What type of truck/trailer is best for my situation?

@Ridgeline
I tagged Ridgeline because he's a small (I think small) fleet owner.

 

If your budget for truck and trailer is less than $100k your options will be severely limited.

 

100K will be anything you can find. Not a lot of money for looking for a setup. Any random used truck will not be worth the money you can afford with a trailer. IMO

 

Get a Cascadia.
Probably a 2013 dry van.
Should be 100k or less.
Obviously due diligence and inspect thoroughly.

 

someone called me?

thanks china!

the absolutely first thing is this … if you want to lower your risk for downtime, the travel time is way off, it is a 18 hour trip for the purpose of a contract.

the second is any good fleet spec’d truck should work, don’t but cheap junk.

the third is a good but light truck is needed and a good clean dry van can be found


But I doubt you should keep the $100k limit, try $140.

 

OK, the transit time needs to be calculated at 48 mph. this is around the standard for this industry, not the speed limit.

This has been used for decades.

When you are taking in account the drive time for the truck, this includes stops for fuel, pee breaks and so on. The driver isn't a robot.

some days you may be able to do it in 14 hours, other times it may take the full 19, you don't want to screw the driver by pressuring them and burning them out (that's another issue for another time).

So when I talk to someone about a contract for a dedicated run, I use 48 mph and this allows me to return a better than expected performance of our work while for the most part doesn't destroy the driver with constant work.

Dedicated work is the worst because it is pretty repetitive, same route same scenery and so on. I did it for three years and if it wasn't for the fact that it was three days a week with four once a month delivering to specific customers all the time, I would not have last.

That said, here is an example.

I have a similar customer, the contracted work covers 896 miles door to door, it is out of the southwest to the midwest. The customer thought that the driver could do it under 13 hours because the guy I was negotiating with did it in 12 hours but I explained to him that the truck doesn't do 75 mph, and the truck has at least one fuel stop and my drivers take breaks regardless.

So it works out to being 18.6 hours or as I have in the contract 20 hours unless there are delays beyond our control.

And with any negotiation, there was a compromise needed to be met between two parties, I lowered the base rate by 12% but decreased the threshold for the FSC to make up the difference.


It all works out.

They accepted it without understanding the FSC and renewed the contract just a couple weeks back despite the enormous amount of money they have been charged for the fuel cost adjustment. This arrangement made them adjust their scheduling a bit more than they wanted, their customer wasn't thrilled with it but when their stats came in from the company HQ, they were happy to see the deliveries were all within their receiving/protect time window, never late.

 

@jayhawk123 just out of my own curiosity, what is your background within the trucking industry? Do you hold a CDL?

I see you've been a member of this site since 2013 but only have 10 posts...

 

Get yourself an automatic kenworth 680 - Peterbilt 579 or Cascadia- stay away from LT- around 500k miles isx15 400 hp dd13 3.08 or lower gear ratio -should be sufficient for your load
Trailer - look for anything 2015 And up with air ride, push button sliders, aluminum roof, and swing doors
I’d change all tires to Sumitomos and have Michelin on the steer