Owner Operator vs. Driver

Yes this company is 100% owner operators and they have the freight lined up for me to run my own truck, multiple truckers 82% of the gross load not pay by the mileage. As for fsc I have to see if they offer it or not. Maintance is all on the driver, but they do have a national account for the drivers to get discounts on maintance.

If I open my small fleet up I wil have them leased on with this company until I could move my trucks into my small fleet. I know fuel goes up and down thats why I was basing fuel on 4.00 a gallon so when it goes down I'll be able to save that much fuel, When prices rise over 4.00 a gallon or 4.10 a gallon the lower prices and higher prices of fuel should off set each other.

 

lol, anyone leased to a carrier needs business sense to survive. not all lease on operators are the same . there are many who can or have to pick and choose there own loads, landstar and mercer being 2. these guys do no different than your lease ops .

you basically said in this post your guys have no business sense. the proof will be whether they survive or not.

i got to tell you this straight up, for someone who has his authority for a couple years, and started not long ago with cr england, you seem to have some kind of overwhelming contempt for O/Oleased to a carrier. you also seem to also think no one else but you has any business sense at all. as you have stating to me before , you are quite arrogant.

you seem to have a good start as a business owner, it seems to have started well for you. i hope it continues. but bill, this "i am the smartest guy in the room" deal is quite offensive to many people.

you state in one post you did quite a bit of generalization in this post, that is quite true. bill, if your business acumen in prior businesses was always spot on would you have ended up driving at cr england or in trucking to begin with???

this business has changed in many respects every year i have done it for the past years. it has changed no more in the last 5ive years than it did in the previous 5 years or each five year period before that




tell me, how do you feel about your lease ops? any of them got business sense?

 

Seems there's a lot of guys on here who like to get their digs in at others (which isn't relevant) for whatever reason. You're reading a lot into something that really isn't there. And don't come back saying "that's what was said right there" with a quote - you're taking things totaly taken out of context - I get exactly what he's saying because I know Bill. If you ever spoke with Bill on the phone I think you'd come away with a totally different perspective. And really there is no comparison from Mercer or Landstar to what we do aside from drivers having the ability if they want to book their own loads - not that those are bad companies just that from the outside looking in I can see certain business limitations on anyone being leased on with them that really don't strike me as appealing.

 

Either way I'd prefer an advice from an arrogant person to no advice at all esp. if they know what they are talking about

 

rollin, no one is getting a dig in. i stated my opinion. the same as you state yours. the comparision isnt that far apart either, you are an operator leased to a company. the big difference is you look for your own loads and have some that the company you are leased has acquired.

and the very limitations that may not appeal to you, may very well appeal to someone else. that doesnt make either one of them a bad business person. they have chosen what they prefer.

it just isnt fair to state that a certain has no business sense, its to broad a brush. some peoples success may be defined differently than yours or bills. some folks are quite content and happy with paying all the truck bills and keeping the bills paid at home, some want that and a little more to put aside.

and concerning the "that what was said right there" remark, all one can do on the net is take what is said right there. thats another point a businessman should take note of, when posting on internet sites or social media, you have to be aware that the facial expression, tonal inflections, and such are lost. it tends to get taken just as it is written.

bill himself can tell you i have messaged about this before. it is just a point of contention with me, there are many sucessful o/o leased to companies that do quite well, and some that dont do well. same as authority owner some do well and some dont .

again, i want to reiterate i am not making a dig. i am simply stating i dont agree with statement a that owner leased to a carrier doesnt know "anything about business". that is simply a false statement.

a couple of posters thought it a little funny since he has leased operators.

i myself was a company and private fleet driver for 10 years and have been an o/o for the past 23, i had my authority for 14 years i hauled all direct accounts without not one broker load during those 14 years and hauled exempt products for several years before that. when fuel spiked to almost 5 bucks in 08 i had 2 trucks of my own and 6 lease operators, i gave them time to find other leases , i sold one truck and gave the other to a driver that had been with me for 9 years. i then spent the next year building a house for my second son. i had full intentions of retiring from trucking.

when i decided to get back into trucking, i could have paid cash for a truck or financed one . the money i already had saved i didnt want to risk on a truck, i already had that bird in hand. i decided to lease a truck so if worse came to worse, i would just turn the truck back in after giving it a go. i took 5000 , spent 3400 on a down payment to lone mountain, spent another 450 on dyno and inspection.

this new truck would stand on its own and i would not use any money i had saved for retirement except for the 5000. here it is 2 and 1/2 years later and i have replaced the original 5 grand and have saved some more.

now granted i had quite a number of years experience behind me in order to do that, but i did it. all while leased to a carrier. i am not alone by any means if this. the general statement was simply to broad and one other point if i might add, a statement of that nature could turn off potential lease ops to f2f.

you got to watch things like that, far from being a dig, i am trying to help.

 

digger, if you make it work at crst with the l/p you can probably make it work anywhere. and probably true with most lease /p deals.

at least youre getting experience under a percentage situation and not a mileage deal where you are only after miles , there you can learn the most revenue for the least amount of miles approach. i however value empty miles the same as loaded miles, i take the load miles plus the d/h miles to get it and then do the per mile rate, i dont say oh 200 mile d/h will cost 30 gallons of fuel way of figuring.

 

You have a different concept of what an O/O is than I do. We do not always get to go where we want, haul what we want, and definitely do not always get home when we want.

 

I think you may misunderstand what I mean by "where I want". As a company driver I would get sent to miami, LA (in california), and Laredo constantly. As a o/o (or L/P if you prefer) I have the choice of staying in a good freight area. I'll stay in IN, IL, MO, KY, TN, WV, VA area all the time hauling 400mi loads for $2.50+ a mile and never have to worry about being too far away to make it home on the hours I have left. As a company driver I could be in GA 2 days before my first hometime in 4 weeks and have literally less than 15 mins of my 70 left on the eobr when I pull in my driveway. As for hauling what I want, that pertains to the loads. I have turned down bad, unprofitable loads or loads into bad areas. As long as I can get my bills paid with a little left over for myself I will go home when I want/need to. I'm not forced to stay out 3, 4, 5 weeks at a time if I don't want to. To me that is the freedom being an o/o provides.

 

I was a gravedigger for 17 years before trucking. The handle stuck. It's spelled gravdigr because back in the early days of AOhell you could only have 8 letter names, and I just kept it that way.