New owner operator/No experience

im 24 just got my own authority and recently obtained my cdl . i have no prior experience , i would love for help with any load boards or companies that fit my path

 

I just did the same thing I left the company after working 3 weeks and just paid 10k down for insurance and got my Mc and dot number

 

I haven't traveled that path, I own my truck and leaded on with a carrier. Any broker will want to know your MC #. Many, if not the vast majority, won't do business with a carrier with less than X months or even years experience. You may find brokers that will work with you.

Sometimes I find my own loads through brokers. My carrier already has agreements set up with hundreds of brokerages. Sometimes I find a decent load, but the agreement has expired or was never set up. Our office staff does all that leg work and it can take up to 24 hours to get all the paperwork signed off, by which time that load got covered.

If you want free load board apps try Truckloads and 123Loadboard. You can view a limited number of loads on 123Loadboard each day, then you are cut off unless you want to pay a monthly subscription.

IMHO anyone jumping into this without much if any experience as a driver, let alone as an owner operator, jumping right into getting a truck and your own authority, SHOULD expect to spend a LOT of money for tuition. What you DON'T know WILL take a big bite out of your stack.

For one thing older trucks mean higher maintenance costs AND lots of down time with no income. Did you purchase your truck with full due diligence? I didn't and I've paid for that mistake. I should have spent a few grand to have a trusted mechanic go over it and had a dyno test done. Had I done that I would have walked away from a money pit.

Another question, do you know what lanes to run and what lanes to avoid? If you get what you THINK is a great paying load to North Dakota, then what???? There's some ####ty paying loads out of there, depending on what trailer you pull. You might have to deadhead hundreds of miles to get a load that pays crap.

Hopefully it will work out for you. However, you have a steep, expensive learning curve ahead of you. This is why the experienced forum members strongly recommend being a company driver for a couple of years before becoming an owner operator. Make your driving mistakes on your boss's equipment. You don't want to grenade the transmission or blow up the drive shaft in your own truck because you didn't yet know how to start from a stoplight on a 14% uphill grade, do you. Learn to at least drive, before complicating it by spending thousands on your mistakes.

 

and hows it going for you ? what comapnies , brokers , and load boards are you currently dealing with ? i have my mc and boc3 everything is done only thing left is ucr and insurance but i havent yet purchased a truck

 

amazing response !!!!!!!!!!!! , since ive already took the leap by getting everything done. would you consider me getting a driver to drive it and i ride with him ? if so what companies are good brokers for owner operators with drivers

 

I think if you have gone this far with expenses you are better off driving the truck yourself. Adding an employee and payroll taxes will only make it worse. I do recommend leasing your truck on with a carrier that will be willing to take on a new driver, it would significantly simplify matters. The best carriers will want an owner operator with one or two years experience. However, many carriers are relaxing their standards as the market for drivers gets tight.

Where are you located? What kind of trailer do you want to pull?

 

You’ll notice, mc#, ucr, dot# etc is the easy part. All you do is pay, they don’t care if you got a truck a cdl or nothing. Now, insurance cares, a lot. Under 30 years old, pay a premium, under 1 year driving, pay an extra premium, may not even be insureable. New authority, pay an extra premium, may not be insureable.

Not trying to discourage by any means, just being real.

 

What do you mean companies? If you have your own authority you ARE the company. If you want to go with a company, you will be under their authority - which gives you almost no reason to have an active authority at that point. The company will provide liability and cargo insurance either by a fee, or included in the percentage they keep.

If your talking about brokerages or power only operations, that’s a different thing.

 

Wow ...

albilinotrucking Talk about going into it blind.

Here is a very important statement you and the other guy with three weeks in need to really have to listen to;

The failure rate for this industry with owner operators is ~85%. This is with a majority of semi-experienced (more than 2 years on the road) failing. Going into it blind as you did, it is almost assured you will end up failing. I am not making this up, others can tell you this is reality, not fantasy.

You should be at least a year on the road just to learn the way things work, and then go to a carrier to lease to a carrier for a bit when you buy a truck to learn how to deal with responsibility of the business. What that will actually do for you is reduce the risk of failure from ~85% to ~60% and give you a foundation to work on.

But to each their own.

 

I just put 9981.81 down for insurance Friday