New owner operator, top 5 veteran tips?

Do your homework long before you even start looking for a truck.

 

Become a member of www.OOIDA.com which is a business website for the owner-operator.

 

Win the lottery and turn in ur cdl

 

Leased to someone or own authority?

 

Invest in proper tools to do the bulk of your repairs. Every thing from brakes to engine repairs to whatever. If you pay someone to do the work, you will not make ends meet.
What is the year make and model truck you bought

 

Have a good amount of money saved up before you start this adventure .

 

See my post on a 2020 Pete. You'll be changing your mind toot-sweet,,,

 

Put money away for taxes, maintenance and a rainy day fund.

 

Unless you are a diesel truck mechanic, avoid buying used trucks from megas.

If a mega's truck is low mileage, it has been wrecked, or is a lemon.

If sold normally, a mega will run the truck 400k miles, doing as little maintenance as they can possibly get away with. They sell it to you, and you end up paying to do the deferred maintenance that they chose not to do.

If you absolutely must buy a used mega truck, I strongly suggest you find a company that operates trucks with the features you want, and ask them to hire you and put you in a high mileage truck, and tell them that if the truck drives well, you may buy it after 50k miles or so. This will allow you the opportunity to get an oil sample and do a dyno on the truck (at your cost) to see if the engine has any existing obvious issues. If the truck is junk, you simply don't buy it, and if they won't put you in a different truck, give them notice and do the same at another company.

Do not buy a modern emissions truck from Crete Carrier, or any other company that uses Opti-Idle instead of an APU. Opti Idle puts a LOT of low-temp operating hours on your exhaust system, which causes early wear and tear on your emissions systems.

I bought a Crete truck. The engine and transmission are still fine, but I have been throwing money at the truck left and right to catch up on deferred maintenance on top of expected maintenance. I barely dodged a nasty bill when my Detroit Diesel emission system One-Box unit was replaced with 499700 miles on the truck. 300 miles from the end of the warrantee, and the shop advised that what they did would have run me 12k outside warrantee.