eventually buy us a dry van. Right now dry van prices are a joke. We not going to pay double the price for a dry van when we can power only and use others trailers and still make a #### good living.

 

I don’t blame you one bit.