Think it'll work?

My thoughts exactly! Sometimes you have to drive through snowstorms.

 

That's exactly what I've pulled for the rental company I'm currently with. The sliding axle group isn't my most favorite idea in the world but it works just fine. I'd rather have something with a stationary group and a hydraulic tail that folds out. At the end of the day, I'll take whatever is in good shape at a reasonable price, though.

 

I've got some reading to do, haha. Thanks for the link!

 

I don't mean to dig up old forums but......

I think 2025 is the year I take the leap. Been biding my time the past few years and observing the markets. Equipment is finally coming down, fuel has been declining, and there's plenty of work around me to get a good start and get my name out there. I think Pres #45/47 will certainly help things along, or at least it makes me less nervous than the previous administration did. I've done a lot of thinking, re-thinking, and over-thinking about it. I even made an estimation spreadsheet where I plugged in all of my numbers to calculate what I need to make per day to break even. It seems pretty doable.

A friend of mine (who will probably end up being my biggest client) finally had to set me straight about it. Leaving a steady and sure paycheck is hard but it's also easy to go back to. If things don't pan out, I can find regular work pretty easily. An old co-worker who quit about 10 years ago bought his own truck said the same thing to me. Albeit, he will occasionally drive out the the west coast or to Texas (we're in Nebraska), but about 99% of his hauls are in state. He claims to be easily pulling in over 6 figures gross and claims to not work that hard.

At the end of the day, I'm not going to get rich working my corporate job. I have plenty of complaints about that place but ultimately, they're not going to pay me what I can make working for myself. If I want to make the money I think I can, then I need to get some skin in the game.

 

I don't mean to dig up old forums but......

For the sake of anyone else trying to do research about doing something similar to what I'm doing

In June of 2025 I got all the compliance things lined up and bought a 2014 Cascadia that used to pull fuel trailers for a local company. I leveraged a few connections I had made over the years doing sales at my previous employer and was able to get a good deal on it. I bought a 2017 SmithCo side-dump trailer in August and worked for weeks in the evenings after coming home from my day job to get the truck and trailer mated together and working. A little here and a little there adds up over time. My wife and I saved up enough money by this point that I only needed to finance about half of the trailer but everything else my wife and I own outright. I put in my notice at work and Halloween was my last day. I've been running off and on since November. I got in with a couple of guys hauling cattle manure for local farmers that pays either by the ton or by the hour. There has definitely been learning curves, no matter how much research or experience I think I had. When I was deciding whether to start this business up or not, I made a spreadsheet that calculated EVERYTHING. I had fuel costs calculated on average miles per day I could drive based on average speeds and fuel mileages, yada, yada. I had insurance and taxes and repairs and tires...basically everything. It calculated for me what I needed to be bringing in per day and moved that out to what I could project to make monthly and yearly. I also had it set to calculate if I ran only 5 days a week, ran on Saturdays, only ran 60% of the year...this helped me determine where my break evens were at and it was even more helpful when I went to the bank for a loan on the trailer. I don't have any real profit/loss to give them but something like this really put their minds at ease and they were willing to work with me. That and I had my extensive list of clients sorted out by if I've spoken with them or not and what industries they're in...Farming, construction, excavation, etc. Believe it or not, even with a 50% down payment and a personal credit score in the 800's, the bank I've been at for my entire life was STILL hesitant to give me a loan.

Anyway, some of my lessons I've learned the last few months: This estimator spreadsheet ended up projecting things pretty accurately and that has been a major help. I thought I did a good job overestimating my costs but I could've done just a little better. For example: I knocked out the rear window in my truck because I'm too cheap to put fenders on it at the time (I've since fixed that). Sure, the window cost $350 but I never before thought about the $1,000 I was losing sitting there watching the window guy do his thing. I'm a slow learner so I knocked that window out twice before actively doing something about it. Two little windows cost me $2,700 or more by the time you factor in for lost wages while sitting. The set of half fenders I bought were cheaper than that. I'm pretty locked in on the real cost of breakdowns now.
I also document EVERYTHING. I have my own daily logs that I write down mileages, times, places, events, if I refuel, when/where I do it, the weather that day, was I driving in a headwind, were there long lines at the load/unload zones....every part of my day is cataloged. From there I can generate invoices and bill my customers. I have a daily journal that I put other things in that don't necessarily belong on a daily log sheet. I have a spot where I count the total number of loads I've hauled, my average fuel mileages, costs, etc. I'm the kind of guy that really likes having hard data to review and I don't remember things well so I have to write it all down before I forget it.

