[TK THE TRUCKER]

Check inside the APU housing. There's an on/off switch in there for doing maintenance and such. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody shut it off to work on it and forgot to turn it back on or just turned it off just because. I really like the Tri-Pac overall and plus there's Thermoking dealers all over the country for service.

The International sounds like a decent deal with the new drive tires,APU and everything else. Don't the old Wal-mart internationals have the smaller 54" sleeper as opposed to the 72"? It's a little on the small side to today's standards if you're staying out on the road for a long time but not too bad. The Volvo is a little bigger. Just remember the Wal-mart truck is probably specified to get the best fuel mileage at 65 mph and if you plan on hammering down the road at 75 your fuel mileage is probably going to be crap. Good luck

[GMAN]

Originally Posted by Dave_0755

Another question area I have is this. I will be starting out using the load boards. I have never made deals with brokers before since I was just a company driver. How do you negotiate the price of the loads? What is a good idea for pricing? I have signed up already for get loaded and the internet truckstop. Get loaded has some prices listed and the ones I've seen are ranging from $1.20 a mile to over $2.00 a mile. That's a huge price difference. I have tried to figure my operating costs the best I can but still I know it will be difficult for me to know what I'm doing here just starting out. I'm kinda going into this with common sense and knowledge from what I've been reading. It's an ongoing process for sure. Should I set a mileage rate and turn down loads that don't meet my price or what? My truck and trailer will be paid for with no liens or payments. I will have fuel, permits, insurance, maintenance, tires, taxes, and accountant fees to pay. Along with other operating costs. But starting out with no debit. Also I will have a cash reserve to start but it's not much more than a couple of months worth of operating costs. My home and personal vehicles are paid for as well. I know also that it takes at least 30 days to get paid on most bills. Also I'm thinking I should get the fuel card from OOIDA as well. I don't really like Fleet One that much though. (I've been turned down a lot at truckstops using one in the past.) But a discount is a discount. Mainly I would like to know how the whole broker system works. I have never done it and I want to get the best price I can of course.

By coming into this business virtually debt free you are way ahead of most who buy their first truck. Negotiating with brokers is pretty much like negotiating anything else. It takes time to develop your negotiating skills. There are a number of ways in which to negotiate better prices. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It is much easier to negotiate better prices when capacity is low. Some points that might help in your development skills are things such as fuel prices going up, multiple stops, pickup and/or delivery lanes. If it is a cheap freight lane coming out then you need to get a better rate going in. If you run into the northeast you need to consider the cost of tolls in your rate. I won't take money out of my pocket to haul a load of freight. I would rather deadhead. There are some who will take a load even if the rate only covers their fuel. That only perpetuates the cheap rates.

It is a little difficult to get an accurate cost per mile for your operating costs until you have some historical data, but you can make a good educated guess. Fuel is the easy one to calculate. I generally use 5 mpg as a base rate. If your truck gets better fuel mileage then you are better off calculating your operating costs high. If fuel costs $3/gallon and you get 5 mpg, then your fuel costs are $0.60/mile. When I do projections I use 10,000/month. In reality, you could run more miles or less, but it is a good average. You can break down nearly all of your costs by the mile. Base plates and permits, tires, insurance, etc., can all be broken down to a per mile rate. Although you don't have equipment payments, it would be good to include the replacement costs when doing your projections. Many new owners also forget to pay themselves when doing calculations. Once you do your projections you should have a good idea of your break even point. You can then decide on how much profit you need and then price your service accordingly. Rates have been all over the place recently. I have a friend who just hauled a van load for $2.18/mile. He has been getting quite a few loads at or just over $2/mile lately. He has also been offered loads for less than $1/mile. I think that he is averaging somewhere around $1.40-1.50/mile for all miles run. Rates can vary widely depending on where you run.

