Question about 2 car hauler

If you can get those rates and maintain them good for you, hold on tightly and I wouldn't be advertising or bragging about it on an internet forum, us senior guys would kill for rates like that right now!

 

I thought on that route $1/mi for a single unit is the norm. Keep in mind that you will be paying the highest tolls in the country on that route so that will take a chunk out of your income per mile.

If I spent much time on that route I'd be looking for a single axle trailer

 

$1 per mile or better used to be the norm from CT/NJ/NY but lately it has been more like .50 or .60 cpm even as tolls have skyrocketed, especially the NYC bridges and PA Turnpike. I have been wrestling between upgrading to a stinger (which will only be a band-aid approach to artificially bring up my revenue per mile) or downgrading to a single axle Sun Country 5 behind my single axle tractors (to help combat the tolls and fuel economy).

 

It seems like 4 or 5 cars on a single axle is the best option from what i've seen people saying expense versus profit wise. at .50cpm with a full 4 load $2.00 isn't terrible, but lower than the standard... Sure, you have these guys running around in duallies with a lower operating cost, or is it really? Duallies should actually be upping their op cost to cover for very very fast depreciation. 300,000 miles you're done hauling at the maximum you know? However, they don't realize that right? so instead of .06cpm to the depreciation fund, they should be more like .20cpm to depreciation, that's $60,000 at 300,000 miles and should be more than enough to replace with a lightly used dually 10,000-20,000 miles on it with a lower buying cost due to already having rolled off the lot.

.10 a mile truck depreciation fund will put you at $100,000 when you hit 1,000,000 miles on a single/tandem axle tractor... Tractor seems more appealing. I mean I have a cummins that I use for personal use around the farm and get 7 mpg under the heaviest load, can't a nice VNL get this?

 

My VNL with Detroit got 7.4 avg over 80k miles pulling a Miller 7 car and that was not driving slow. I didn't think that was too bad for pulling a 14 foot tall parachute

 

VNL's are nice. I used to dislike them because they weren't your standard pete or KW, but I found out they are like giant Cadillacs so to say LOL. The only downside would be an extra axle on tolls I suppose.I know tolls here in Virginia are nothing compared to the upper states.

 

There's always converting one to single axle. Or even installing a lift axle

 

I liked my 2000 VNM42T day cab, it was a single axle with a D-12, 10 speed, ran great and pulled 7.5 mpg with my Miller 7 car. We still have it, needs a frame rail (typical Volvo rust by the stack and spring mounts) and could use a trans rebuild after 1.7 million miles. The engine has never been opened, been an awesome truck.

 

I have to do something if $2 per mile is going to become the new norm, my 7 car operating expense was $2.30 per mile, all odometer miles last year (2015) which wasn't bad (and was down .12 cpm from 2014) when I was running north with 4 or 5 units and south with a full 7 unit load, making great bank, but in the last 12 months my expense has stayed the same but the revenue per mile is way down. Fleet wide (all 5 trucks) we average $1.98 per mile operating cost for all odometer miles in 2015, we did ok and still turned a profit but with our workers comp at 14% this year and insurance near $30,000 it is getting harder.