New Career

Looking for some advice actually a lot of advice. Want to change careers, I have cdl and enough to buy my own truck paid in full, but I don’t have any trucking experience. I’m in my mid 40s and would need to at least gross 250k a year, and hopefully build up to 330/340 range. Is this realistic?

Nothing wrong with looking for a new career, but ask yourself this;

If you were going to spend $150,000-$200,000 on buying a truck, would you hire a guy that has no experience and send him out on the road?

Others will chime in with more detail, but I would ABSOLUTELY NOT start your own trucking business right now, which is what you're asking.

If you wanna drive, go be a company driver first.

Good luck!

Welcome, Michael!

Others will chime in with more detail, but I would ABSOLUTELY NOT start your own trucking business right now, which is what you're asking.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. Trucking is a commodity service, which makes it incredibly difficult to produce worthwhile profits, especially on a small scale. You really need scale to begin leveraging up into better profits.

As a company driver you can expect to make around $60,000 - $70,000 in the first year or two, and if you're highly motivated you can reach $80,000 or more by your third or fourth year. There are some company drivers making over $100,000 per year.

The long-term salary of a company driver is almost always higher than the long-term profits of an owner operator , often times considerably higher. The stress, the financial risk, and the required knowledge is also far less as a company driver.

If you want to give trucking a shot, go for it! But do it as a company driver for at least a couple years. As you learn your craft, study the business side of trucking. It's incredibly complex. It will easily take you two full years to really grasp the nuances of running a business in this industry, and hopefully, by then, you'll realize it isn't worth it financially.

Being a company driver is the way ago, especially in the beginning.

Michael, how did you obtain your CDL? With no trucking experience you would be almost guaranteed to fail as an owner/operator. Even seasoned veteran O/0’s are struggling right now and will be struggling for the foreseeable future.

The company I drive for is almost all company drivers, but they do have arrangements with maybe a dozen drivers who own their trucks and then I guess the company acts as a “broker” for them. It is not a lease arrangement like some companies have. I have met most of these guys and the one common denominator is that they are all very experienced drivers who learned the trade BEFORE becoming O/O’s. In talking to them, I am always amazed at how complicated it is to be a single truck O/O. And from what I can gather, they have all the headaches I don’t have to contend with and in the long run don’t make more money than I do. They are in it because they are fiercely independent individuals and not because it makes particular business or financial sense.

From my perspective, being a company driver is really like being a trucking business owner. It’s similar to owning a “franchise “, where you are free to operate your own entity but under the umbrella of a bigger and more experienced corporation. I am like an independent little business but with security.

I started out pursuing a driving career about 5 years ago and have over 2 years behind the wheel. At this point, I have nowhere near enough knowledge and experience to be an O/O. I also have no desire to be one, ever. What I am doing is fun, profitable and relatively simple. Why complicate my life?

So my advice would be for you to put your money in some interest bearing account, get a company driving job and then maybe after 5 or 6 years of driving you could revisit this idea of yours with a better knowledge base.

Hello Michael, and welcome to our forum!

I found your initial post intriguing. I started my trucking career in much the same way you are trying to do. I had the means to purchase my own equipment, and since I had owned other businesses, I thought it would be the best way for me to approach the trucking career. After doing my initial research, and I went hard core into that part, I finally determined that I needed to do just like the folks above have recommended. I determined that I needed to start as a company driver to learn the ropes.

There are a lot of reasons for that approach. For starters you will never find a broker who will work with an inexperienced driver like yourself. They know this business well enough to know that it is a huge mistake. Furthermore, the insurance companies will treat you ridiculously badly when they quote you rates. You will be paying way too much for insurance for several years due to having no verifiable experience. Those are probably things you haven't even thought of, but they will painfully ruin you very quickly.

After being a company driver now for an excess of one million miles, I am even more convinced that being an owner/operator is a fools game. The odds are really stacked against the guys who play that game. I know there are a lot of them, and some of them have to be making it, but they simply don't have the scale or the cost controls to compete with the big players who can easily manipulate the markets. The smaller companies end up just sucking air and trying to hang in there long enough to get a little breathing room. It is a really tough business.

I found this part of your post concerning...

I don’t have any trucking experience... I would need to at least gross 250k a year, and hopefully build up to 330/340 range.

You mention having zero experience, yet you seem to know how much you need to gross. That implies you know what you will net from that amount of gross revenue. How can that be when you have no experience in this field? We have owner/operators in here who can tell you how difficult this career has been lately. There is very little margin if any in most of the freight rates being used currently. This industry is famous for its successful operating ratios coming in somewhere around 97%. That is a tough nut to cut.

Take it slow when jumping into a commodities business like trucking. Make sure you understand how cut throat it is. The independent contractor, can choose to set his own rates, but the customer gets to choose who they want to pull their freight. It doesn't mean a damn thing to them if you have fancy lights and lots of chrome on your truck. They don't care if your truck is purple or yellow. They will go with the orange trucks at Schneider if they have the cheapest price. In this type of business, the rates are set by uncontrollable and unpredictable factors. Do you really want to find yourself in that quagmire?

If you can buy a truck outright, why not use that money for real estate instead? Much better return to rent a property and see the investment grow instead of depreciating in a vehicle.

Like others, and as a previous business owner as well, I thought I would do the same as you. I had a pretty firm understanding of business principles, overhead and profit, operating rations, regulatory requirements....In my field of work. They dont transfer over. The costs are different, the ratios are different, the philosophies are different. There are many many nuances and subtleties to this business, more than most other areas. Its simply not feasible to do business in trucking without learning the driving side, freight side, the business side, and the regulatory side of it.

Even after a couple of years of driving, while my wife and I have the means to purchase a truck right now, and I have my own authority, I still dont entertain it. For one thing, the market is in a historic downturn, worse than 08, worse than 19. For another, Im just beginning to scratch the surface about how freight moves in a business sense. Most of the things I have heard about how to get loads, get the right price and get paid, manage fuel, manage regulatory burdens, manage the equipment....are all dead wrong. Just as there is so much misinformation and bad stereotypes about driving out there, so goes the same with the business end of it.

At any rate, I strongly recommend investing the money you have wisely, If you are intent on getting into the business side of trucking, it would begin with learning how to drive and then how to complete loads 100 percent successfully, every time. Consider school and training, then company driving your first steps in the business. If you find success in that, then decide later if you want to proceed into leasing (not recommended) or ownership.

Brand new driver with no experience gets a quote of $60,000 per year for insurance. Not good idea

Welcome Michael. The short answer to your initial question is “no”.

As the folks above have made great points I won’t repeat those. I agree with each.

I am an O/O and the past 18 months have been very rough. With the state of the economy everything keeps going up and rates keep falling. Equipment is coming back to somewhat normal prices, but still on the high side.

Parts have been hit and miss on availability, that is getting better, but still a issue on some things.