Trucking business without me as the driver

There are franchises to be had 100k or less. And the risk and attention needed would be less frantic. Myself and the other 2 persons who posted responses are not trying to hurt your feelings, but we have been trucking quite awhile. I really dont know what you are seeing to peak your interest, but we live this lifestyle and see the reality... it high risk to those that are from inside the industry, and insane risk to those bursting into it without experience

 

OK let's break this down. You are not going to like my comments but take them seriously.

What kind of engineers?

How young?

Why?

You can't just get a truck, get a driver and a dispatcher, the slowly grow anything.

This is a highly competitive, high cost, high liability, super high risk and worse of all high failure rate INDUSTRY.

Insurance is a must, the CDL really is too for a lot of reasons.

Find another industry - SERIOUSLY!

you will appreciate it when you don't lose all your money.

Really?

Let him do this first, get it started with his own money and then have him start to help you out.

Some money?

Sorry you need to make a lot of money.

It doesn't matter, the driver is the hardest part, it is somehting that you have to depend on someone to take your $150k truck and drive it without destroying it. It takes me a month to find a good driver, there are a lot of sh**** drivers out there and some of them should not leave their house let alone drive a truck.

'the load'?

What does that mean?

Buying a truck is a process and it is more important when you can not drive it. The process cost money and time, it is done with every truck YOU LOOK AT and ARE SERIOUS OF BUYING.

A TRUCK IS A TOOL, YOU DON'T BUT A USED CNC MACHINE WITHOUT MAKING SURE IT WORKS RIGHT AND IS NOT WORN OUT AND YOU DO THE SAME WITH A TRUCK.

You are getting help from someone who buys distressed companies so you are getting the best advice you can ever get, take it seriously.

It isn't, those numbers are bullcrap.

I am.

Sure, it doesn't matter what you buy. I would buy new.

You will need $200k to $300k to set this all up because you are not drivers. I would never take advice from anyone who is just a driver or a one truck owner/operator because you are going into owning and running a fleet.

I don't know, operating a business like this has a high risk of failure for people who have been in this industry for years, so coming into it, you are in that 90% failure within a year category.

Investing, open a subway franchise. Little Ceasars is possible, I would say real estate but the government got that all screwed up, but not trucking.

 

Why not a nail salon ?

pizza restaurant?

BBQ joint ?

There is not going to be any profit left over , after you pay the truck expenses , fuel insurance , driver , maintenance,compliance , set aside some to replace the truck in three years ,

and there is nothing to grow unless you have a friend that worked in the shipping department at a paper mill or some other large business that can throw some loads your way .

if you have to use load boards , you will never make any money .

what’s on the load boards is the bottom of the barrel that the big trucking companies that have connections at factories etc didn’t want because it doesn’t pay enough to be profitable for them .

Years ago I bought a truck and drove it myself and did most of the maintenance myself , and made pretty good money having it leased under a larger company that had their own trailers and their own direct freight contracts with automakers and parts suppliers .

made so
Much money I bought three more trucks and hired drivers .

The problem was I assumed the hired drivers would work as hard as I did .

I paid the drivers 33% of the gross to the truck . Which is on the high side .

my wife is an accountant and she figured that the hired drivers worked almost exactly 65% as hard as I did .

it took the hired drivers 5 days to make the same money to the truck that I could make in 3 and a half or 4 days .

that combined with the maint costs going to the moon meant I was actually making less money with four trucks than I made with one ,
Plus I had four times the headache and stress .

trucking is one of the most highly regulated industries in the country, and one of the most riskiest .

when your driver gets involved in an accident , you’re gonna get sued .
Even for a minor accident .

even if it’s not your drivers fault ,

and who will you hire to finish delivering the Load ?
how long will the truck be in the repair shop ?

usually it will be weeks in the shop , even for a minor repair .

Are you going to keep laying the driver when there’s no truck to drive ?

of course not , so he will be gone in a day or two to work for another company that has trucks and loads to haul .

then when your truck is repaired , you’re gonna have to find another driver .

And like any other industry , all the good employees already have a job .

every decent driver already has a job .

my neighbor is a driver .
He works for a small company that has 8 trucks .

off about 6 weeks when things were slow , the company pays the drivers $600 a week to sit at home when there are no loads , otherwise the drivers would be gone in no time to another company .