I overlooked how much time the holidays were going to cost me. Not the end of the world but just something you think about after the fact. I guess what I'm saying is that timing is everything. I've still managed to bank up a lot of money in invoices from my customers in a short period of time...It's just that getting them to pay has been a difficult adventure. In the world of agriculture, you don't get paid until your client is paid. That could be upwards of a year for some of these guys. Example...The farmer buys manure from the feedlot and the feedlot hires me to haul it. The feedlot isn't going to pay me until the farmer pays the feedlot. I think this has been my biggest hurdle thus far. It's been helpful to have some savings to lean on to supplement my wife's income at the moment.

My wife has been running the accounting software for me and she says we're in the black when you figure all the unpaid invoices but I know that money in the bank can't be counted until it's actually in the bank. Thankfully, she recognized that I'm flooded with running the truck, working on the truck, and lining up work. It's not that I couldn't run the books myself, I'm more than able, it's just that I'm exhausted at the end of the day. She's been picking up the slack and helping where she knows how to. It's good to have help! Perseverance has been a big thing with keeping the wheels turning both literally and figuratively.

Breakdowns plagued me the first week or two of running. Every single day, something was broken and cost me time and money. That was a pretty discouraging at first but eventually all the bugs worked out and things are going fine for the most part. Sometimes you want to pile empty beer cans around that stinking truck until you can't see it anymore but that's not going to help anything. Gotta keep moving!

Speaking of moving, always have a plan for the future. I sat down one night and wrote out a list of goals. All of them. Everything I wanted to accomplish by doing this business and not just the lame or obvious ones like a "to make money". These were honest things from as little as wanting limit down time to as big as retirement and my endgame. I broke those down into priority levels and selected what I wanted for this year. I have the list hanging on my beer fridge, on my tool box, in my log book...I've put it everywhere to remind myself that I need to keep working toward something. My next things are a mixture of finding more steady work, better paying customers, and delving into new types of work. Manure hauling is typically winter work. I'm looking at lining up work for this summer and on. I'm currently working to get in with a local corn processing plant to haul biproducts and waste. I'm talking with some construction outfits about their needs once the weather is better and they're running at full throttle again. I'm also looking into other trailers that may be more suitable for other materials than what my side-dump trailer is made for, or even a flatbed to get into equipment hauling. I have a pickup and a trailer that I could get into local hotshot type of things, too. These things are part of my goal to move toward diversification which will in turn help keep income flowing. A couple of my friends think I should make a YouTube channel but I don't feel like getting into that. I've heard that it can be lucrative, though...

I've also learned to say no to customers. I've had a few low-ballers approach me about hauling for them but they think I'll do it for 30%-50% cheaper than the going rate. I honestly would probably still make money but there's no reason to give it away when I have other better paying jobs on the table right now...assuming they pay their bill. But, more money doesn't mean more profit. I could haul manure 40 miles away for $8/ton or 5 miles away for $7/ton. I'm more likely to take the lower paying job because it's shorter trips, less fuel, and more tons hauled than the longer trip. The tonnage makes up for the lower price. Negotiation is important and that's part of knowing your numbers AND knowing your worth. Doing cheap jobs as a "pay your dues" type of thing is a bad idea because the client is going to expect that price forever and he'll likely tell everyone else that I'm working for pennies. That's not the kind of work I want to attract. Know when to say NO and walk away. I know that "if the wheels ain't turning, you ain't earning" but you need to know when to park the truck.

So, that's where I'm at in life with all of this. My original post was from 2022 but I planned this for A LOT longer...so long that I don't exactly remember how long it's really been. Some of my earliest notes I've found where dated 2017. I've had a lot happen in life since then too, which kind of explains the delay in doing this. I met my wife in 2017 and had no savings. Was heavily involved with volunteering with my church and my small hometown in 2018. Got married in 2019. Pandemic in 2020/2021, not to mention insane prices and inflation. Sold my bachelor pad and bought a new house those years. Babies in 2021 and 2023. Buried all four grandparents, a step mother, and my biological father in that timeframe and my mother's health isn't great either. On top of all of that, my wife and I are trying for baby #3. My luck, I'm going to get hit with triplets or something stupid like that. I guess I mean to say that I wasn't procrastinating this whole time (not completely, anyway) but I've been busy.

I hope that some of this is helpful to someone down the line. Like I said before, there weren't a lot of resources about this niche in trucking when I started out. Most everyone around here told me to "just do it" and everything will just fall in place. I don't believe in luck or magic. I want the research and I want the data. Hopefully my research will help someone else get a faster start than I did and realize their dreams of owning/operating a small business sooner than it took me! Sorry for the long post but felt like a follow-up was the right thing to do. Here's to a good 2026, fellas!