I have used Truckersedge (OOIDA's Fleet One) and TCH fuel cards. An advantage to the Fleetone card is that you can get a penny or two discount at some truck stops, mostly mom and pop. You can have access to the Bridgestone National Tire account with the Fleet One account. I no longer use Fleet One. I like the way TCH does some of their fuel reports. You don't have the fuel discounts, but they are very easy to do business. With a single truck operation, you might do well with the PDCA card from TAB. TAB is owned by Flying J. It is a Mastercard debit card. You can get the cash price at Flying J and most of the mom and pop truck stops. The big chains, such as TA, Love's and Pilot treat it as a credit card. The great thing about the PDCA card is that you don't have a transaction fee as you do with the fuel cards. You can get national tire discounts through the PDCA account. I believe they offer discounts on Michelin and a few other brands. Bridgestone is not on their discount list.

[Paul McGraw]

Originally Posted by Dave_0755

I hope discussing rates isn't a touchy subject. I really don't expect a huge gain especially starting out with limited knowledge. I just hope that I can show a profit after fuel and other expenses. I am thinking it's going to be tough starting out. Hopefully I can get into a rhythm keep it up.

Rates are terrible now. One reason rates are terrible is that there are too many people operating trucks who have no idea of how much they need to charge in order to operate their business. Check out this website.

https://www.fairtran.com/

As of this date FairTran says you need to AVERAGE $1.45 per mile to operate a truck. However, you also need to hit a minimum revenue per day. For example, you could do a 100 mile run five days per week at $2 per mile and only gross $1,000 per week. You will not be able to succeed with gross revenue below at least $3,000 per week. You need high gross revenue and high revenue per mile.

It is VERY hard too achieve both high revenue and high revenue per mile unless you are lucky enough to live in Chicago.

Always remember that brokers will try to get you to run as cheap as possible. They do not care if you make money or not. The less you make, the more they make. If you HAVE to do this, bad DAC report, bad MVR, or a recent preventable accident, then you might consider looking for a well established dispatching service that will negotiate with brokers for you, and give you advice on where to run.

[GMAN]

When you first start running your authority or lease to a carrier, there are many unknowns. I think that it is good that you are doing your research, Dave_0755. We have had quite a few people who come on here asking about operating costs and expect to get an exact answer. That is difficult to do since we all have different break even points. The owner who has a $2,500 equipment payment will have a different break even or operating cost than someone who only has a $500 payment. Using the base of 10,000 miles per month the owner who has the $2,500 payment will have equipment costs of $0.25/mile whereas the owner with the $500 payment will have equipment costs of $0.05/mile. Someone such as yourself who has no equipment payment will have a different break even point than either of these. Where you run can also affect your break even point. Fuel costs can vary considerably from one region of the country to another. Fuel in Pennsylvania or Illinois can be $0.20/gallon or more higher than in Virginia or Kentucky. At 5 mpg, your operating costs will increase $0.04/mile just because of the difference in fuel costs.

Another consideration is your household expenses. If you have few household expenses then you could succeed with lower profit margins than someone who has a big mortgage and a lot of debt. That doesn't necessarily mean that you should haul cheap freight, but you could take a cheaper load and still make money when the person who has high debt could not.

I don't think that it is worth running your authority unless you can make more by doing so than either leasing to another carrier or as a company driver. I have had several former owner operators who have told me that they made more money driving for me than they did on their own or by leasing to a carrier.

Overall, rates are still down over a couple of years ago. Many are in survival mode and are attempting to keep the doors open until rates turn around or the economy improves.

One way to do better is to go where the freight takes you. Some people only want to run certain lanes and be home every week. Those are the ones who will likely not make it in this type of economy. If you remain flexible and run where the best rates and freight availability take you then you can be successful. It may not be easy with the current economy, but it can be done. You will need to keep a tight rein on your expenses. I keep a spare tire on my trucks. Doing so could save you $100 or more if you need to buy a tire on the road. I can buy a used tire locally for around $100 or less. That same tire could cost $175-225 on the road. I can purchase a new tire locally for about $250 or so. A new tire on the road can cost as much as $600 unless you can get national tire discounts. A few weeks ago I stopped at the Petro in Virginia at the 29 mm and was quoted $599 for one drive tire without any discounts. I have paid $330 for a trailer tire on the road on my national tire discounts. I can buy a comparable tire locally for $189-224. I save where I can. It isn't a matter of IF but WHEN you will blow a tire.

This is not the best time to venture out on your own, but people have succeeded during tough times before. Some will be successful during this time. Others will fail.

