Taking the plunge. My journey as an O/O.

With your determination, current work experience and work ethic, you could easily be turning 80k to 100k a year (combined income and benefits right now) as a company driver with several different companies. That's with no concerns of truck maintenance and liability.

I do applaud your determination though...

Like they say, to each their own.

 

Everyone has to follow their own path.

The fact is this, in the end, the odds of making more money as an owner operator are very low. Opposed to leveraging one's experience and work ethic as a driver for a good company that has nice equipment, contract freight, benefits, including retirement, etc.

I say this as an owner operator with my own authority for the last 6 years. The ONLY reason I do it is because I'm very independent and do not like being told what to do, where & when to go LOL

 

I have been running local dump trucks and recently low bed trucks for 30 years so my experience is a little different but I do see the same things happen to you guys running longer distance.
First I know what every truck makes per day, week and year and what each driver produces in those trucks.
I also have maintenance and repair and labor cost for for every truck separately and down time or days of production lost due to repair and what that cost is in net and gross revenue and I know what my overhead is per day per truck and I include my salary my mechanics salary and every last expense both personal and business related.
My old trucks cost more to keep running than the payment on a new truck when you figure in lost revenue and my time doing the repair, I do make more being a mechanic than driving my trucks.
When I first started and had just one truck I did not see the true cost of running an old POS but it did teach me the hard way about getting the truck spec right and the cost of doing repairs twice and the true cost of used or knock off parts.
one more thing that helps I took bouns deprecation on the new truck for 2019 and got 19,000 tax refund back and am paying no estimated taxes so far this year.
this is my newest of the 4 trucks I'm running

 

Those piston rings finally got seated in with that nice heavy pulling through the hills. Great to hear.

 

Heat is your friend. 55k, pretty good. 70k for a Detroit used to be typical. Like you flipped a switch.

 

Quality of fuel. You just got a good load.