Started a business that hauls gas/diesel

You'be been in business for a year and a half and you're still losing money? You must have a very understanding source of operating capitol.

You have about five trucks and nine trailers? I don't quite get that part. You either have equipment or you don't.

Are you a jobber? Do you haul fuel you buy on the spot market for resale? Or are you strictly transporting fuel for somebody else?

Local, regional, or OTR?

Do you track your operating expenses? When you're losing money like you are you'll have to figure out where every penny is going. And by every penny I mean exactly that.
Find out what your fixed costs are. Find out what each truck is costing you and what each truck is earning.

Take a look at your rate structure. Again, track every truck and every load and figure out what it's costing you to haul.

Track your shop expenses. Again, every truck should have the dollar amount that went into maintaining that truck and it should be recorded and compared with other trucks.

I know, all this is nit-picking and dull but unless you have unlimited backing from somebody who doesn't care about profit you're headed for trouble.

 

I hope those private loans are not against the business in any way by your partners. It's one thing if a part owner mortgages his house on his own, the loss of which or the burning deliquent etc will not affect your business in any way.

I am concerned for your use of the word some owner operator. Well there are some that will charge you 600 daily loaded or not. You say you are 130 miles and back. To me that's local. What are you doing, buying independant non branded gasoline and hauling to a dealer around the area or are you hauling the fuel you bought to your own dealer locations to sell?

Find out what you fixed costs are asap. These are the costs that come out any day, every day, all the time.

Then find out what your variable costs are. Again are you buying fuel in bulk? Or what?

Sounds a awful lot of feast and famine going on there. You might need to get out more than just 130 miles. Or relocate to a better market such as NLR. We have fleets of all sorts of fuel coming and going all day long and night too.

 

I'd imagine it's hard to make a decent amount if you're not going over 130 miles...? You're restricting yourself.

Like previously mentioned, find out your fixed costs, I also recommend to do a daily, and mileage cost analysis on each truck.

I do my fixed costs over a year, monthly, weekly and daily this includes the cost analysis per truck. This way, I can see how much EACH truck needs to provide in revenue DAILY, WEEKLY, MONTHLY AND YEARLY so I can always be on track.

Also, maintenance. Maintenance is getting out of hand as far as parts and hourly shop rates go. Do you have a maintenance savings account? Do you go to dealers for maintenance? If not a dealer, who's doing the maintenance? Down time cost analysis is also important.

 

I was a company driver but know that you need to get a handle on cost so you'll know where to cut and where to add. We figured on Dollars Per Hour and Cents Per Mile. One deals with the cost of the driver ,his or her benefits, and any expense that deals with the driver. The other is the operating cost. How much does it cost to move the truck? This should be your biggest cost when you start out. It includes tires, engine work, diesel fuel, and all the cost the truck generate.

 

When I was promoted to terminal manager [AKA Fall Guy] Matlack's regional controller gave me a page showing the minimums for local and OTR work with the company drivers to cover the cost of wages, benefits, etc.to use for pricing prospective work.

Every month he would show up right after the UPS guy delivered the P & L statement to go over anything that was not 'normal' and to correct items 'miss classified' so I would charge the correct account and keep his books straight.

Corporate would also monitor how we did the work. I was told to stop doing an account because it was priced for the company drivers but ended up being done by owner operators and their cut made the terminal loose money after maintenance costs were brought in...

 

We had it figured at a 160 miles. Anything over that and the common carrier would be cheaper. The company had it all figured out even the advertisement on the truck. You'd think with all that planning we'd still be hauling our own gasoline.