Caroline: [00:00:00] Welcome to This Week in Trucking, the podcast that tells you what you need to know about the trucking market for the week. My name is Caroline, and today I’m really excited to have the opportunity to talk to Ilya Denisenko, owner of ICV Express, to talk about how he is running his owner-operator trucking business.

Caroline: Thanks so much for being here, Ilya.

Ilya: Yep, thanks for having me.

Caroline: All right. So tell us, how did you get into the trucking business? Yeah,

Ilya: actually, just trucking in general, even driving as a company driver was completely unplanned. Uh, at that time, I was working at Yelp. I previously worked in restaurants and just, I was looking for other jobs. Yelp changed their sales program. I didn’t like their new structure and their system and everything.

Ilya: So I was just looking for other work. And at that time, I was like, okay, I’m, Coming up on 30 years old, the economy at that time, it was supposed to go into recession before covid and all that stuff. So I was like, [00:01:00] okay, I gotta kick it into high gear. I want to buy a house before I’m 30, all that kind of stuff.

Ilya: And I was like, what’s the quickest thing I can kind of do? That’s. Maybe potentially career changing or whatever. Um, and while I was looking at jobs, 1 of my friends, he actually had a CDL, but he didn’t have a job in this industry. So once in a while in my restaurant job searches, I would get a job like.

Ilya: Hey, uh, trucking company, 5, 000, uh, to join, whatever, all these great rates and everything. And I would send him those links and I was like, eventually I was like, wait a minute, I could do that. That sounds a lot better than these restaurant jobs paying whatever per hour. And that’s when I joined, uh, like I made a, Same as everything I made an Excel sheet compared all the trucking companies and their CDL programs went to prime and got my CDL. So,

Caroline: awesome. So did you get your CDL training paid for then?

Ilya: [00:02:00] yeah, that’s kind of what I did. I looked for the companies that did it for free and prime literally gave you either a bus ticket, or they paid for your plane ticket, gave you housing, food, everything paid you during the training, uh, literally everything. That’s why I was like a no brainer.

Caroline: Is that pretty competitive to get into?

Ilya: Um, not, not really, like, it was pretty simple. You just needed to have, like, a work record. It almost didn’t matter where you worked as long as you just have, like, the normal record. I worked here, here and here for 3 years. Uh, and then you would just get in obviously, then you have to pass their training and their tests and everything.

Ilya: But other than that, it was pretty simple. They’re older people, younger people, men, women, everyone from like. Almost the whole every part of the country that were there with me.

Caroline: So how long have you been driving a truck then?

Ilya: Uh, that was in summer of 2019 when I switched over there. So. Coming up on six [00:03:00] years, five and a half, six years, something like that.

Caroline: And what made you want to start your own business?

Ilya: Um, so actually, uh, before that I was hired by a company in Europe to open up their restaurant brand for them here. So I got a little, I got a little bit of exposure into starting and running a business because I was their main person here. That was a multi location restaurant company in New Jersey, Manhattan with a warehouse in New Jersey that ran at night.

Ilya: So it was like a pretty big operation. I opened up the whole thing for them here. And since then, I, like, after I worked with them, I went back to being an employee for other companies. That’s how I got into Yelp. I thought, I actually, side story, I used Yelp’s program to grow our sales there. So I thought, hey, I can, I can help restaurant owners grow their sales the same way.

Ilya: That’s why I went over there. Um, and

Caroline: a little bit of entrepreneurial [00:04:00] background already.

Ilya: right. So then when I was driving a prime, then I worked for Martin transport and, uh, Walmart, like, I had a few, uh, driving jobs. And the whole time I was kind of like. Okay, like, this is good, but I’m kind of bored. I was thinking about starting my own businesses. Me and my friend, we started an online ecommerce business where we sold pet supplies and all of that kind of stuff.

Ilya: Um. And at the end of that, I was like. Looking for businesses to buy. I listened to like entrepreneurship shows, startup shows, all that kind of stuff. My first million. Um, I was looking at gas station stores, restaurants, literally everything. Eventually, I’m like, wait a minute. I’ve been listening to trucking shows for 4 years.

Ilya: I’m in here now. I’ll just start a trucking business.

Caroline: And that was last year. Is that right?

Ilya: yeah, I actually started the planning around Halloween of 2023, and then I formed the LLC in December, uh, early December, and I bought the [00:05:00] truck in, like, late December around Christmas. Um,

Caroline: experience, I see a lot of people buying a truck first and that’s like the first thing they do. And then they go, wait, okay, how do I pay for this thing? So talk to me about your, your planning and what went into thinking about when you were going to open a trucking business, because at the end of 2023, 2023.

Caroline: really wasn’t too favorable of a time to open a business. So tell me what was different for you.

