Purchasing your lease truck...

I am available, for a small fee plus expenses, to carry luggage on, off, and during, any cruise.

 

Is Injun still around? I haven't seen her post on the forums since I started driving again.

 

Check your mailbox, she is around, just not here.

 

As a follow up from my previous posts on this thread, I did a bit of a check around and found a couple of O/O's that indeed have 2 and 3 trucks respectively. In each case they owned older model trucks, one is making payments on one of their trucks. So it is possible to get multiple trucks within the Swift O/O system.

By comparison I've talked to a few Landstar O/O's. One had 12 trucks, another 10 trucks, and a handful of other O/O's had in the single digits.

For my own retirement planning I'd like to get a few trucks, with reliable drivers working for me, and look toward a "phase out" period of reducing my own drive time after I purchase our retirement property.

 

Umm, I think you need to check the pricing on what you can pay drivers. Even if you hired drivers, you wouldn't be able to pay them very much. Most O/O have to hire a team just to make money. How much money would you profit having a truck owned in your name and paying a driver?

 

That's a very very good question. Doesn't seem to be that much room in the equation with Swift to be a fleet O/O, which is my ultimate goal. The fleet owners I've met at Swift don't have new trucks, most are at least 5 y.o. with some quite a bit older than that.

 

It's the same thing with any large carrier! You can't make any money to justify it. .92 cents a mile, plus FSC...you might be able to pay them .31 cents, maybe .32 cents...there is no incentive. You're already getting squeezed with low rates to begin with, then, you have to squeeze out another low rate and what are you left with? You'd be running a hobby, not a business. They profit of you, you still remain poor. The only way you can make money is getting your own authority using your own trucks and trailers. Factor in break downs and paying for hotels, or horrid fuel mileage because they want to idle all the time, OR they want to go home every week and not run...You've got yourself a white elephant.

 

I've met quite a few successful fleet owners leased to Landstar, dispatching their own fleet (where you can select loads based on load value). ACME is another company that has successful fleet owners. In each case the truck is earning much higher revenue per mile than with Swift (or other major carriers). Seems to me you would want at least $2.00 per mile to begin to make a business of it, and some of the Landstar fleet owners I personally talked to won't move their trucks for less than $3 per mile.

I just received a QC message noting Swift is offering $1.075 per mile plus fuel surcharge, so that sounds like a bit of an improvement, but still not in the ballpark of what I'm looking for.

 

Landstar is not Swift, Knight, or CRE. Apples to oranges. Where does Swift post this info? There is none to be found online, their web pages seem to be outdated. It's hard to find any information.