Why should I become an O/O ???

I actually know where you can get an 05 ex Averitt Express truck for $17,000. It's got around 500k miles on it and its the Averitt bright red. Has steel wheels but those can be changed. It looks good but I've not went and looked at it in person. The truck is at Don Baskin Truck Sales in Tennessee. You can find him in the truck paper as well. He gets a lot of the trade in Averitt trucks.

I wish so bad I would have went with a Volvo with a Cummins instead of a KW with a Cat. Anyway we all live and learn. My next will be just that or I will get an ex Wal-Mart International. Those trucks get great fuel mileage, have been maintained very well and as a plus they come with a Thermoking APU. You can find them all over the place for $25k and under. Don Baskin has some of those too.

 

I think my situation was pure luck for my first year... Lucky i made it as long as I did with my old broken down 379 then smartened up when I bought my Volvo.

 

OK I'm in a similar situation as soon2btrucking. I will be in the market to buy a truck around February - April 2011 when some funds come through. I am talking with everyone and getting input from everyone and every source about what to do as I have currently only 5 months experience out here. Talked to a driver today who has 51 years doing this. He seemed of the attitude it's better to stay company driver. But when I asked him what's involved with getting authority and getting loads off boards he went through a whole list of things that didn't seem too bad-- insurance (sure, higher for a new business), authority is only $350 (no problem), tags, plates, taxes etc, no qualcomm, no logs (ahh shucks). He doesn't keep logs; he just writes down the city where he stops and the mileage on the odometer next to it. Stops about every 3 or 4 hours, sleeps when he's tired, eats when he's hungry, gets the load there when it needs to be there period.

He did say leasing onto an outfit can be a losing proposition which I have read many times here as well. Loads where he's making $2000 on today used to pay him $3600 years ago. I think a lot of that is cost of fuel though.

 

and you really believed him that he doesnt keep logs at all?
in this business i take 99.9% of everything i hear or am told with a grain of salt---if not the b/someter goes off way to much

 

He may have been having some fun with me lol. I asked him who he faxes his logs to. He said 'no one, I have my own authority'. Then he reached back and grabbed an old empty coffee can and said he tears his logs into little pieces and when the can is full of the confetti, he will hold it out the window and let the pieces litter the highway. I guess that's his passive agressive way to get back at the DOT....

 

scottied I don't know if you actually believe the man or not...anyway. It's a federal DOT law that if you have interstate DOT authority your driver MUST keep a log and the company must keep a copy of the log on file for the DOT to inspect when they wish to an inspection.