Christ Rank calling me out like that, remind me never to go out in public with you.
Anyway I do help dispatch all the trucks but mainly I was brought in to help with the money. This is the guy by the way, for whom I was running for before. The one who was dispatching me. He has a bunch of trucks but it was never really managed prooperly.
He pays me, but not really much. The obvious benefit to me is I am constantly looking for new work and instead of saying I can offer two or three trucks (if all goes well this week) I can offer 21.
I have set up an email that I send out daily to various people to let them know where the trucks are going to be. Like I said better to offer more capacity.
Actually I contacted one large super market chain a while back and they said they require 20 trucks. However that was during the fuel run-up and people were dropping like flies so they said as we are close that we could send over our info. When we recently hit 20 I contacted him again and he actually offered us a lane. We haven't decided on it yet as it might not fit our operation but nonetheless the oportunity was offered.
As for the numbers, I don't have everthing finalized. To be honest it's hard to keep up with. I have gone through numberous accountants but I keep firing them as they don't do things how I like. One thing that you already know is that there isn't a lot of money in this business. If one reads back to my earlier posts its amazing how naive I was and how little I knew when I got into this. (not that I know so much now, do we ever really stop learing anyway?)
Your comment that it would take 4-5 trucks to enable a guy stay home is missing one big part of what it takes for a guy to stay home, that is his expenses.
You could be making a million dollars a year but if your expense are more than a million dollars well you won't make it. (Of course you know all this but I'm just saying
. )
Me personally, I live a simple life. Thus a lot of the changes that people are making are already how I live my life. I don't by flat screen tv's. I drive a 9 year old car that has been paid off for years. Material things do not make me happy.
It should be added however, that my wife has a good salary which covers our biggest expense, the mortgage (I admit I got caught up in the real estate frenzy down here in South Florida too). However she will be losing her job soon and we now have a baby on the way. So we will see.
Anyway as for the trucking, I don't take money out of the business. It runs itself. So I haven't needed to live off of it. I really think I can make this work though. Sometimes I think these business are more profitable then people claim, (talking on a larger scale of course). You can't live off of a few trucks. I started getting into my first repair bills and they weren't cheap. We now have an in-house mechanic though so this will save a lot.
It is true, the more trucks you get the cheaper everything else becomes. I see the kind of money this other guy is generating. If that were my company (and he claims he wants to sell it to me), I would be making some money as I would have nowhere near the expenses he has (Just car/boat payments alone which the company pays every month is about $3,000. I would not have those payments.
I would like to add some owner/operators but that will be in the future. There are so many changes going on now. Of course we have less freight, but one big thing is this credit problem. People are not going to be able to upgrade and get new equipment if the banks aren't lending. So I'm trying to decide how to progress.
Also as we obtain new customers, I do see there is a downside to that. There is something to be said for working off of the spot-market. The guy I work with always said he didn't want any contracts and now I see why. We actually got a good contract but that means you "have" to be there and we have to take freight cheaper than we'd like to have a truck where we are obligated to be.
I'd really like to be able to drop trailers but it is so hard to get new equipment now.
In the end, I guess I didn't answer your quesion Rank, I know and I'm sorry; as usual I digressed. Hope you are doing well though.