No experience but getting Authority

Some people don't want to take the time to find what they need.

 

If you don't want to go to the fmcsa website and find what you need, you could go to the JJ Keller website. They should have everything you want. www.jjkeller.com.

 

Wow.. I take a break last night and spend this morning hustling a load and all this good stuff pops up.

Bill: Thanks so much for sharing your notes. You've definitely raised a couple of things that I need to give attention to before my call comes. Mainly tweaking how my records are kept to have more ready answers to the questions about loads. I think we're set with the files as I've used the driver and drug files from OOIDA and have the maintenance folders from another supplier. Although I will need to print out a maintenance plan to avoid the points you got on that.

For the most part it looks like as long as you've made half an effort to follow some sort of checklist, only minor things will come up. I appreciate your sharing this more than you know, and will be watching for your other thread when you're able to get to it.

 

I have been looking into getting my own authority for a few weeks now. I am compelled to post here and thank those of you that have shared your knowledge and experiences in getting your authority.

Mr. Redforeman, BigBadBill, G/Man, josh.c to name a few. Thank You for all the information. I love free stuff!!

I would like to pick your brains on this subject.

I am researching DOT compliance companies. Here is a link to one I found.

http://www.foleyservices.com/index.aspx

I understand I can do it myself cheaper, and one day possibly better. Right now I don't want to. I want to run the truck. I am not married, I have no children, I do own a home. I don't want to run the truck all week or all month and then spend every minute I am home filing papers or basically doing the office work. I will need to cut grass, shovel snow or well....it's home ownership you get the idea. Plus at some point there needs to be time for grilling and beer drinking and having your feet up. Nobody wants to work 24/7/ 365

Depending on the costs of some of the services these types of companies provide will depend on whether or not I use them, and eventually one day if all works out I can ween myself off them. The initial start up can be so overwhelming, that paying for some of these services will ease a little of the burden allowing me to run the truck.

I am a member of OOIDA and have spoken with them as well. They are a great resource and will help getting you up and running and giving you what you need to do it right, but in the end I will still have to do it all and like I said at the start, I want to be running as much as I can to make it work.

Anyway, suggestions of web sites or companies or just any suggestions at all.

Thanks again for the great info you guys post!!

 

Keeping up with the paperwork isn't too bad as long as you keep your records straight. Whether you use an outside service or do it yourself, you are doing most of the paperwork, anyway.

Once you get your authority the main thing you will need to track are your IFTA miles and fuel purchases. If you do the paperwork each week you should not require more than about 30 minutes when you get home. Filing IFTA is a breeze if you keep up with everything. You should be able to do that in about 1-2 hours at the end of the quarter.

OOIDA is a good resource. They can help with most any of your compliance questions. If you get on their email list, you should be notified of any pending legislation or rules which will affect your business.

You can file for your own authority. It should not take more than 30 minutes to 1 hour, at the most. It beats paying a service $150 plus for doing it for you. The filing fee is $300. Anything over and above that is for the service fee.

Unfortunately, paperwork is part of this business. There are things which must be done to our trucks and to carry on the business when we come home. If you want a business that is paper free or trouble free, then this is not the business for you.

 

Foley Compliance binder is one that I returned. While it had some good information that are more about selling the service in the binder than anything else. Conservatively I would say half the pages in the binder are ads for their services. I do believe that if you do their drug program you can get the binder cheaper.

The reality is that if you are a solo operator it is not going to save you much time. You still have to compile all the information that they will end up putting into files for you. I would say once you get to 3-4 drivers it starts to make sense.

 

Lilbit - there's your business opportunity. Get him going with his laptop, e-fax, a wireless internet card, and a all-in-one printer on his truck and you be the virtual office.

I think today I've about worn a path to the fax machine and done at least one recharge on my phone and headset. My inbox has 6 faxes in it just from this morning. One set of back/forth setting up a new broker and a load, plus chasing down some missing BOL sheets that were never given to us on a delivery three weeks ago. And that doesn't include my day job. Good times!