Ilya: so back when I was driving a prime, like I had, we had free serious XM and all that stuff. And I started listening to, uh, the trucking channel. I started listening, like I heard all the shows on there. Eventually I started listening to a guy named Kevin Rutherford. A lot of people know him and he has the let’s truck show.

Ilya: And I’ve been listening. That was one of the shows I listened to for four years and during 2023, it was The bottom of the market, the market was going down and he kept saying, Hey, like, [00:06:00] that’s when the, like, if you know how to run a business, that would be a good time to start. And I thought about it and it kind of makes sense because if you make it through the bottom, the only way to go is up.

Ilya: So it’s kind of better from there versus if you start at the top or in the middle. You don’t really know what the worst part of the business might be like.

Caroline: Yeah. Absolutely. That’s actually an interesting perspective. I imagine that by the time you wanted to get into it, truck prices were pretty good by then.

Ilya: Yeah, exactly. Yep. I ended up buying my truck. It was just 47, 000. It wasn’t that expensive. So

Caroline: And someone had probably bought it for a couple hundred grand.

Ilya: exactly. Yeah, the, the guy I bought it from, I think he bought it probably in the middle of covert or something like that.

Caroline: Right. Right. So tell us about your operation today. What kind of truck do you have? Are you thinking about getting more trucks? And what do you haul?

Ilya: Uh, [00:07:00] so right now this truck I bought it with 575, 000 miles on it. It’s about to hit 700, 000. Um, I pull a drive in. I’m flexible. I could go into refer. I purposely rented a trailer so I could easily switch it out. Um, a lot of people give me. Give me a little bit of trouble because I rented a trailer from super ego and they’re not happy with that company.

Ilya: But if you’re going into the business, their rates are really good and their terms are really good. They’ll rent to newer companies. So you don’t really like if you’re 1st, you’re in business. You don’t have a lot of options. All the big companies, they won’t give you a trailer until you’re 3 years in, um, this, this

Caroline: either have to buy or rent from, from the few options that you have.

Ilya: Pretty much, yeah. And their terms are good. You can lease for a year, you can rent month to month, you can split, I can call the guy and switch to a reefer tomorrow if I want. And that’s exactly what I wanted because most of my experience is in reefer. I have a lot of [00:08:00] food safety certifications from the restaurant, so I can work a lot with, like, pretty well with food.

Ilya: But dry van was pretty easy to start out with, so right now that’s what I have still.

Caroline: And when you first got into running your own business, where did you get loads? How did you source that first, that first year of loads?

Ilya: Well, that was actually the thing because it seemed like right when I started, I got my, my authority was started January 11th of last year. And by the time I got all the registrations and everything set, it was the end of January. And it seemed like the whole freight theft and fraud. Peaked around then.

Ilya: So until then, my plan was, Hey, I’ll start with the load boards. I’ll network and I’ll work my way up from there. So my 1st post on social media actually with this business was, I’m in Chicago. I just picked up the trailer. I’m good to go, but I’ve been calling every broker on the load board and no one will give me a load because my authority is brand new.[00:09:00] 

Ilya: Literally everyone I called, they were like, M. C. I give them the number and they’ll hang up on me like without even a word.

Caroline: Wow.

Ilya: Yeah, and, uh, so I networked from there. Obviously, I did the start with TQL because they’ll work with anyone. Um, then I went to C. H. Robinson. Luckily, uh, this was part of my plan going in a few months prior.

Ilya: I was at a concert in North Carolina and I was sitting at the bar and I happened to start talking to the 2 guys next to me and they were both brokers at TQL. So, uh,

Caroline: Wow.

Ilya: Yeah, before I even planned on starting my own business. But I added them on social media. So I went into it, like I didn’t have to use the TQL board.

Ilya: I just worked with these two guys.

Caroline: Wow. What a coincidence.

Ilya: Yeah.

Caroline: That’s wild. So TQL, you usually with the main big brokers that will work with newer authorities. Now you’ve been doing something [00:10:00] that I don’t see a lot of owner operators doing, which is posting on social media. Every time you deliver a load, what inspired you to do that? And how do you think that has impacted your business?

Ilya: um, that’s, it’s been going pretty well. I’ve actually gotten through just social media and the internet, just documenting how I build the business. I’ve probably gotten four brokers that normally require a year of authority that. On boarded me like 3 months in because they saw the difference in how I work.

Ilya: And the reason I started doing that was because the business shows I was listening to prior all the startup shows once in a while. You’ll hear like a thing. People do a call called the building in public where they’ll just document everything, whether it’s YouTube, Instagram, linked in and 1 of the things I.

Ilya: Like, I was trying to take from those shows was, hey, let me apply some of these things that the tech companies are doing or whatever. And because I don’t see anyone else documenting how they’re building a trucking company or going from 1 truck to multiple trucks. So I was like, let me [00:11:00] try that out. And.

