Shoestring start ups?

When I started being an O/O in 2003 I was on a shoe-string budget kind of. I had $0 down, and nothing in savings. My local bank loaned me $33k to buy my 1st truck. They financed it as a used car so my intrest rate was good. My monthly payments were $700 a month and I was leased to Schneider doing local truck-rail work. The saving graces were:
I had no kids and was not married
Had no house payment, I was renting an apt for $500 month
It was my ONLY bill
The truck ran 3 years w/o a single thing breaking..... I got super lucky here and have never been this lucky since.
Lastly, I knew how much i was going to make as I had been doing the exact same job as a company driver, and I actually wound up making about $400 more each week than I expected!!!

As you can see, very rare circumstances.
My advice, save up and have at least say $10,000 put aside just incase the unthinkable happens.

 

No offense, but it seems more like you're trying to rationalize what you're already figuring out is a bad idea (from reading lots of the old threads here) by fishing for success stories.

Business failures, aka running out of money, usually come from a sequence of negative events versus a single cause. Sort of like a plane crash. Most people focus on the spectacular ending when there were several practically trivial events that, had any one been avoided, would have prevented the flaming wreck at the end. With less cash to begin with, your journey to the scene of the crash will be much shorter.

Q: So what's the number one way to avoid running out of money?
A: Start with more.

That mindset tells me you're probably not cut out to start trucking on a shoestring budget. I don't know grimesjm1, but I have met jmcclelland2004. He's living in his truck, eating inexpensively prepared groceries vs restaraunts, and getting a school of hard knocks education on servicing and repairing his own rig. He is the guy I would picture taking home $400/wk and putting $350 back while living in a tent and eating ramen noodles every meal. At the end of the year he'd have $18,200 in the bank. Not because he's some kind of ###### or something. It's because he wants it -that bad- that he'll make the hard sacrifices to get it.

 

My question is, who the heck are these guys working for and only making $400wk ???? Must be something bad in their background or MVR. I know I could pack it all up and go work for 4 companies here and BRING HOME $700+ a week and be home every night.

 

A job is a job and you do what you have to do and work your way up. If you're flipping burgers or greeting walmart customers, you may have made some bad decisions in life. At least they are motivated enough to have that job. If you want to start a business bad enough, you figure out a way to get it done. I know people that take home $400/wk that are more likely to be successful than others that have 6-figure incomes. IMO it starts with a work ethic and ends with wanting it bad enough to do the hard work to get it.

 

Yes, but you were talking about a guy who is driving a truck and making $400wk, not a wal-mart greeter..... that's where I got confused.

I agree 100% with the work ethic thing. I could only work 3 days a week on my dedicated gig and make plenty, but I put in a extra day and a half to bring in an extra $800 each week that goes into my maintance and retirement account each week. i don't want to be doing this at 50yrs old, I want to be sitting on a boat fishing with everything paid for

 

SHC: Agreed. I was thinking -a- job, not necessarily in transport. On the other hand that could apply to people working off their indentured training contracts for a mega carrier.

Zab: In Feb 1995 I had to move out of my home with a borrowed pickup in the middle of the night, with the sheriff due to show up at sunrise to throw us out if we weren't already gone. The old truck had no muffler and the neighbors even called the cops on me at 2am while I was struggling to get the hell out. It was the worst day of my life and the day I started changing my way of thinking about luck and circumstance. Among other things, it taught me that the eviction occurred overnight, but that I had made many decisions in the years leading up to it that made it happen. It wasn't that my now ex-wife had misread (and missed) a court date the week before. It wasn't that we both had taken new, crummy jobs at the same time two months earlier. It actually went way back before that. I spent a lot of years thinking things would just work out someday and blaming the bad times on bad luck or whatever other reason suited the occaision.

First, I made the decision to complete the college degree I walked away from at 18 yrs old. Two years later I took the leap into i/t as a career. I made a lot of money doing that for a living the past 14 years. However, in March 1997 when I took that leap I went from taking home around $1,000/wk as an auto mechanic to earning $10/hour at a call center. $400/wk gross. There's that number again LOL.

I wasn't exactly camping and eating ramen noodles, but I had to really want it to voluntarily take a 60% cut in pay to make it happen. With no guaranteed upside other than what I thought I could achieve given what I was reading in the trade rags. I had to figure it out, deal with the short pay, and make a lot of changes to make it work.

So my point is: Yes it's possible. But certainly not easy and there are no short cuts or room for wishful thinking and luck. The two things that have stuck with me are:

1. Nobody gives a #### about my success other than me and I'm not entitled to anything in life.
2. Nothing will change for me unless I do something to change it.

I am the last one ever to second guess your circumstances. Based on what you've shared, it sounds like you're at a crossroads. You either need to stick with your delivery management gig and make that work, or make a big play that may involve moving to another location (maybe back into your truck LOL) to self-pay training and go to a mega carrier for experience. Or possibly do all that and instead land a job with a small o/o with authority willing to take a chance on your good character and apparent initiative. Either way, there's not an easy or half-way to go about it.

 

I started out in 1993 on a broken shoe string budget. I was 23 and thought I knew it all and nobody was going to tell me different, I had no bills. I had $2500 in my bank account and found a 1982 Freightliner Cabover for $12,500. Put the $2500 hundred down and borrowed $10k from a bank but needed a co-signer. Borrowed money from my mom for the tag and some fuel money. Rented a cow trailer from a friend for 10% and told the insurance company I was a farm operation and it was pretty cheap. Authority and permits well I bootlegged it. I ran mostly Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico. I got stopped once in New Mexico and had to buy a trip permit from the officer and he let me go. Got stopped twice in Holdrege, NE by the DOT and all they got me on was my log book didn't even ask for permits. I did this for about five months until I got tired of always running on a shoe string budget and tired of being broke. My cheap truck was always nickle and dimeing me to death and I was always running the back roads. I always loaded with some guys that run nice equipment and were leased to somebody and had money. So I leased on to a reputable guy that had fuel cards and did it legal. After one month my engine went down and cost me $4500 to rebuilt it and the guy I was leased to paid the bill and took so much out each week, if I was still running on my own I would have been out of business. Know I have my own authority and do things legal. That was in 1993 and I wouldn't even think about doing it these days. I would end up in prison and be chatting with you guys from a state owned computer. lol.

You need a lot of cash in the bank to get going, it sucks waiting around on your money. Factoring is a option I know some owners of small 200 truck fleets that got started by using a factoring company or banks to factor their money. Credit cards will just get you in trouble, well they did me anyway. A cheap truck is good but check it out real good. I sold my 2007 Pete 379 that I bought new and ran it until Feb.2011 and sold it, it was to heavy and nice to do what I am doing know. I bought a '01 KW T800 for $19,000 that had a lot of work down to it and all paperwork. A friend of mine did the same thing and bought a '95 KW T600 for $10,000 and has put about $5,000 into it, mostly a/c work, tires etc...

 

I have heard this story over and over again from people in Florida, Arizona and Utah. Ever think of relocating??? I know it's home and all, but there are plenty of jobs elsewhere and paying much better. Florida is probably the WORST state to work in if you are in transportation, construction or a Union laborer. Everybody wants to live in the nice sunny climate, but there are only so many jobs and too many people, not to mention all the illegals that will do the job for pennies on the dollar of what a tax paying person will require.