Ukumfe: These comments are right on. Most of these services sell you a system that requires you to still do all the legwork to fill them in. If they do anything, they do a great job of selling you more of their system without doing any actual work. Not to knock them entirely - if you follow their system to the letter, you will be compliant. But that's not the full value you are looking for.

Case in point: Not to sidetrack on a software thread, but I had in my plan to buy one of the o/o software packages to ease my accounting work. OMFG the market choices are horrible. I'm partially to blame for my criticism as my day job is managing large scale I/T infrastructure projects and I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to expecting value out of software. Everything I've tried has done a few things well and omitted valuable (to me) features elsewhere. And every one of them requires hours of setup before you can really trial them and get some output. I don't care what you say, everything I've seen on the market just sucks. I'm having an easier time of it with spreadsheets, a scanner, and manilla folders.

 

RedForeman, my wheels are spinning big time and have been for a few months! That idea has actually popped into my head already too. Will you stop reading my mind?

 

I was thinking the same thing when I posted earlier regarding Lilbits other service post.

Red - Agree on the software. It is complicated and incomplete. I want an easy, complete accounting system. And if you don't provide invoicing then it is not complete. Easest I found was www.rigbooks.com (and cheap) but they did not have invoicing. A beta in invoicing is planned for this week and if it works I am set. If you check it out I would love to hear your thoughts. You can get a free 30-day trial.

 

I just looked over their preview information and it looks pretty slick. I'll sign up in the next few days and do some shadow booking to explore it. Being greedy, I was looking for something that would do the invoicing, payroll, and export data into meaningful formats for accountants.

I would only offer two preliminary warnings before really checking it out by using it:

1. "Software as a service" is still fairly immature as technology goes. The only thing I really worry about is access to useful, local, and separate data as a backup. As-in data that is stored on a system that I own. That way, when this company goes bankrupt or decides they want to serve brokers instead of carriers, or does their IPO and sells out to Google and I don't trust them, I can still use the data that I've entered in over time. For example, I've been using Turbotax online to do my income taxes for several years. I don't need to worry about that data since I have hard copies of my returns and retain all the original paperwork in my safe. I also have electronic copies stored on multiple secure locations. So for this product, I'll be looking for data export features and looking at what that exported data looks like.

The upside is that application updates are immediate and usually trouble-free. No downloads or update services to hassle with. When new features are rolled out, they go online right away.

2. Shared I/T infrastructure is what I've been doing for a living for the past 14 years. That system is used by hundreds of different companies. It's a great thing for the users since everyone just pays for a slice of the system they use. A downside is that in order to keep the system stable and trouble-free, features must remain uniform for the most part. That is, you don't get too many custom features beyond a fairly narrow set. This goes beyond stuff like custom reports and formatting. Consider how you book major repairs or maintenance. Again, I haven't really dug into this application yet to see what it offers. But for example, some people book those big expenses against a single load, or a truck, or a month, or accrue over a year's time, or some combination of those. When you have to adapt your business model to your tools, it can be a problem sometimes.

The other thing about shared systems is that there is no such thing as fool-proof data protection and recovery. On the latter, I prefer a backup that I have control of. On the former, these types of applications worry me a little due to the attractiveness of data mining. I'm not saying you're storing state secrets on there, but with hundreds of carriers keeping their records in the same system, it would seem attractive to profile and sell that information. It wouldn't be any direct harm to you; however, think of the potential. You think a DAT subscription costs a lot - that's because they already do what this company does for bigger firms. What do you think this company will be selling off the backend? Lane rates and profiles, truck costs, service profiles, and on and on. All based on real, live o/o's making their individual livings one load at a time. While you and I are getting this service for $144/year, our brokers and shippers will be paying 10 times that to profile their freight to control rates. I can't wait to read their terms of service and privacy policy. I'm not normally a member of the tinfoil hat crowd, but in my opinion, this is a lot of information in one place that could take a lot of control away from the o/o in the longer run.

Sorry if this comes off sounding too negative before I've really tested it out. I've just seen too many business models like this one where the discounted or free service is funded with something they don't really go out of their way to point out to you.