Ilya: Seems to be going well, whether it’s talking to brokers, whether it’s, Hey, I’m over here. What do you guys know in this area for parking or restaurants or whatever? You know, um, just it made it, it got me to a lot of good other connections, even just outside of brokers in the industry. Right.

Caroline: by us because this is why I reached out to you. I said, huh, I haven’t seen a lot of people, especially on LinkedIn. I think a lot of people sleep on LinkedIn. Uh, they don’t realize how powerful of a platform it can be for really any industry, especially in trucking where there’s not a lot of people talking about trucking on, on LinkedIn as operators of, uh, as carriers.

Caroline: Um, tons of opportunity to do that then.

Ilya: Right. And then

Caroline: yeah, go for it.

Ilya: I was going to say part of my thing is like a lot of what I see a lot of owner operators doing is they’re kind of, they go into after being a company driver. So it’s like the way they work. I, to me, it kind of looks like it’s [00:12:00] like company driver level 2 kind of thing where I went into it and not like the way I work is I look at who has the results that I want.

Ilya: Like the companies, the guys with a few trucks and how are they working and or how did they get there? So I set up the website. I got the email with ilia at icvexpress. com. I have the shirt Like all that kind of stuff. I set up the company page on every social media platform kind of thing because It builds credibility and professionalism So when you’re reaching out to someone even if you have just one truck You stand out from the other 100 people that might call them

Caroline: Totally. Yeah. Dress for the job you want, not the job you have. Right.

Ilya: Right.

Caroline: That’s awesome. And I think you’re right. Cause I think a lot of people buy a truck and they think that they’ve bought a job when really they’ve started a business. And those two things are, are really different concepts.

Ilya: Yeah, and I think that’s where kind of the [00:13:00] divide in the industry comes from. Also, is some people still have the employee mindset where the like the smaller percentage that do grow successfully there. They have the business owner mindset.

Caroline: So tell me about the plans that you have. You’ve mentioned growth a couple of times. Are you thinking about acquiring new trucks? What does that five year, 10 year plan look like for ICB?

Ilya: Um, yeah, right now, uh, Well, previously, like, going into my plan was the 1st year. I want to network with brokers, shippers, people in the industry, get myself established where I have access to freight and then see how to expand because I don’t want to expand and then look for freight for those additional drivers.

Ilya: 1 by 1 kind of thing. And basically, that’s kind of where I am. I have access to different kinds of freight. I can. Phil, I don’t know how many trucks and now I’m looking at expand. So, like, it’s, it’s a better problem to have of how do I expand [00:14:00] versus where do I find the freight kind of thing? Um, so that’s what that’s what I’m looking at is.

Ilya: Do I want to go 1 truck at a time? Do I want to work with the financial company and get a loan for, like, a few trucks and then also 1 of the ways I was looking, I was maybe to buy an existing trucking company and then apply my strategies to that. So,

Caroline: So you’re still kind of exploring different options is what it sounds like. Awesome. Let’s talk a little bit about the numbers here. So when you are looking for loads, uh, or, or you’re considering different loads that, that brokers are telling you about, what is your rule of thumb in terms of rate per mile or the lanes that you will run, uh, for your

Ilya: Um, I’ll go pretty much anywhere. I got lucky when I had my, uh, training at prime. I had a trainer that took me to every downtown in America. I went to downtown Chicago, New York city. I’ve been to a few of the boroughs pretty much [00:15:00] everywhere in America. So I’ll go anywhere. And I grew up in the Northeast.

Ilya: I’m good with the snow and everything. But, uh, for me, like. It’s not really about the area. It’s more about the time. Um, in the beginning, the 1st, few months, I really, like, push for the efficiency of the truck. So I know what my, my truck will get driving at different speeds. So, basically, at this point, when I look at freight, I just need to get a certain amount per day and I know my efficiency is already there to cover that.

Ilya: And that’s about it. Um,

Caroline: is that number per day that you aim for?

Ilya: For me, if, like, if I get 800 bucks per day revenue, I’m happy. That’s, that’s enough to cover the truck. That’s enough revenue for me. So if I could average 800, that’s good. If it’s anything above, I’m happy, even happier. If it’s anything below, I just need to know, or I just know I need to cover a little bit more the next day or something like that.

Caroline: Right. And let’s talk about the cost of starting a trucking business and running a trucking business. When you [00:16:00] first got started you, you got an LLC, uh, you, you bought your own truck. What did all of that cost just to get started on the road?

Ilya: Um, so actually, I have the numbers just specifically just to get authority. Pretty much, pretty much just to get all the registrations and authority and everything. It came out to 8, 100 that’s literally not the truck. That’s not pay for anything. That’s not any of the supplies. That’s literally just authority and registrations.

Ilya: It was, um. 400

Caroline: everything. That’s like IFTA, uh, IP, IRP, uh, registration, all of the possible registrations, licenses that you 8, 000.

