Theoretical question?

No that's not how it works in this industry.

You haven't own many trucks have you, a lot that I owned were scrapped out because ... well they were junk and the ones I kept to mess with are not going to be on the road but rare enough to keep.

I have the money, BUT I would not dare put one of my drivers in a truck that I would hate to drive.

This is a business, it can't be run on nostalgia. Older trucks in a fleet costs too much money to run.

Wait?!?

When did they move Death Valley?

I know of Bob, he is a single truck owner, you are talking about fleet management, HUGE difference.

 

In theory it is possible.

I worked for a company many years ago, that had a large Fleet of trucks, and there was one account that they decided they would repair all the trucks and run old trucks.

When they sent me down there and I got into one of those trucks at first I was disgusted. I wanted a nice new shiny truck. But when I drove the truck they sent me out in, I couldn't believe how nice the truck actually was. When I went down the road it was razor straight, the transmission shifted perfectly there was absolutely no vibration it rode so nice everything worked perfectly on that truck like it was absolutely brand new. They sent me down there to work for a while and all the trucks were the same absolutely like new. Even the clutches and clutch brakes were always correctly adjusted. Yes older trucks absolutely 100% can be fully rebuilt.

They used that site there at that account as their mechanical shop and they had satellite places in other surrounding states. When we had a problem with the newer trucks which by the way did not ride As Nice did not handle this nice did not hold the road is nice did not stop as nice as those old trucks, but when we had a real problem they would send us to there. But the newer satellite trucks they pretty much could only put a bandaid on them and send them back out whereas the older trucks were right there exactly at the site and they could rebuild them on the spot.

I don't know if they still do that or not, but when they close that facility down and lost that account I should have bought at least one of those trucks. They were absolutely A1 condition to travel anywhere in the whole United States.

I also worked for another pretty good size company they ran through California and the West Coast. Their trucks all had at least a million miles on them, those were the newest LOL. Some had a million and a half and even 2 million miles +. For all I know they could have had trucks that had 3 and 4 million miles or more. And they ran the road every day every night around the clock and when they had a problem their mechanics rip them apart and fixed it. They were quiet, Rode nice and did everything they were supposed to do

At that particular place when you would come back from your trip, they wanted you to fill out as detailed of a vehicle inspection report as you could, and they wanted you to miss nothing. And as soon as the truck would get back the mechanics would pull it right into the garage IMMEDIATELY.

I came back from Washington State back to Southern California and I dropped the truck off, went inside did what I had to do and when I came out the mechanics already had the wheels off of it and the springs off of it because it had vibration.

So it is entirely possible and some companies do or have done something similar. Although I must say it is not the norm.

But these places that I described the trucks were in such good shape because the mechanics were right there and immediately and instantaneously without even the slightest thought of cost fix everything and was even pre-emptive about it. Management in general I don't think approaches Trucking that way. I think most prefer to just pay up front and keep their fingers crossed that the cost of repairs will remain lower.

As a guy myself that has done many mechanical repairs I can tell you that one guy can only take care of so many trucks. So if you are asking this as a guy starting a trucking business as to whether you could build a fleet of trucks and do this, I suppose it's possible but you really have to have a very large shop area and not be afraid to hire Mechanics for sure. These places weren't afraid to hire mechanics they weren't afraid of anything and they had the Deep Pockets to do that.

The next issue it would be that a company that was all on paper with exempt trucks would probably be audited quite a bit and you have to have personnel to make sure everything is correct.

I don't know if these companies still operate that way but it has been done and it can be done.

 

Eventually the window lickers will have to learn to run legal or will be forced to work at McDonalds.

 

I always liked leaving Flagstaff in the morning and heading east in my slow 62 mph truck, the same fast trucks kept passing me over and over and over.
I’d get on the cb and tell them it’s the fourth time they passed me today, some of them would get real pissed off.
A lot of drivers don’t and will never have a good work ethic, they’re the ones that needed paper logs so they could create a log page that looks like a good driver’s normal log page.

Your theoretical company would only attract slackers and one big wreck and then the attorneys digging through all the receipt and BOL times would easily show the false logging, plus there’d be an ad somewhere promoting the paper logs.
A jury would easily award 100 plus million to an “injured” plaintiff.

A team of lawyers going through a driver’s log book will find a lot more wrong then an officer doing a random roadside inspection.

 

I don’t see how it would be hard to keep a small fleet of nice old KW’s or Pete’s rolling. I really don’t know why a person would want a large one in this present time. A small carrier with half a dozen trucks would be doable, but you’d never get enough drivers to fill lots of old trucks. Most modern wheel monkeys want brand new trucks they don’t ever have to do any more than put fuel in, and trade them out on a lease every couple years. I think it’s more difficult to fit a microwave, Xbox and flatscreen into an old rig compared to the modern aero trucks. Running paper logs is hard in a society that has total dependence on touch screens.

I do not think it’s possible to grow a large fleet with 2000 and older rigs.

 

5 years from now, you would suddenly have a goldmine