New to Car Hauling

I'm not familiar with "Fast pass" but I assume it is probably something along the lines of the Easy Pass or the PrePass.

The Easy Pass is for toll roads and is mostly in Florida and is available to anyone that wants automated tolls and a discount at the same time.

The PrePass is (I believe) a national program that sends you an in cab signal letting you bypass the truck scales about 80% of the time.

Hope this is helpful.

 

I know of only 1 owner operator that attempted to run only rail head to dealerships. That lasted about 4 maybe 6 months.

There is decent money in it but it's not really any better than most other car hauling jobs and it is almost always deadheading back to hurry up and grab the next load... Assuming there is a next load available. Most of the new cars at the various terminals are hauled by companies with dozens of trucks under contract. Most of the time we (Everybody else) get the left overs the big company can't haul on time. This could of course be different in different areas of the country.

Jacksonville has the Port and a few rail heads for different manufacturers. I have hauled out of most of them. There is one that I frequently get a decent load going to Orlando and I use those loads to get me from my routes in Jax down to my routes in Orlando so I'm not empty. That works out about 75% of the time. The rest of the time I have some other avenues I try and as a last resort I'll check Central Dispatch. Working off CD is such a pain I frequently just deadhead down to Orlando if it comes to getting loads from CD. For me the time it takes to chase all over Jax to get a decent load and then the time ti chase all over Orlando to drop it, the time is more valuable and I just go empty to get to my real work that is waiting on me.

It seems a lot of people that are not in this segment of the trucking industry believe getting (car) freight is easy and plentiful. To be honest it is. However, getting good paying, or even decent paying freight is a whole other story. I see people wanting to pay as low as 20 cents a mile to haul an expensive new luxury car from some place in the middle of nowhere. Absolutely minimal pay, coming out of (or going into) a fairly remote location (miles out of the way) often with weird difficult gate hours.

This is in no way a segment of the industry for everybody. It takes a lot of work to get good freight and there is a lot of risk with every single unit you put on your trailer. I say it all the time to other truckers looking to get into cars, "Anybody can drive a truck. Not just anybody can successfully haul cars, and to be honest not everybody wants to do it after they have been doing it for 6 months and see what it is really like".

 

geez .... i'm not even in the business (learning it, but not in it as of yet) & know 3 that are totally successful, one with a full size tractor & 10 car, the other with a dually & 5 car ... & there are plenty of loads for them to haul any day of the year. & the dually & 5 car friend just got his nephew into it about 8 months ago & his nephew is also exceeding/successful in the business thus far - both he & his nephew started as new cdl/new venture/no prior trucking/own authority haulers. full size rig & 10 car friend started just about 20 yrs. ago (united rd. & sealand - currently leased on with sealand). i have been out with both helping them for about a year combined (shuttling them to cars mainly, but obviously learning how to load/unload/strap/dealers you can leave at/getting to know porters & what not) & what i have learned & witnessed is somewhat different from your experiences - as you have stated i'm sure it is different in different parts of the country, but from what i know & have seen/experienced first hand, it just isn't as difficult & non-rewarding as i believe it has been to you or as you are are making it seem to others. at least here in northern ca, the rail yard/new cars to dealers side of hauling is pretty rewarding & do able - NOT easy, but the freight is here & loads are plentiful if you know what you are doing & who to contact. i will say this though, in car hauling it's a lot of who you know as opposed to what you know

 

Your lack of sentence structure makes your long quip difficult to digest.

I love when a guy wants to refute some real good info.

I love when people ask a question and then want to argue the answer when they do not hear what they want to hear.

 

Define "totally successful". I know plenty of people in this business that think because they are "clearing" 2k a week that they are successful. I think it's a joke to be making that as a business owner because you can make more than that at a company.

 

Sure there is plenty of freight available. I can get all the freight I want at $0.20/mile and I only have to go 40 miles out of the way to get it. I could fill several trucks with that crap each and every day.

I'm talking reasonably priced and not to far off route and accessable during the hours that I'm actually going to be there.

THAT is a whole different story. That kind of freight does not just fall out of the sky and land on your trailer.

