So what happens when owner op doesn’t work out?

If his truck catastrophically broke down after a year and a half and he could not afford to fix it, that's a good indication he was operating on way too thin of a wallet and disaster is never far away when that's the case. Lots have figured that out the hard way. I won't harangue the guy about his choice to finance or pay cash for the truck but I will be a little critical with where all his money went and why none of it stayed in his account after that. Like a lot of guys who go out and flop running their own truck for the first time, they treat their settlement checks like it's a paycheck that's guaranteed to be there every week or two so long as they can pull themselves out of bed and go to work, but that ain't the way it's done. You gotta live on nothin' until you've built up an almost unbreakable purse if you want to stick around. Most people do not have this type of financial discipline.

 

I don't think there's any hard and fast rule on whether pay cash or finance you first truck is the better idea, or at least there shouldn't be. Depends on the situation and the truck in question.

 

You go to walmart, get paid 110K a year and have your stuff paid for quite quickly.

Becoming a company driver is as easy as peeing and losing a bit of body hair.

When you open the front door a vacuum sucks you in.

So if I ever lost my ###, I would be knocking on walmarts door to get my life back on track.

 

Half a million in cash in the bank is too much. Way too much.

 

Haha "ruin your credit FOR LIFE"
I love it, not just his credit, his children's credit and his children's children's credit, you can't make this stuff up, free entertainment

 

They probably don't mention it because of two things # 1. no one likes to think about the bad side or "worse case scenario" #2. Its kind of obvious what will happen in the worse case scenario. But you are correct anyone considering getting into business for themselves needs to do their due diligence, in other posts to do with taking on an O/O role, I've always mentioned this fact is always consider the "what ifs' what if transport rates come down? what if the price of diesel fuel goes up ?, what if interests rates go up, what if the truck breaks down and so on and so on, if one can answer yes to this then by all means go ahead with the business plan, if one answers no to these questions then their better off working for someone else and letting them worry about all those issues.

 

If Johnny has to ask this question, Johnny shouldn't have started a business in the first place.