The journey begins - purchased a truck.

It really is refreshing seeing someone successful such as yourself post what is truly possible in our world of trucking. I see you have the same book keeper I do and it is worth every penny of that $23 a month. I thought my low miles were great, but you make me look like a long haul trucker with my 80,000 miles. I am not surprised at all by your great numbers as I have seen many of your posts and can tell your intelligence and business skills are second to none. Keep up the great work and I will be trying to run less miles than you next year, but I have a pool and new pickup to save for so I can’t make any promises. Happy New Year!

 

Thanks for the offer of help and I will likely take you up on it. A couple friends and former co-workers of mine have basically what we plan with the exception ours will be rectangular instead of rounded. We plan on a fiberglass with a saltwater filtration. In our area we usually get cold winters and it seems to be less maintenance long term than gunite. It won’t be a great big pool but the pool company thinks that with a rectangular pool it will fit perfect between the garage and fence. They also said the sliding cover will work better at keeping it cleaner on a rectangular design. Not an actor, but a friend scratching our dogs head.

 

I like the look of gunite better, but I like the lifetime warranty and Installation time of the other. We are not set in stone just yet on the plans. Several friends have tried to talk us out of a pool, but my feelings are that even if I don’t get in it all the time sitting beside it is relaxing. Enjoy your time off and I hope we can share best practices.

 

I consider $100 per hour billable rate for professional service reasonable.

That $18 per state sounds a little cheap cause (at $100 per hour billable ) they have to do each state in about 10 minutes to stay ahead.

And those state fees are in line with the higher cost per hour of state employees with benefit and retirement packages.

I also would have a hard time justifying paying the escorts through LS. But I usually made sure money was in the bank/on the fuel card to operate the business with. Other folks have a hard time keeping float money in the bank.

LS not donating money to bad operators and charging everybody $25 for the cost of them administrating the checks is reasonable since they should not have to do that stuff. But I expect folks to run their trucks like it is a business.

 

You don’t give up $25 to Landstar for them to pay escorts, more like $18, you only get your percentage of the $25 you save.
That works out to .0009% of each load this year, I’ll just be lazy and let LS pay the escorts.
The other problem I’ve run into is the IRS requires you to issue 1099’s to the ones you pay over $800 a year..