Quote:
Originally Posted by Orange Andy
A good, understanding wife is a huge part of the success equation. Sounds like you have a good one Merrick, and appreciate her support while being left at home.
Sounds like your efficiency has improved a lot in the short time you have been otr. Keep looking for any other ways to increase your margin as you go.
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Thanks Orange Andy, and yes I did got lucky in getting the woman I have. Sometimes it's even like "what am I doing out here?" I mean I got into this with no knowledge; I mean what I did was basically insane by buying all of this stuff, and I could just go home and get $20 an hour driving for South Eastern or something but she knows that would be slow death for me. So she supports me being out here.
As to improving my efficiency, I've been thinking how to reduce expenses but I guess you can only go so low. I watch where I fuel, I get the cash back on the fuel purchase which is HUGE with the credit card. I refinanced the truck to a much lower rate, the other equipment is all at 0% and when that ends I will either pay it off or just roll it over.
In less than 90 days I will have 2 years on my CDL so when I renew my insurance policy I'm hoping I won't be paying $14,000. I paid the insurance up front too to obviate unecessary monthly fees. I don't pay monthly parking as I'm not home that often. I don't idle either to wast fuel. So basically I got it as low as I can.
Another thing is I try and plan my fuel that I run til almost empty to not carry excess weight but make sure I will not suffer by end up in a more expensive state and pay more for fuel to wipe out any savings I get running lighter. Actually I heard a thing on the airlines recently that they even took out most of the magazines to cut out excess weight among other things.
The guy I use to run with rents parking spots from this other trucking company. I spoke with the son of the owner of that company today. I asked his opinion of this industry and he said that anyone that gets into it now is insane. He said you use to make good money before but fuel is just too high. They have quite a bit of trucks and have contracts for freight out of Florida. They want to get out.
More and more as I ask questions out here it does seem that this industry is heading for much more consolidation and I still think at this point that anyone that can hang out as things get tighter and tighter will do all right.
I need to meet with my friend while I'm back. I'd like to work with him again but in a different way. I don't want to be dispatched but he has trucks already and if I can find shippers then if I'm with him I can offer more capacity. Besides he has his day job which he loves and he knows I look into things. Actually he just bought 2 more new Kenworths and I was reading in Landline magazine about OOIDA members getting a rebate for buying KW's so I told him and he got the rebates.
I believe in working with people. We all can't do all things. I don't know mechanics so I need to find someone who does. Actually I remembered that I drove local before I went OTR and the guy who use to service the trucks from the local leasing place had such an eye for these trucks and as I'm home I am going to go see him to see if he would be interested in taking on side work.
Anyway, I woke this morning about 5 miles from my delivery and I called to see if I could come over and she said they were closed today but she would try and get someone to unload me and call me back. I called the broker and I was pissed but I had no_worries words in my head to conduct myself professionaly so I told him very calmly the situation. I didn't get into "you need to pay me if I sit til tomorrow". He said he would call the lady himself. I had never worked with this broker before either. But the lady called me back and said she would be there in 10 minutes.
I tried to get a load from there, Ocala, to South Florida and found one from CH Robinson but with DH it would have been about $1.30 a mile and didn't pick up til later in the night and deliver the next day and so I just drove home empty. After I was thinking that wasn't too smart, it was about 250 miles.
What a difference the tone of these brokers voice when you are calling an area with no freight. Boy they are cocky as hell. Call them in Chicago and they are so humble.
Hey no_worries, about the extra deadhead, I mean I understand not trying to capture it in the next load, but for instance I have put about 60,000 miles on the truck since I have had it. I divide that by total revenue and I get a certain number (not sure off the top of my head) but do you subtract basically extra deadhead from the total miles? It would make sense cause I did it real quick and it came to about $1.40 but that's every mile on the truck and really that's not a true reflection on the rates I'm hauling for.
Tomorrow I take the truck in to get the APU serviced. I've put just about 1000 hours on it already. I know I could probably change the oil myself, but I need a place to leave the truck for a couple of weeks so it's cheaper to pay to get work done on it and not have to pay for parking. I hope he lets me leave it there for a couple of weeks.