Should I leave my job to become an owner operator

If you're lucky with a brand new one, you pretty much have just the payment and basic routine maintenance for a while.

Last time I looked, a brand new day cab isn't that much less expensive than a brand new sleeper though, and it's pretty limiting. If I was ready for that kind of fixed cost I'd want as many options as possible for booking freight. I would NOT buy a truck specific to one gig. If/when that gig dries up you have to either figure out another use for that truck or get rid of it.

I also wouldn't buy a new truck for a $990/day gig. On 546 miles the fuel bill will be large, even with a new efficient one. And day cabs do worse than sleepers, especially if you don't get one with all the aero and get a short one & tuck it up so close to the trailer that it rides like #### and you hate life.

And you're still not going to get close to OTR fuel mileage on a local gig unless it's pure highway out and back and almost idling drop and hook.

This is coming from someone who does have a day cab, just not a new one, and somewhat longer for a day cab. I have my authority and run local, but I'm not willing to lock myself into a big payment.

 

How did you get that 50k how long did it take to generate that

 

What type of work do you do?

 

It really boils down to how much personal salary you need. I have yet to see a load anywhere that you'd actually lose money running. But your personal salary at the end of it might not be that good.

It'll be extremely tough to pay yourself 1800/week. That's an excellent company salary, and about the same as what I made when I was company.

I'm still relatively new and have not been able to comfortably put myself up there again. For one, it's hard to plan yourself to run that hard even if you want to, especially with a day cab where your HOS are more important than most (can't hang out and look for a return load and just pull over to sleep). For two, the startup expenses are too high. Insurance is expensive and you need reserves for your truck. Whether it's for downtime/rental under warranty or inevitable downtime/big maintenance on a used truck. Third, I just don't want to run that hard in a day cab anymore. 14 hours a day every day sucks.

If you're motivated as hell and you have your wife dispatch you, finding loads while you drive (assuming you're not making it happen with the 990/day gig that's already planned out and steady), you might be able to maintain your current salary eventually. But you'll need to buy a full rate family health insurance plan because you won't get the company discount rate anymore.

 

To answer the second part about choosing loads, I basically look for shortest deadhead, lowest miles first then see what it pays. I run hub and spoke from my house basically. I'll deadhead a little, grab it, deliver it, and bobtail back.

Since I bobtail back I use less fuel but when I book a load I split that price in half for my per mile rate. If it's good I take it if it's not, I don't. There are a lot of loads I'd run in a heartbeat if I had a sleeper but they only pay one way, so the bobtail would kill me. With a sleeper you can run a nice long load and just hang out near the delivery until you book something coming back or wherever else you feel like running.

 

My first three trucks were daycabs, my last 17 trucks I believe it would be have all been sleeper. I found that you can do anything with a short wheelbase sleeper that you can a daycab so don’t limit yourself.

A good thing to do with a sleeper would be take a load from Detroit to NJ for like $3000 and a load back to Detroit for $1500. Turn two of those a week for $9000 in revenue on not that many miles.

Rates aren’t always high as they are now but that’s why you save back for when that pays $2000 and $1000 for $6000 revenue per week.

Don’t let it burn a hole in your pocket. Having 50k in the bank is better then losing it doing something else. Or maybe in the future the stock market will go way down and you can get into that. Or buy a house or something. It’s just that trucks cost double what they did just 18 months ago.

 

Exactly. I like my day cab because I've run basically nothing but day cabs, and it was an inexpensive truck to start out on.

My next truck will most likely be a sleeper, if I don't have a coffin built for this one.