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

Stubborn ? That is not a good quality for a business man. No wonder you are doing this deal, even dough there are good people giving you a free advise not to do it. En reality , people who succeed in life is because they learned from other people’s mistakes. At the end all you doing is making those companies lower their rates , because they have an stubborn doing the hard work for them .
By the way , what Crete is going to do for you is the easy part of this business and they are going to make more money than you .

 

3600 miles is defenitely a lot of miles per week.

 

I really commend what you are doing man. It’s just I’m worried your slowly going broke and don’t realize it.

You are just flat out not making enough money, and that’s even with running a ton of miles. Right now you are simply owning your own job. If you were leased onto me I’d be happy as a pig in #### since I’d be making bank off you. One problem is your wearing your truck out at a tremendous pace. You shouldn’t need to run but 23 to 2800 miles per week and your pay should be atleast 40 cents higher per mile.

The reason I asked what happens if you pay yourself .55/mi is because I was hoping you would realize that not much is left over. Here is a good way to look at if your overall situation is ok.. act as if you had to hire a driver to drive your truck. How much money would you make then? What if you got sick or hurt? Right now you would be SOL because after you hired someone your truck would be getting worn out and you would have nothing left over to live on. It’s not sustainable my friend. We didn’t even take into account payroll taxes and workers comp.

I think what’s going to happen is one day less then a year from now your tires will be bald and you won’t have the money to change them out. If you do it’ll be because you robbed from your “driver pay” to make it happen. That’s just shooting yourself in the foot.

I hate even typing this stuff out but somebody has to say it and it’s because I care.

 

isnt it ### backwards to lease onto someone for 1.30 ?whats the deal with cleaning 1099 driver's paychecks,wearing off ur truck,health doing 3500 miles and not getting MC experience,brokers,customers. if you go hard do it wot, especially no family and debts behind you.

 

Now look at the big picture. YOU ARE HELPING THEM TO LOWER THE RATES !!!!!! Don’t you get it !!!! Can someone explain this guys , PLEASE !!!!!!!

 

Are you kidding me? Look man i understand this your first plunge as an oo and the safety net desire is strong but at those rates its a false safety net. Take the truck to a good company with real rates. Those rates are extremely low.

Averaging 1.80 a mile, all miles, calculated from the odometer, should be the absolute bare minimum goal of an owner operator leased to a company.

I'd like to touch on a few of the points you made in earlier posts. The goal of making as much as you did as a company driver by the end of the first year is fine. However you failed to include the costs of employee benefits things like group healthcare discounts, paid vacation, workmans comp, matching 401k. Those need to have a $ figure assigned to them and factored into the final income equation.

Also you mentioned the exit strategy. If not earning x by y date you foo back to being a company driver is a solid plan. But how do you get out from under the truck loan? That needs to be pay of the exit strategy.

 

edited to just the the most important part of your post here


This is not a bad idea. In fact its a very good solid plan. The problem is with.b the rates you are agreeing to pull for you are not lowering risks, you are increasing them.

Normally i would suggest a person go to either mercer, landstar, Bennett, or daily. they are all basically equal when it comes to which is the better carrier to lease to. But in your situation with no knowledge of freight lanes/market dynamics mercer would be better simply because you can lean on your coordinator(basically a dispatcher) while you learn lanes and markets.

 

Do you think Crete is lowering their rates just because he's willing to run 3600 miles a week at $1.30 per mile gross to the truck?

Heck no, man...

They're laughing all the way to the bank. These CEO's have to wake up and pinch themselves every morning with glee that some guy would be willing to assume ALL liability for a $1.30 a mile.