Ilya: Yeah. And that also includes 4, 000 down for the insurance because first year insurance is insane right now. Like the best quote I got at that time was about [00:17:00] 25, 000 with 4, 000 down and the other quotes I got were near and above 30, 000.

Caroline: Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say 25 actually isn’t the highest I’ve, I’ve heard.

Ilya: right. Um, so then outside of that, the truck, I’ve like, if, It’s almost always a bad idea to buy a brand new truck going into the business. Um, I figured out a good price range for me was anywhere from 30, 000 to 60, 000, depending on the truck. And I was really only looking at the Freightliners or the Volvos.

Ilya: Um, I’ve driven some of the other brands of trucks and, like, there was just nothing really good about any of them. Um, the downside with the freight liners is you have to change the 1 box at, uh, about 700, 000 miles. So that’s another 20 to 25, 000 you have to put in. So, I figured the Volvo’s, you don’t have to do that.

Ilya: Also, the Volvo’s, I looked at, they’re, they seem to have better drivers that have driven them. [00:18:00] They were in much better condition, all of them, 100 percent of the time. So, I went with the Volvo, I got it for 47, 000. Also, another cost was whatever truck I went into, I knew I was going to spend 5 to 10, 000 dollars basically resetting it to new.

Ilya: Like, I had the, the DPF filter for the, from the emissions taken out and they basically bake it overnight in an oven and they basically reset it to new condition. I took it to a Volvo shop in North Carolina, and they did a lot of work. I spent 8, 000 total just on maintenance and upgrades. But since then, I do these oil samples every 25, 000 miles, and about 100, 000 miles later, the oil is still like new.

Caroline: Wow.

Ilya: Yeah, so

Caroline: So that’s a good investment then

Ilya: right exactly. Yeah,

Caroline: Awesome. What kind of, um, interest rate did you get or did you buy your truck in cash?

Ilya: I bought in cash[00:19:00] 

Caroline: Nice.

Ilya: That was the thing too because I figured out that When you’re purchasing a truck first of all, you should be looking at the history of it the specs of it all that kind of stuff And if you go to a dealership, it’s already cleaned up. You’re not gonna get the oil out of it To get an oil sample with because they already put new oil into it’s already cleaned up in detail You’re not going to see the wear and tear of it So I figured out the best deals in the best place to really buy a truck was actually facebook marketplace of all places

Caroline: Oh, interesting.

Ilya: Yeah, and that’s where I found it.

Ilya: So Um, it’s it’s hard to get a uh, a bank loan or anything like that for a truck from there

Caroline: Sure. Sure. Sure. You’re going to have to go to a dealership if you want to get a loan.

Ilya: Right.

Caroline: So what advice do you have for someone, uh, buying a new truck, obviously, if you can’t or a, or a new to them truck, let’s say, um, to start a [00:20:00] business. Um, we talked about the type of truck. Um, we talked about, you know, maintenance, looking at wear and tear, any other advice that you have for people looking to buy trucks?

Ilya: Um, first of all, don’t settle because there’s going to be like, even for me, but there always will be options that are almost good, but there’s gonna be like those few things that maybe you’re like, okay, it’s, it’s probably good enough, but then you might want to settle. If you don’t settle, it’s going to be better.

Ilya: Like, if to wait even a month or 2 later to find the, like, the full good package kind of thing. Um, also to like, everywhere I went, The people like even dealerships, they didn’t know what an oil sample was. They didn’t know what the gear ratio was. They didn’t know a lot of other basic things. That means all the other buyers that are going to them.

Ilya: They’re just looking at color and the setup and the condition of the truck pretty much. And so the other thing that you should be doing absolutely is the oil sample before they change the oil in the car. They get the [00:21:00] truck because that’s going to show you how the truck has been running. That’s going to show you if parts are wearing out.

Ilya: That’s going to show you mission system problems. So literally, like, if you’re going into any business, you should be looking at the cost to start it, the potential of revenue, the risks, right? Uh, where am I going to get my customers revenue, all that kind of stuff. So the big thing is risks, right? If you’re going into trucking, the truck’s probably going to break down.

Ilya: That’s going to be a lot of money. The best way to prevent that is do that oil sample, get that ECM report. That’s going to show you if that’s going to happen, and if so, what’s going to happen. Maybe it’ll show you this part’s going to break down, but it’s not that expensive, not a big deal kind of thing.

Caroline: So coming into the business, especially in a down market with no truck payment, that makes life a little easier. How did you work that in, though, into your calculations? I mean, you paid 55, 000 up front for the truck plus the, you [00:22:00] know, maintenance on it. Do you put that over a year? Are you looking at that as

Ilya: Yeah,

Caroline: month to month, how much you need to be making to pay back, pay yourself back for that truck.

Ilya: yeah. So I looked at like basically the total startup of the business. That’s the truck, the registrations, the investment of the upgrades. That’s the trailer rental. That’s also also going into it. I planned on since it was a down market. I planned on getting at least 6 months of nothing better than a dollar a mile.

