Starting a company but not driving

Like anything else-it could go real well or turn out real bad,or somewhere in the middle.Do you have any experience with trucks or will you be depending on others for everything?


The more you know yourself the more likely youare to be successful.With little trucking knowledge or experience I would think long and hard before getting into it.My suggestion is find something that you wont have to depend on everybody else to help you make a profit.In this economy your best bet may be to take your money and head for a casino.Not trying to discourage you,I just don`t see this going well based on the info you have given.

 

That's my goal twinturbo. Own a few trucks and have owner operators leased to me. If you dont mind me asking (1) how do you pay your owner operators (2) how do you build a load and (3) how do you get O/O to lease on with you (word to mouth)?

 

Well like I said, I've been in the trucking business since I was 19yrs old now Im almost 30...worked as a broker for CHR for 5yrs saved up about 40k to buy a used truck of the auction and used reefer and started a company as well as driving ...I lived in a truck pretty much for 2yrs more when I bought another truck/reefer and hired my good ol buddy then there was 2 of us and I was the one booking all the loads and doing all the paperwork my wife helped me ofcourse around the office at home while i was in the truck driving and booking loads from a laptop...and the on 2 more owners came and then 2 more etc...basically word of mouth i guess.
I hire o/o with their own truck and trailer under my authority and i charge them 8% of the payload....so they get 92% but they pay their own fuel, isurance, pro rates etc...all i do is load them and do their paperwork.
As far as building up a load I've noticed back when i was a manager for CHR a lot of carriers or o/o never get details on the load that they inquiring about...yes CHR paid cheap rates as well as any other broker out there they will try to move freight for as cheap as possible they are in this business just like we are trying to make as much profit as possible. Building up a load isnt that hard all you need to know is basics 53foot trailer takes 30skids turned sideways 48footers take 26skids sideways.....most reefers don't take more than 43000lbs loads...majority of the loads that brokers post are built wrong...thats why you have to ask more info like the skid count, weight, height, is it stackable? when is delivery? etc...so for example 2 days ago or so I had a truck in Atlanta called on a load that was posted 53ft R temp. at 60degrees the weight was 3500lbs ...the rate was $3400 going to portland, OR thats like 1.25 a mile cheap as hell, however there was only 6 pallets so basically customer needed his product moved asap and paid a full truck load on 6skids....so i book that then send truck towards Kansas City,MO there i book another $2500 load that was only 11 skids 16000lbs...unfortunetly it was already friday and he still had more than 20feet left in his trailer but I ran out of time and couldn't consolidate another full load or LTL...but overall the truck made 2700miles from atlanta with $5900 thats 2.18 per mile I consider that a pretty good run. Also keep in the back of your mind what each load consists of like you cannot put adhesives with meat products just claim waiting to happen...there is more to building loads even better but then you need to find a warehouse and some people that you know there that will help you breakdown a freight and you can pack that SOB to the limit but its very time consuming and you can only do that with LTL since they give you 7-10days transit time with full loads its much harder because it will take you only a week to consolidate one trailer and then you will be late on all your deliveries and here we go problems again...but if you do that you can average easy 3-4 bucks a mile. I've also noticed that it is much harder to consolidate freight now than it was 5yrs ago....but we still surviving and there is always going to be freight as long as we alive.

 

Twinturbotrans,
Great post! Thank You!

 

Twinturbo you are the man. My situation: own my truck and trailer (53 dry van and is paid off). I'm currently leased to a company because I want to get my feet wet first and using their authority. Correct if I'm wrong but here is what I need to do in order to do what you're doing. (1) Get my own authority (MC etc.). With this I can get my own insurance. (2) According to Gears (thank you), I need to sign up to a load board or two and exchange information with them so I can start dealing with brokers and getting loads (is there another way to get connected with brokers)? (3) After sometime do the shippers start contacted me directly or there something else I need to do to cut out the broker? Thank you in advance for all of your responses.

 

Shippers will never contact you..at least they never called me first...I had to make thousands of phone calls before I started getting some calls back from shippers...plus not all shippers pay great rates, there are some brokers that had better rates during busy season than some shippers...so what im trying to tell you that it depends on your area and ofcourse your equipment...I am from OREGON so we do stay pretty busy out of here most of the year with produce.....the best time to call shippers is when its busy season they most likely will give you a shot...and once you got that one load direct you better make sure you pickup a load on time be there on time for delivery and most likely that shipper will give you more freight...Another thing to watch out is backdooring a broker as I call it...if you take a load from a broker you cannot call his shipper and ask for a freight direct within at least one year since you pulled the load for that broker or could be even few years gotta read your contract! I found that best way to find shippers is to walk into their warehouse and present yourself well make sure that they know that your not a broker that you have your own trucks...maybe take that shipping manager to lunch or something buy him a beer if he drinks it always cracks the ice. Plus not all shippers are the ones that pay for freight..i'd say majority is the buyer who arranges transportation and pays freight. Same thing goes with brokers....most brokers already have carriers who haul for them all year around and most likely those brokers don't even post their freight on boards if is good paying freight.

 

Great response Twinturbo. An additional question (of course)....should I purchase another truck and trailer before contacting brokers? I would assume that brokers/shippers would give loads to a company that had more trucks than a company with one truck. Meaning if one truck breaks down, I would be able to send another to finish delivering the load (if the repairs can't be made on the road). I'm sure there are different opinions on this.

 

uhh no you should'nt buy a truck 1st....ever...1st you need to have a business plan...having only 1 truck you would need to go through brokers 1st unless you have established a relationship with a shipper/buyer/customer already that is willing to give you freight tommorow after you go and buy truck today l once you buy a truck you need to figure it out your business plan ofcourse: are you gonna load that truck? are you gonna drive it? do you need a driver? insurance and setting up MC will be all natural...will need factoring complany?(bad idea...factoring companies charge 2-3% to get you right away iwhen most brokers pay 30-40days) for a one guy deal i would do what i did to start out...but remember i already had 5yrs prior experience in freight industry so my business plan was easy: 1 truck/reefer $50k paid and $40k for cash flow, maintenance..etc, thats why you need additional income just incase if the truck does breakdown cannot be fixed you have to hire another company to transload it and still deliver on time... I was driving for the 1st 2yrs hell im still driving when i need to take it to the shop or if my driver gets lazy and forgets to do a PM....i booked my own freight through brokers and my averages were 1.80-2.00 a mile on all my miles and i mean loaded, deadhead miles etc..and I made good money during that 2yr period, bought another truck/reefer and then figured out that it would be much easier to load trucks at home and hire drivers and still make decent profit...now I have 8 trucks/trailers and 10 drivers and i think its my max in order to keep everyone happy with freight..even if i sell one of my older truck/trailers i wont buy another one right now because freight is going to slowdown in the next couple months and pick back up around march-april next year

 

I would agree with everything twin has said. Shippers/brokers do not care if you have 1 or 1000. All they care about is the 1 truck that is going to move the load under consideration. I would also say that in the year I have been doing this I have had about 1 out of every 5 or 6 brokers I have hauled for start calling me every once in a while looking for trucks. Finally, I also agree that freight is going to slow down in the next couple of months so it is a bad time to be trying to put a truck on the road, however because of the slowdown it is a GOOD time to buy a truck as the prices will likely take they annual first of the year dip. Lots of fleet trucks are ordered in Nov - Dec and delivered in Jan. Lots of used trucks hit the market just as freight hits its slowest time of the year.