Actually in an S-Corp you can use the money for any purpose you want. It just has to be adjusted between business and personal at the close of the year.
Regardless of the tax structure if you omit numbers and/or items you will never have an accurate accounting of true profit/loss. There is a difference between accounting P/L and tax P/L. If you don't run a comparison of total payroll cost(one of many items omited) you have an in-accurate accounting of cost. That's why many operate at sub-par wage yet still believe they are at a profit.

this thread makes my head spin...! :confused:

If you don't think like a trucker it won't spin.:)

Actually you will find the same thing in any business. People want to believe they are making money even if they're not.

You should be careful mixing personal and corporate money. It could cause your corporate status to be challenged. If you constantly mix corporate and personal expenses you could be considered a proprietorship if someone wanted to challenge you, such as the IRS or some legal eagle. I have had corporations for well over 30 years. Most have been set up with the S election.

I'm still pretty confused on all of this. I was wondering if somebody could give me some guidelines or links on where I can educate myself better on the topic. Thanks!

There are quite a few trucking specific software packages. Some do more and are better than others. Truckers Helper seems to be a good program. It will do most anything you want in this business including your payroll. They have several versions available depending on whether you are a company driver, owner operator, run your own authority or have a fleet of trucks. www.truckershelper.com. Two that I have are EasyTrucking and TrucknPro. Easy Trucking will do about everything except your payroll, including your fuel taxes. It is not as user friendly as I would prefer. TrucknPro is one that I like. It will do everything except payroll and your fuel taxes, although you can put in your miles and it will print it out for you. All you need to do is put the figures into the state supplied form and do the calculations. www.trucknpro.com and www.easytrucking.com are the two websites. All three should have an online demo or trial. There are others, but these are the three I am most familiar. One thing that I like about all three of these programs is that they will automatically give you your mileage rate for which you are running. Each has their own set of features. All of them will help you keep the books current.

Other than things like equipment payments and insurance, the only way to be accurate on projections is to estimate using some average costs. If you want complete accuracy you will need historical data. When someone is starting out they have no basis on which to do projections or estimates other than using averages from others. I still prefer to look at costs based upon miles since that is the way most of us are compensated. It helps to know your operational costs by the mile so that when you are quoted a rate you will know whether you can profitably take the load or not. It is simple and easy to use. There are some who use a day rate to figure costs. I guess we can each use what is most comfortable for us.

I'll check these out, thanks GMAN.

Is this still good for percentages of the load?

I think so. Your operational costs should not change dramatically per mile. When you work percentage you know before hand where you need to be per mile to break even. When you look at your share of the load you know right away if it is going to work for you or not. If your break even is $1/mile and your percentage only pays $0.90 then you know it will not be profitable for you to take that load. On the other hand if the load pays $1.50 then it may be profitable to take the load. If it goes to an area that has a lot of tolls then it may not be worth it to take that load due to the extra costs of doing business in that area. Your fixed costs can be broken down by the mile or day if you prefer. Since everyone's operation is slightly different each must do some fine tuning to make sure everything works as planned.