[Dave_0755]

Thanks for all of the replies. I am not going into this completely blind. I have been a company driver for 10 years now. I graduated from M.S. Carriers Truck driving Academy in Millington, TN back in 00. Out of 63 people only 33 graduated and I graduated 2nd in my class. I'm not bragging. It's just I had to apply myself because that course was very tough. Anyone that can remember M.S. will remember that it was a great company but they were a tough/fair company to work for. During training we were taught how to be O/O even if we was only going to be company drivers. They said they did this because they encouraged drivers to become O/O, but they had no training for the O/O program. I learned a lot from the class. After 10 years I still have my book from the class. It's about as thick as an old Sears and Roebuck catalog and has a vast amount of knowledge in it. It seems every time I read it I learn something new.
I am figuring that starting out will be tough on me. Everyone local here is telling me to pull a grain trailer for local farmers. I don't want this for several reasons. One being it's a pay by load deal and farmers pay different. Some won't let you pull for them unless you know someone. It is a complicated thing. Basically locals like dealing with locals and plus it's like a click either you go to church with someone and know the system or your considered an outsider. Also there are only a few grain and rice mills here and sometimes the lines are a mile long at peak times waiting to get unloaded. You don't get paid to sit at the mill. Prices on these loads are like everything else, it varies and so does the quality people you work for. The loads are few and far between when cutting season is over. I just don't want to limit myself and get into a seasonal job. It's a lot of work with little reward and a constantly filthy truck from the dirt roads and dusty mills.
One bright silver lining I see in all of this is the fact of where I am located. It's trucker friendly here. I'm 55 miles from Memphis and lots of freight comes in and out of there. It's called the Hub for a reason. It's like Grand Central Station for trucks, trains, planes, and barges. I looked on get loaded the other day and saw over 200 loads coming out of Memphis in one day. That doesn't include all of the outbound loads from companies that have contracts. There's that many or more loads coming into the city as well.
I am in Jonesboro, AR and the loads are picking up here. We have new factories in town and more are being built. Great Dane has a factory here and Nestle as well as Post and some other big names. I see a lot of loads coming out of this area on get loaded but none have the prices listed. Some of the loads coming out of Memphis list the prices but few do.
My biggest worry is that I have seen trucking companies here in this area come and go. I don't know of any one truck independents that run out of here like I'm wanting to do. I do know of a few guys that have 2 to 20 trucks and hire drivers. They seem to do well. All have nice personal trucks and big houses. They don't drive themselves, but they tell me they started small and worked their way up. This is what I eventually want to do. I'm hoping to spend a year or so out over the road then buy more trucks and trailers, hire a couple of drivers and just dispatch/office manage and look for a local company or two a can haul repeated loads for. It might be a dream but if all i can achieve is one truck one trailer and a decent income then I will see it as a win. I'm just wanting to absorb as much info as I can so I will limit my mistakes. One thing M.S. taught us that I always found as amusing is this. C.Y.A. it stood for cover your a--. They said in this industry you have to plan and look ahead and cover your a-- or its cya later.

[Ridge Runner]

When it comes to negotiating a price there is a set of tapes called " The Secret Powers of Power Negotiating". They were given to me by my boss 20 years ago as I was the purchasing agent for the company. I wish I could remember the author. A few points that I can remember are as follows:

1) The whistle. Very effective. When quoted a price, just whistle and say that that is way below what you can haul for. Watch their reaction and be ready with a counter offer. Go a little high and work down. That way BOTH feel that you have won. Trust me, this will build a future relationship.

2) Be prepared to walk away. I did this in a store in Atlanta several years ago. My (now) wife had decided to marry me and she was still in search of my ring. The store had a ring that she (and I) loved. The price tag was $1,700. We had negotiated the price down to $700.00 and I walked out and said "no deal". I walked out and stood outside the store and the sales girl came out and got me. We bought the ring for 499.00.

3) The same goes for hotel/motel rooms. I have NEVER paid more than 1/2 the price that was ask at the beginning. At 1am it is better to get something than nothing. All you have to do is ask. You might be surprised.

If your savvy you can cut down on expenses. A dollar saved is a dollar earned.