Ilya: Revenue, so I need I needed to have money plan above to cover anything above that. So that as well, basically going into the whole thing. Total package was probably about 90, 000 that it cost. And that’s what I planned out as the truck payment kind of thing. And I factored into the numbers, uh, like, basically like that, basically, as if I bought a 90, 000 truck.

Caroline: So let’s then talk about, uh, the ongoing [00:23:00] costs of running your truck. What kind of fuel mileage do you get and what, what do you do to try and save money on fuel?

Ilya: A big factor is speed. If you look into fuel economy kind of stuff, efficiency, the common number is one mile per gallon for every 10 miles per hour. And that’s pretty much what I’ve seen. If I drive 65, my truck will get in the eights, like, Somewhere in the 8 mile per gallon range. If I slow it down to the low 60s or 57, 58, 59, my truck will easily be in the nines.

Ilya: And then if I go above 65 to the 70 mile an hour range, and I’m going to be in the low eights, high sevens, uh, depending on what I’m, what freight I have. And that’s with the rental trailer, which is not efficient at all. Um. So that’s as far as the efficiency goes, and that’s 1 thing. I know, like, if I need to improve efficiency for a certain trip, or if I’m not in a rush, I’ll slow down and [00:24:00] my.

Ilya: Economy will go up automatically, um. Tires your, I installed the air dog system, which literally helps get the truck better torque at lower RPM, which results in better fuel economy, all that kind of stuff. Um, the truck itself. It’s an aerodynamic truck. Um. That’s the basics kind of stuff.

Caroline: Sounds like you’re thinking a lot about how you drive and sort of what you have in terms of equipment. Is there anything that. Any strategic way that you look, where to fuel, do you like fueling at certain locations better than others, certain States better than others. How do you think about that?

Ilya: Um, so before I went into running it as my own business, I frequently heard that the 2 best programs for owner operators and small companies was, uh, the Nastic Trucking Association, their fuel cart and mud flap [00:25:00] their app. Um, so I signed up for those 2 and. After having a lot of other fuel card companies call me, they seem to have the best rates and I’ve actually had someone try to sign me up for, uh, the pilot program and theirs is almost as good only because they were trying to directly match nastics rates.

Ilya: Um, so, and they, yeah, and they use Petro mostly and a few other small stops. So I go with their system.

Caroline: if you use TA mostly, and we can talk about this later, uh, you got to check out the Bobtail fuel finder

Ilya: Okay.

Caroline: just to see how it compares. I’m curious to see how it compares to what you’re seeing on NASDAQ and, and mudflap, because we are, we’re catching up to them. And a lot of days we have better prices, especially at TA.

Ilya: Okay. I’ll check it out.

Caroline: So I’ll send you the link to it. Awesome. All right. So how many miles are you driving per week? Let’s say,

Ilya: Um, so [00:26:00] that, that, that was part of my expenses going in the first few months. I purposely tried out local regional runs where it was anywhere from a hundred miles per load to 500 miles. Sometimes I did two per day, two separate loads per day. Um, so those, those weeks I ran maybe a thousand to 17, 1800 miles per week total.

Ilya: Now I run two to 3000 miles per week depending on. What’s available?

Caroline: and you said you’re aiming for 800 a day. Is that right?

Ilya: Yeah, average. Yep.

Caroline: How many days a week do you work?

Ilya: Uh, depends on the freight. Um, most of the time I leave Monday and I come back Friday, sometimes late Sat, or early Saturday. Um, right now I’ve been staying out on weekends every other week just for the weekend. Cause the freight’s been there and it’s been available to help, uh, right now I just have to renew my insurance.

Ilya: So that was another [00:27:00] big down payment kind of thing and the taxes and fees and everything and all that stuff. And the freight’s been there so it balanced out, like it made it worth it to stay out a few extra weekends.

Caroline: So 5. 5 days, let’s say, five and a

Ilya: Yeah, pretty much, yeah, most of the time, yep, so. Yeah, so revenue wise, 800 bucks a day, about 4, 000 bucks per week. That’s, that’s more than good for me. Uh,

Caroline: And talk to me about any other costs we’ve talked about. insurance, um, a little bit, uh, you said it was 25, 000 a year, right? So a little over 2, 000 a month. Um, talk to me about any other costs you have. We talked about fuel. We talked about, um, truck payment. Obviously you don’t have a monthly truck payment.

Caroline: You have to pay for a trailer though. How much is it to rent your trailer?

Ilya: trailer. Like I said, the super ego, their rates were good. 600 bucks a month. That’s pretty decent. And the trailers, [00:28:00] it’s not the best. But it’s pretty good. Good condition. They, one of the reasons I went with them. Also, they, they changed all the tires and picks and everything. Make sure it’s compliant before you pick it up.