Time is money. Miles either cost or make money. You have to balance time to get/drop a load, miles out of the way and what do those miles cost you. What is the time going to cost you. Can you make it while they are open or do you have to spend the night and take the time penalty for the delay, and a hundred or more other things to consider. Weight, scales, height, will the load fit your rig, 1 pick, 1 drop or multiple picks from multiple locations with multiple drops, and on and on. And don't the forget to load it all in order so when you drop you don't have to dump the whole load to get the stupid car in the front. And then reload it all back again.

You also need to know when to cut and run empty to your next good freight because that other stuff is only going to suck up your time and fuel.

Also, working under lease to a big operator is way different than strictly doing your own thing on many different levels.

I'm not doing this because I get off on hauling cars. I actually intend to (and do) make a profit. To do that you can't be chasing cheep freight all over just so you have cars on, they need to make a reasonable profit per mile. That's ALL miles loaded and empty and out of the way to go get or drop.

But you have at your disposal direct face to face contact with (as you described) at least 3 or 4 successful people right there in your home area of (proposed) operation. Why are you wasting time here when you could be soaking up info directly in person from your successful friends?

It's easy. You'll find plenty of prime freight all along your most preferred route every day. You'll likely never have a breakdown, weather delay, dealer that can't find keys, you'll never have a car that isn't ready until tomorrow, and each and every one of the cars you pull from the auction will be sitting in the transport lot waiting for you so no time wasted looking for a lost car in an auction parking lot with 10,000 other cars.

It really is a easy simple job that is all but guaranteed to make you rich in just a few years. You don't even have to work all that hard. Just drive around some, (In a nice new rig with no payment and super low insurance) listening to Pearl Jam on the radio, load a car every now and then in perfect weather in a safe protected private lot that is super easy to get in and out of. Don't worry about your height or weight, they don't ever really check that stuff. No need to bother with a log book, annual inspections, DOT physical, IFTA, ITAR, heavy use tax or any of that nonsense either.

This whole time I have just been making stuff up to make it seem hundreds of times more more difficult than it really is just to discourage new people from entering the business in order that I have less competition for cheap freight.

Piece of cake. Jump right in. Noooo problem..........

 

I agree that "being successful" needs to be defined, by each one of us. If a person "brings home" $2,000 a week and is happy then that's their business. I won't give you my exact numbers because that's between me and the wife but I leave $2,000 in profit on the table nearly every week because I don't want or need to work any harder. "Hypothetically" I may have made enough already to not worry about that extra $2,000 a week. On a good week the stock market makes me way more money than my pretty red Pete does and I am totally good with that. My point, if there is a point, is that there is money to be made and what makes you happy is not relevant to what makes the next person happy and "successful"! The first 30+ years of my working career I worked "like no one else, so that now I can work like no one else". Part of my quote is courtesy of Dave Ramsey, but it does apply in my case.

 

True, but what I was getting at was people going into business for company driver wages or sometimes less.

 

To each their own Terry! Everyone has a different reason for working for their self and believe it or not money isn't always the number 1 reason. The level of comfort that I now have and the lack of tension, I would be happy with much less than I make.
I can't even agree that if someone makes the same amount they should stay at a job. If that were true I should have stayed at UPS. After all I could have stayed running team cross country starting my week on Friday afternoon and could always pick up an extra 30-40 days of OT and double time in a year. It is very possible to make $160,000-$200,000 per person running team for UPS as an employee, if you have no life. Would I go back to that, absolutely not because I can make just as much now working Mon-fri/sat. Do I want to make that much, not really. I am happy someplace between $100,000 and $200,000. Every year older I get I am happy with less and less.
My point to you is that I have absolutely no right to tell you how much you need to make, but you have absolutely no right telling me or anyone else what they need to make to run their own business. If they ask your opinion then that is different. I can still like you, but we don't have to agree on this topic.
Others I happen to like have posted that one truck owners are basically paying for a job. That might be their way of looking at it but one year after writing 2 very large checks, one to Fitzgerald Gliders and one to Rush Peterbilt totaling nearly $300,000 I feel I got my money's worth. Since it was my money I don't need to please anyone but me. I am pleased and I determine the level of ROI that I want. I am very aware of all the costs associated with this. I ran the numbers every which way possible and when I factor in my level of satisfaction with my decision I can't even compare my life now verses my life as an employee. Therefore I am getting an awesome Return On Investment.

 

I agree with you, BUT, if these guys keep hauling for cheaper and cheaper, you better be ok with making less because you will. Eventually H&A will get undercut by these hacks, which will affect your paycheck and your ROI.