What's a good 1 man truck business for a noobie? I'm going to get my CDL.

Your ability to get insurance might be the deciding factor. Most companies will not right a policy for an in-experienced driver.That goes for most businesses.
Me thinks you will need to learn how to handle the wagon, then buy the horse.

 

Well for starters the 50,000 you have will be gone pretty fast buying your own equipment. If you cant get hired for unknown reasons your probably going to have a hard time getting insured. Im not trying to discourage you just helping you weight your options. For a decent truck your looking atleast at $30-35k and then another $10-15k for trailer depending on trailer type. then another $5-7k getting up and running. If you make it through that your going to need another $12-15k for operating expenses until you get up and running and money is steady.

 

Take $5000 and put that down on a 24-26' box truck & start making deliveries for companies. That's how I started back in 1996.

 

That's not much money for a decent truck and to cover a few months of fuel until you get steady payments. And insurance is going to be a big hurdle with costs starting in the $teens if you can get it at all with no experience.

 

I'd like to get a CDL and just buy a truck and take off making money on my own It does not work that way , lot more to it ( as others posted ) than buying a truck.

 

Consider a 26 foot straight truck and delivering appliances and such for Sears, home depot, lowes, and furniture stores. I hear they do pretty good. I would be doing it but I would be self employed and need the company paid insurance. I wouldn't buy the truck but lease one...easier to get out of. Look on craigs list in your area for these opportunities. If you do well, put more trucks on the road.

 

how do you start delivery to companies. Where would you even start after obtaining a truck?

 

Doing a year, or even 6 months of OTR will be the best investment you ever made. Not only will it allow you to learn at the expense of another company, to let you get used to how often problems happen, how often trucks break down, keeping track of bills, and stuff like that.

When you get into trucking, the difficult part is adjusting to problems. Lets face it, when you come across a problem you have never seen in your life, or even heard of, its going to be stressful. If you learn those things working for someone else, it will make your business a lot easier.

And most importantly, if you run for someone else, you can see what it takes for them to make money. The kind of miles, the kind of fuel costs, and the kind of procedures they use. So, when you get your own truck, you know exactly what you need to break to be successful.
You are going to see a lot of dispatch screw ups, which is a great thing to learn from, being pissed at a dispatcher means that when you have your own business, you will never do it to yourself, because the hate that you experienced drives you to avoid the same problem.

Also, working for someone else lets you get used to the real world, how long it takes in real life to go a certain distance on certain kinds of roads, it also lets you get to know major highways and the obstacles, get to know truckstops, get used to dealing with customers, and things like that...

I would highly recommend working for another company for a few months, to see exactly what you DONT want to do. Learn from their mistakes, no reason to lose your own cash and fuel money while you are learning.

And another thing, dont buy a truck cash. Put down about $5k at a decent place like "Lone Mountain", and use the rest a a buffer. What that does, is you pay the extra few percent interest, but if you get hurt or whatever, you can make the payments for months and months, have a food and mortgage buffer, and stuff like that.

If you just spend all your money on a truck right up front, you will only be saving like $1-2k a month... so it will take you a long time to save up enough to cover the kind of things that life likes to throw around. If you only spend $10k and keep $40k, you could be out of work for a year and not lose everything. If you spend your cash up front, and you need money, you have to sell the truck... but if you have payments... you keep the truck and you keep emergency money...

I once talked to a millionaire, and he told me the same thing. He said not to pay cash, but that he kept enough cash to make 4-5 years of payments on an investment before he got his money back. If he had put that down up front, he could have lost everything in a few months, but since he took a loan and kept the backup money... he could wait out the hard times...

Im doing the same thing right now. Instead of spending my money up front, I did payments, and when I needed two months off for family issues, I had money to make the payments and pay rent... I have most of my money still saved, and could take another few months off without a problem...

But if I had spent it up front, I would have had to sell something to make ends meet right now.

You know how expensive insurance is? Well, think of the interest on a loan as insurance. For that extra 5-7% every year, you get to keep your money and spend someone elses money... a few percent is a hell of a lot cheaper than having to sell something you already own at some discount because you didnt have any money for an emergency...