Ilya: So that was good. And then from there on, I just have to maintain it and not abuse it. And that’s, I’ve been pretty good at that. Like, it’s been in pretty good condition. It has the aerodynamic side skirts on the bottom to help the airflow. So that was a pretty big plus with it.

Caroline: Awesome. What other costs do you, um, keep in mind when you’re, when you’re out on the road? Tolls. Any software that you use?

Ilya: Tolls, yeah, like, uh, load board membership, truckstop. com. I still haven’t booked any freight on there, but they have a lot of helpful tools on there, like rate insights, uh, supply and demand kind of thing, where there’s maybe too many trucks or not enough trucks kind of thing. I can look at what my rate might be out of this area or that area on certain days.

Ilya: [00:29:00] So, just like, even just for negotiation, I’ve been able to make my money back on that pretty much every month. Cell phone, ELD, that kind of stuff, um, just small stuff, um, scales, uh, scale tickets kind of stuff, uh, nothing too crazy outside of all that.

Caroline: Do you have a, do you pay a lot in tolls or do you typically move in areas that don’t have a lot of tolls?

Ilya: Uh, I’m flexible for where to go, but I’ve also noticed the areas where the tolls are, it hasn’t paid much better to make up for it, like the Northeast or I 77, like through West Virginia and whatever, like, I don’t really like that route anyway, and there’s a lot of tolls along there, but basically, like the northeast, it seems to get so overcrowded that the rates to come out of there are pretty high.

Ilya: Not very good, so I’ve been able to make better money, just not being really in [00:30:00] areas where there’s that many tolls. So, um, I do have tolls occasionally here and there, obviously crossing certain bridges and whatever, but it’s not really much of anything.

Caroline: All right, I’m going to pull up, have you ever used a platform called Trucker Calculator?

Ilya: Um, I’m not sure if I’ve used that 1. I’ve seen a few, a few apps that will, like, calculate tolls and whatever along the route.

Caroline: Yeah, they, this one is actually just, um, it’s kind of like a, like a really, really pretty spreadsheet.

Ilya: Oh, okay.

Caroline: So, um, I like it because it’s super simple. You can just put all of your numbers in here and it will calculate out what you’re, Total gross is the number of working days, uh, the total number of miles you can enter in any of this, these things, and you can get [00:31:00] an idea for how much is your, your cost per mile and, and all of that.

Caroline: So I’m going to plug in some of the numbers that you gave me. Um, and we’re going to edit this together because I’m going to go really slow, but then it’s going to be, it’s going to look really cool in the video because Amy’s going to do a great job. Uh, alright, so we said 800 a day, if you’re working five and a half days a week, that would be 22 working days, let’s say, out of the month.

Caroline: Right? So let’s say that on average, we’re grossing 16, 000, 17, 600. The working days is 22. The total miles We said we’re two to 3, 000 a week. Can we say 2, 500 a week on average?

Ilya: Yeah.[00:32:00] 

Caroline: That’s fair. So 10, 000.

Ilya: Mm hmm.

Caroline: All right. So right now that’s an average of 176 per mile. Now the beauty of your operation is that you don’t have a truck payment because this is what is killing.

Caroline: Most people do have to rent a trailer. So this is, I guess it’s not 600 a week, right? It’s one 50 a week.

Ilya: Yep.

Caroline: 600. Um, why is it saying 750? All right. I’m just going to put 600. There we go. Okay. Apparently I can’t do math. Um, truck insurance, uh, we said it was, let’s see, 25. So about 2080 a month.

Ilya: Well, uh, there was a down payment and there was about 18. 90 per month.

Caroline: I see. 1890 per month. Do you have to pay anything additionally for trailer insurance?

Ilya: No, it’s all part of

Caroline: [00:33:00] It’s all included in the, alright. Do you pay for a dispatch service?

Ilya: No, absolutely not.

Caroline: All right. Tell me about that, that, that brought out some feeling

Ilya: No.

Caroline: in your voice. Uh, what did you ever consider, uh, doing a dispatch service?

Ilya: Um, I mean, I, I listened to what the people tell me, because, uh, like, as soon as you activate your MC, you get instant calls, like, within the minute, pretty much. And you could get, like, 1 or 200 calls from them per day. And from what I’ve heard, they’ll do the paperwork for you. They’ll give you load options, this and that.

Ilya: But from my point of view, the like, if you’re operating a business, you should be doing that all yourself. So, you know, all the little details, you know, what the market rates are, you know, what the brokers are saying, you know, what your costs are. If you’re having them do that for you, even if they give you their some of the data, you’re not knowing all the little parts of it.

Ilya: It’s kind of like, no, like, there’s a, [00:34:00] there’s like a tire, uh. There’s like systems that manage your tire inflation and the heat and all that stuff. And it sounds like not that not that important of a thing, but it could reveal a problem with one break, like with one break on one wheel kind of thing. And that’s the same with this paperwork is like the whole picture might look not too bad, but you don’t know if you’re wasting too much money on one random thing.

