Owner Operators what are your biggest issues now?

I have been an owner operator for 6 years, ending in Jan 2014. But I want to get a pulse on the way things are now in this post pandemic environment. What are your biggest challenges?

 

Parts availability.

 

Maintenance costs have skyrocketed, parts availability, and waiting weeks to get into a shop to get required work done.

 

Being inundated with everyone hawking a un-needed product

 

Getting parts is ridiculous. And when you do get them they are crap! Quality is very low. Case in point n14 stuck at a corporate cummins repair shop for over two months waiting on parts for complete rebuild $45,000 plus. Been back 3 times in less then 20,000 miles for failures. Now I had it towed back for it dropping injector cup and destroying head, liner, piston, turbo. Guess what? They don't have any idea when they can get all the parts to fix it.

 

More 4 wheelers doing dumb things. It’s like they forgot how to drive and they taught the new generation with nothing.


Parts, shop time, lack of common sense from people.

 

Haven’t had a ton of issues yet but I did read there might be a CO2 shortage coming that will affect beer breweries which could become a much bigger problem

 

for a one time only $500 fee I can solve that problem for you

 

This is just the tip of the ice burg. You should see how many never make it past moderation and into the forums. It's constant.
We can't be everywhere and we knock out the most obvious ones.

 

I personally believe other than diesel cost and rates everything is fine. I’ve been doing this a long time and there’s always fluctuations where sometimes you kill it and sometimes you don’t. I have trucks as new as 2017 and as old as 1996 and I have yet to wait for a part this whole year. Worst issue on parts is I had to drive 150 miles to get the exact steer tires I wanted in 11R24.5

As for shops, you need to get a good relationship going with a local mechanic and a backup one. I can get an oil change done anytime any day because of friendship. Doesn’t take much, idle chat, free soda, tacos, best buds in no time.

Edit: I guess to answer the question what is my biggest challenge, it’s unethical brokers. Such as saying pu is 1pm and in reality it was 6am and now they won’t load you until tomorrow, etc.