Home every weekend , and he made just over $100k last year .


There’s a long thread on here from someone named “doubleyellow “

he documented his work
Every load , every expense , etc .

He eventually sold his rig and invested in some real estate .

If you have lots of money sitting around looking to invest
I’d reccomend you look at “lifestyles unlimited “ real estate .

they mostly do syndicated apartment complexes purchases m
Where 7 or 10 people pool money for the down payment on an apartment complex , fix it up and resell it for a pretty good profit .

it would be a much better investment than trucking .

a lot less risky .

 

That's awesome. I mean really. Excellent research. Would you consider this the internet too? How many positive responses have you gotten so far?

Let's try this since you say you still need convincing not to do it. Research. Research right here among real truckers. Read back about 2 years on this exact forum and see how many people have come on here and said the EXACT same thing you are proposing, same game, different players.

How many have gone on and on for pages trying to rationalize their lack of foresight or willingness to listen? All of them.

How many have come back and said it worked out? I know of none.

Keep checking this thread to see how many more people advise you against this.

Your timing is horrible.

Your experience is nonexistent.

You don't even know what you don't know.

 

Next to fuel, driver pay will be your biggest expense. If you pay percentage, at say 30%, (what I was making as a driver) he will have to run his but off so you make any money. Tires wear out, oil needs changed, DEF systems fail, a cheap driver hits a bridge, etc. etc. Now, 6 months in, the truck engine blew up right after you put 10 new tires on it. Money was already tight because you spent ALL you had to buy the truck and trailer. Your driver has a mortgage, so he NEEDS his paycheck. Are you going to buy him another truck to drive until the engine is swapped out, or fire him and close the doors? THIS I KNOW BECAUSE I BLEW UP MY TRUCK ENGINE 6600 MILES AFTER I BOUGHT IT. Steak and Shake will give you a franchise for 10k. Scatter 10 of them around the state if you have moldy money, but @Ridgeline isnt kidding. You have a super high chance at failure. You are getting honest answers, we aren’t just Yes-men who will tell you what you want to hear, but almost everyone on here is experienced in some way in the logistics industry. Everyone on here has more experience than you, they all say the same thing.

 

So you're going to start a trucking business with one truck, a hired driver and hire a dispatcher? Wtf do you need a dispatcher for with one truck? Lol. Do you have work lined up? Real work, not load board subscriptions. You're gonna scrape the bottom of the barrel for a driver. That driver is going to break your ### costing you money. The best drivers already have their own truck or a great paying job with benefits that you will never be able to match. Trucking is a competitive business that eats naive people like you up every day. Dry vans, reefers and flatbeds are a dime a dozen out here. Rates reflect it. Have fun losing money on your new hobby.

 

Those Youtube truckers, most of them are FOS. If that was part of your research then ignore everything they said.

 

Didn’t see the other 2 replies before mine before I posted, but they all say pretty much the same thing

 

With absolutely zero experience in what you are trying to get into right now, this is an exceptionally bad idea.

I've been driving 11 years. I've leased a couple of times, but most been a company driver for those 11 years. I was laid off in October of last year from a unicorn bankers hours trucking job. Found a gig working for a private carrier stuck on the night shift the last six months. During the last six months I seriously considered emptying brokerage accounts and using my savings to buy a truck, forge my own path, and be my own boss. Go where I wanna go and stay out of the areas I didn't like. After about a month into researching this it became beyond obvious to me this was not only a bad idea right now, but one that would probably bankrupt me.

A one man show (that you outlined is your current goal) in this freight market is NOT a good idea. Even if the rates were better right now, it takes a monumental amount of money to keep these trucks running. And it doesn't matter if your breakdown is covered under warranty. It's gonna take 2-3 weeks of downtime to get that sorted and you didn't make generate any revenue. The driver you plan to pay didn't make any money and he or she ain't gonna wait around for you to figure it out.

It's a bad idea right now for experienced folks like me. Even in good times there is immense risk. And you wanna jump into all of that without knowing anything? Best of luck.

unloader

 

this is a disaster. invest in real estate it would have a better ROI. what are your goals with your plan to become a millionaire?