Caroline: Right. Not to mention the tires and brakes are some of the most common reasons people get put out of service.

Ilya: Exactly. Yeah.

Caroline: Um, yeah, that’s, that’s typically what I’ve heard from carriers as well. I’ve also heard people who had good experiences starting with a dispatcher when they really didn’t, maybe didn’t have as much experience in the industry as others.

Caroline: And so they wanted to learn from a dispatcher first and then kind of weaned themselves off of it. Um, and then I’ve also heard the other way around. I learned how to dispatch [00:35:00] myself and then I got tired of it and I didn’t want to do it anymore. But because I knew how to do it, I knew how to hire someone to do it.

Caroline: So, I think regardless, you gotta act, you have to know how to dispatch yourself, even if you don’t want to do it. In the long run, you have to know how to do it, not only because you have to know the sort of operational part of it, but also because you need to be creating your own relationships with your customers.

Ilya: exactly.

Caroline: don’t want to be dependent on somebody else for your primary source of revenue.

Ilya: Yeah, and that’s what I was going to say. The only really potentially good thing I could see about it today in the market is the fact that, like, like I said, going into it in the beginning, there’s almost no one that will give you freight and there I keep sometimes I. Try to give these people constructive criticism.

Ilya: I keep telling them use the fact that you’ll get them freight as your only selling point, because, like, if you call someone new and they can’t get freight, they’ll sign up with you. [00:36:00] But then at the same time, there’s still the dispatch service. Technically should be using your MC and the broker should be telling them the same thing.

Ilya: Hey, the MC is not old enough. So it’s like, how are they getting that freight kind of thing? And that’s where that’s where I think a lot of the freight theft and fraud thing. For fraud issues come from, it’s probably from these dispatch services because who knows what MC they’re using, where whose personal info they’re using, where, um, like, like, if you’re day 1 and they’re offering you 3 per mile, how are they going to get you 3 per mile free?

Ilya: If you can’t even get 2 per mile free. Mm hmm.

Caroline: Yeah. There’s no way I can see where you, there might be edges around it that are flexible. So, you know, you, for example, when you, uh, met some brokers, you know, personally and formed a relationship with them directly, then you were able to kind of, they were able to bend the rules for [00:37:00] you.

Caroline: Right. I can imagine where some dispatchers might have that kind of relationship with brokers to say, Hey, I know that he’s brand new, but You know, he’s got this much experience as a company driver. She’s, you know, been driving for 10 years. She really knows what she’s doing. I mean, they can probably, maybe they’re better positioned to put in a good word for you, but I agree that I think potentially a lot of the, a lot of the fraud is, we know that most of the fraud is coming from identity theft.

Ilya: Mm

Caroline: First, first of all, so even just giving someone. Your information access to your information, even if you’re not working with them anymore, they could be using it for not

Ilya: And, and

Caroline: so good purposes.

Ilya: speaking to them to like, like we have, we drive 10 hours a day, a lot of like, I’ll speak to all of them and I figured out that the vast majority of them are all in other countries somewhere else. There’s, there’s none of them that are here because 1 thing I’ll tell them, they’ll ask me.[00:38:00] 

Ilya: Like one of their opening questions is what’s your revenue because they try to offer me better revenue and I’ll tell them, well, you’re a random person calling me. I’ll tell you my revenue. If you tell me what your paycheck is this week, and then they’ll start giving me numbers and it comes out that their paycheck is like 1 or 200 bucks per month.

Ilya: And I’m like, okay, so you’re in another country.

Caroline: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, honestly, that’s really the only way that that business model can even work at this point. Right. Because if you’re only making a small percentage of each load, you know, and you might be working for another dispatching service, so you’re not even. You know, making what the company is making, you’re making a fraction of what the company is making at that point.

Caroline: There’s no way that you can make a living wage in the United States

Ilya: Exactly. Yeah. The rate, the rates they usually offer is like three to 5%.

Caroline: And that just doesn’t, the math just doesn’t work out for them to be based in the U S at that point. [00:39:00] Well, let’s talk about safety. Do you have any, uh, safety compliance services that you use?

Ilya: Um, I, I’m like, uh, part of that is being a member of nasty. They do some training there. Once you expand to having drivers, they have some programs you can work with them on to set up a safety system for your own company. Um, for me, I just drive like. Even when I was a company driver, I drive safer than the actual person, or most, the average person in it, um, safer and slower.

Ilya: My thing is, this is a job, my goal is to get home at the end of the day, I’m not in a rush anywhere, you know, I’d rather arrive late, and the brokers will agree they’d rather the load arrive late than in a ditch or in a crash somewhere.

Caroline: Absolutely. Absolutely. How about factoring? Do you factor? Your loads.

