Planning to build a small fleet, which truck to start with?

Exactly!

 

That's absolutely low class.

 

He died a few years ago; so it was all for nothing.

 

Okay. I thought maybe it was one of those third rate bottom feeder outfits that you're always pimping to drivers who don't know any better.

 

Well my first answer to you would be that if you have a lot of cash and a lot of money to invest why don't you just go buy real estate?

If you have that much available money you could buy a property almost in cash put a tenant in it that one would be paid off maybe in just a few years and you could replicate that over and over again and be very very wealthy without all of the regulations and drivers and insurance and all the nonsense.

If you don't have experience in this industry then any other business that you would start would be on equal footing because you wouldn't have experience in that one either.

Why in the world would you choose this business? What is your reasoning?

I don't mean this to sound funny but your first driver if you have no experience and you don't even have a CDL your first driver is going to be a real teacher but the lessons he's going to teach you are going to make you cry.

Would you know how to tell if a driver was stealing fuel? What happens if let's say you're on a beach in Florida and your truck is up in the Pacific Northwest near Canada and your driver decides he's going to bail and your truck has been abandoned.

What would you do?

Let's say you're on that same beach in Florida and your drivers up near Canada in the Pacific Northwest and your truck has some kind of major problem. Even trucks under warranty sometimes it takes them weeks to fix them. What do you do with your driver?

What happens if you spend $150,000 on a truck and you're spending $20,000 a year and insurance and you spent a ton of money to get yourself set up and you can't find a driver. Or you find a driver and he works for a month and he quits then what?

You can't get into the truck and make money. Even if everything was completely paid for it's still costing you a fortune and you're making zero. Whereas if you invest your money in something else it will be more constant in making you money with less headaches for sure.

What if you do this and the economy takes a downturn and plummets and the rates fall to their lowest levels that we've seen God forbid in however long. Then what?

If you're fortunate enough to even have a driver do you just work to break even and wear your truck out and lose all the money that you've invested?

I'm not suggesting that you are unintelligent or not capable or insulting you in any way. But this business has a way of eating people up and spitting them out with maybe a 90% failure rate with people that have a lot of experience.

And I think the point that I'm trying to make is that even under the best of circumstances this is not an easy business. I'm not suggesting that you think it is easy but what I am suggesting is there so many pitfalls that can trip someone up that if you're really not aware of all of them and actively looking for them it's really easy to drain your wallet and then some.

And once you make that giant capital investment you will never ever ever ever ever get your money back out of it if you sell the truck and trailer.

There's a reason why the old adage is do you want to have a million dollars in trucking, then start with 2 million.

People that own a lot of real estate that make money don't generally lose it.

But a lot of trucking companies close down because the margins are not that great and it's not easy to make money.

And just a comment on trucks, if you're going to have a truck and going to put a driver and it's going to travel all across the United States and you don't want to bang your head up against the wall you're going to have to buy something brand new.

There is no option to buy something with a series 60 or any of that because no matter what kind of shape those trucks are in there going to need repair and in the end it's going to be cheaper just to buy a brand new truck.

I know because I have an older truck that I worked over from front to back I have done every single solitary repair to that truck myself, including working the engine over and putting the engine into the truck.

Older trucks are great but no matter what kind of condition you find one it's going to need repairs as you go and all that is down time and if you have to pay someone to do them forget it.

So if you decide to continue with this plan which I advise you against, figure in your plan for a brand spanking new truck with the best warranty that you can get and cross your fingers and hope you don't really have a lot of bad problems.

I think most guys that have fleets were one truck owner-operators that drove themselves and weathered the storm and save their money and built themselves up.

 

Well the thing with volvos is that they're durable. Of all the trucks I've driven, I've had the least down time with them. The only time I had a break down with a Volvo was when I drove one that got up in age, at about 850k. It needed fuel injectors, then the transmission wore out. As good as that truck drove, if I owned it, I might have considered replacing the transmission, as expensive as it is. Now heres something to think about: regardless of what brand of truck you drive, if you're in tune with it, you'll be able to sense something isn't right. If you have a mechanic you trust, or a dealer, try to catch repairs before they go to hell, that way you can get it home or get it to whichever mechanic you trust. Sometimes that's difficult, and you'll run into those concerns with any brand.

 

I just died

 

we both got the same amount but I own a truck and reefer trailer.
What job let's you work 3 months and take nine off? And save 20k in 3 months? I never found one of this fantasy jobs or I wasn't willing to kiss enough ###.

btw my insurance dropped 10k for next year. I won't buy another 35k truck. That's 45k right there.

 

Not trying to stir up controversy but I think what @AKDoug is saying is that in the world of real business, of all businesses that generate real money, Trucking is not really on that list.

I'm sure there are businesses out there that don't have all the expense they're really good businesses that generate a lot more than Trucking.

It does not mean that individually a person can't do well for himself or even move from that business into something better, but on the comparison of business-to-business I'm sure there are a lot of businesses that make a hell of a lot more money without all the expense and regulation.

Especially when you expand and begin hiring drivers.