American Truck Business Services (
www.attrucktax.com), an accounting firm that specializes in helping owner-operators, has a useful booklet called "Partners in Business". I picked up my free copy at the recent MidAmerica Trucking Show in Louisville, KY. The book has plenty of sound advice for o/o, especially since ABTS services about 30,000 o/o and can determine trends and "pinpoint benchmarks".
For example, according to ABTS average O/O spends about 68% of gross profit on business related expenses:
Fuel - 39%
Truck payment - 15%
Maintenance - 5%
Insurance - 4%
Licence and permits - 4%
Cell phones and other communications - 1%
This means you get to keep only 32% of your gross monthly profit, no matter how big the settlement check is.
Now, if we assume a COMPANY DRIVER does 9,000 miles a month and get paid 35 cents per mile, he or she will get $3,150 a month in NET INCOME and will have no expenses after that, except taxes. For an OWNER-OPERATOR to get the same kind of money in NET INCOME, he or she has to make GROSS: $3,150 divided by 32% or $9,843 gross per month.
If this O/O wants to work as much as a typical company driver and do 9000 miles per month, the pay per mile would have to be MINIMUM: $9,843 divided by 9000 miles or $1.09. So if you collect $1.09 per mile you will only make the same money as a company driver! This should help you choose the company to lease to as O/O.
If your expenses are going to be average (as in the example above) and you don't want to spend 30 days a month in the truck, make sure the company you lease to will pay MORE than 1.09 per mile gross so that you can make at least more money than a typical company driver. Otherwise, the whole "business enterprise" is not worse the headache it'll take to get it started.
I just applied to Mercer, and they pay 74.2% of the gross but you must have your flatbed or stepdeck trailer (you can lease one thru Mercer for about $500 per month).