Ilya: Um, I have not yet, because I haven’t, [00:40:00] um Like I said, I haven’t booked anything off of a load board. I usually only work with the same, like, few brokers, um, and all of them either have quick pay or I just use their normal terms. Um, I’m assuming now my, well, not I’m assuming now my goal is to, like, expand a little bit into other brokerages.

Ilya: So I might have to use it a little bit then, but I haven’t yet.

Caroline: All right. Let’s talk if you, if you need it, um, for driver’s salary, obviously you are, uh, yourself, the, the driver. Um, do you set aside a salary for yourself?

Ilya: Uh, I don’t have a set number that I pay myself. Um, my goal.

Caroline: Sure. [00:41:00] So I think you’re, you’re recording cut out for just a second ’cause I think you were getting another call. Right. So I’m just gonna reiterate, you said you usually like to set aside for yourself a thousand dollars a week. So that per month would be, uh, $4,000. Makes sense. Um, and then you can give yourself a little bonus on top with whatever you make additionally than that.

Caroline: Right. Obviously you don’t have any deductions here. All right. So, uh, you said that your truck gets about seven, um, miles to the gallon is that, or eight, eight miles on average. Is that right? Okay. So if we say it’s, um, 2, 500 miles divided by eight, that’s going to be 300. and 12. 5 gallons per week. Um, let’s see if I, Add that up.

Caroline: Let’s [00:42:00] say four weeks in the month. That’s about 1, 250 gallons. So I’m just going to put that here. Um, let’s see. Fuel. Dollars. Uh, I’m not sure. Let’s see. Miles. I’m not sure why that says miles. It should say, you know, the cost of fuel. What is your average that you’re getting for per gallon that you would say?

Caroline: Solid.

Caroline: Solid. Alright, so this is, I see. Okay, so this is going to be 290 times

Caroline: 1250.[00:43:00] 

Caroline: Alright, so that’s about 3600. Tolls,

Caroline: do you have how much you pay in tolls?

Caroline: Got it. So maybe we can just put a hundred bucks maybe on average, is it? What about maintenance? Do you, now there are some months where you have to pay a lot for maintenance, some months where you don’t have to pay barely anything. How do you think about that? What are you reserving each month to go toward maintenance?

Caroline: Hmm,[00:44:00] 

Caroline: per mile.

Caroline: So that’s about a thousand dollars a month.

Caroline: Now, it’d be 250 per week if you’re going, if you’re going 2, 500 miles. Um, in a week, 10, 000 in a, in a month, so 1, 000 a month on maintenance. What do you, what do you pay for your ELD? Which ELD do you have?

Caroline: Nice. And what about IFTA? Are you paying out every quarter or do you usually get money back?[00:45:00] 

Caroline: Oh, okay. So that’s not too bad. Just like 50 bucks a month. Any other fixed or, or variable expenses that you can think of?

Caroline: Okay. So that would be,

Caroline: all right. So per week, that’d be 225. So per month, which 900. All

Caroline: [00:46:00] right. So now we have a full picture. Of, uh, the, what the business is bringing in and what it costs to run the business. And it looks like on average, you are netting about a little over 5, 000 a month. And that is not including what you have paid yourself, right? As your minimum, this is what I need.

Caroline: Definitely need to bring home to cover expenses. So this is a pretty, This is a very pretty picture, um, compared to the other, uh, things that we have seen in the industry. Lots of people going out of business. Probably the key thing here is that you don’t have a truck payment. What other things do you think that you’re doing differently than other people to make these kinds of numbers work in this industry right now?

Caroline: Hmm.[00:47:00] 

Caroline: Oops.

Caroline: Yeah.

Caroline: I’m knocking on wood for you.

Caroline: Ouch.[00:48:00] 

Caroline: Keeping it simple.

Caroline: Wow.[00:49:00] 

Caroline: Right. Right. Tools to, to make money for your business. As simple as that. All right. Well, this is a very nice picture. So this is with, uh, your, you know, estimated, uh, truck payment. Um, but this is the real picture without the estimated truck payment. So I’ll let, um, Amy do a little, uh, bit of editing there, uh, back and forth with these numbers.

Caroline: But this is looking really good. Congrats on your first year of business. Um, that is a huge milestone. Um, tell me what is something that you have learned that you wish you would have known before you started your business?[00:50:00] 

Caroline: Hmm.[00:51:00] 

Caroline: And that’s actually coming up. So I’ll put a link to that broker carrier summit in, in the description. So if people are interested in that, that they can go check that out.

Caroline: Yeah, that’s your ticket right there. [00:52:00] That’s awesome. Ilia, thank you so much for joining us on this week in trucking. I learned a whole lot and I know that the people watching this video have learned a whole lot as well. If you liked this video and you want to see more, please give this video a like and subscribe to this week in trucking so you never miss out on an episode and everybody drive safe.