Episode Highlights

Hellbent

Caroline: [00:00:00] Welcome to This Week In Trucking. We talk about serious trucking and transportation businesses, talking to business owners and drivers to share real numbers about what it takes to make it in this industry. Today I’m talking to Jamie Hagen to talk about his trucking business, hellbent Express. Thanks for being here, Jamie.

Jamie: Thank you for having me.

Caroline: So tell me about your business. How many trucks are you running? What type of equipment do you have? What kind of freight do you haul?

Speaker 8: Oh, all the tough questions. We have technically right now we have eight trucks. They’re all Mac anthems. If you can’t tell by my gear, bit of a Mac fan, we haul primarily dry van freight, so anything across the United States, primarily in the Midwest here the upper Midwest, I should say the the Dakotas in Minnesota.

Speaker 8: And but we we’ve been in business since, 2020 would be hell. Bend Express is birth, IEI guess you could call it. Prior to that I was leased to a carrier, so I’ve been driving my entire life and I’ve owned my own truck since 2010. So it’s been an ongoing [00:01:00] saga, but struck on my own in 2020 with Helman Express, and that’s what we’ve been doing ever since.

Speaker: Cool. So 2020 was a crazy year

Speaker: for the trucking industry. Did you get into it knowing once it took off in 2020 or were, had you al already planned to start your own business that year?

Speaker 8: No, I had three trucks leased to another carrier and I just, trucks got dirt cheap right after COVID happened. The two weeks that turned

Speaker 8: into two months after the two months, they were giving away truck, they were wholesaling, brand new trucks and

Speaker 8: trailers. So I thought, what the heck?

Speaker 8: Like I’ll buy a fourth truck and my own trailer, get my own authority, and I’ll just have that off to the side just in case someday I need it. Then we, the market completely booms and. I just essentially just started buying trucks and moving that business and picking up, direct customers and stuff and just, it just took off.

Speaker 8: At one time we were up to 12 trucks but we stopped leasing onto a second carrier and sold those trucks. So now it’s just the drive vans at Hell [00:02:00] Bend Express. And we do have two open deck trailers as well

Speaker: So in 2020 there were a lot of people that got into this business and started their businesses thinking that this would be the new normal, that 2020 rates were gonna be the new

Speaker 9: right,

Speaker: I can tell by not only your reaction to that, but also the fact that you’re still in business and that you still have eight trucks, that you probably didn’t fall for that kind of thinking.

Speaker 8: No, my dad was a truck driver through the eighties, through deregulation through the nineties. I started driving when I was 16. So I’ve been around the industry my entire life. Had my, got my CDL at 18. This is the only job I’ve ever done is drive a truck. So I’ve seen how the market loves to go up and it just comes right back down again.

Speaker 8: It’s just the way the

Speaker 8: market works, it finds its balance all the time. So it’s always been a game of pennies through everybody making big money. I was making smart decisions, or at least trying to, not trying to overpay for things and still. Focusing on what got me to the dance, fuel efficiency and those things, keeping [00:03:00] expenses low.

Speaker 8: So that way when this day came, now granted, I never thought this day would come, I didn’t think it would get this bad,

Speaker 8: Who knows what the world would bring next. So you just gotta roll with it, right?

Speaker: Let’s talk a little bit about how you’re rolling with it. Do you mind if I ask you some questions about how much it costs to run your business?

Speaker 8: Sure. Feel

Speaker 8: free.

Speaker: right. So I am going to pull up a tool. Have you ever used trucker calculator?

Speaker 8: I’ve never heard of it.

Speaker 8: I used to do all that by hand on paper, and then I figured out how to make I, I shouldn’t say, I figured out, my wife figured out how she come along and helped me figure out how to make a spreadsheet,

Speaker 8: excel spreadsheet. So we’ve been, doing it by hand, so to speak for a long time. Still do it that way, even though we have a TMS and other things to help us still use that old school spreadsheet.

Speaker: Cool.

Speaker: I believe it’s still free for one truck. So if you’re an owner operator that just has one truck, you can use it for free and it has a nominal cost for larger fleets. But maybe we can just go through one of your drive van trucks.

Speaker: How much, let’s talk [00:04:00] about first the kind of rates that you’re getting.

Speaker: How much would that be for total gross on a monthly basis.

Speaker 8: so I would say our average is close to 25,000 is where our, or at least where our goal is to get to that area.

Speaker: And how many days in a month is someone out driving?

Speaker 8: Now that really does depend on the truck, on the

Speaker 8: driver themselves. Some guys are living the truck, so I don’t even know how to quantify how many, like how that, how you’d quant. ’cause they take random days off. You know what I mean? So

Speaker 8: I guess you’d call that not. Working but not being home. I’d say most of the guys are working around 25 days,

Speaker: so that’s between five and six days a week,

Speaker 8: Yeah. Yeah. I’d say six days a week. Yeah.

Speaker: How

Speaker: many.

Speaker 8: to Yeah.

Speaker: 25 or maybe 24 working days depending on how long the month is.

Speaker: How about miles? How many miles does that represent that the truck is gone?

Speaker 8: You’re gonna be probably in that 11 to 12,000 mile range,

Speaker 8: So

Speaker: 11 500,

Speaker 9: Yeah.

Speaker: so that comes out to two 17 per mile, is [00:05:00] that about what you would expect?

Speaker 8: Yeah. Yeah. That would be close to what we have. Yeah.

Speaker 8: On any given month, now we’re using, probably an average some months or better somewhere worse. Just depends on how bad it goes,

Speaker: sure. Yeah. And that’s what we’re trying to get to here. Trying to average over a certain period of time, maybe over the last, six months or so. Knowing that some months are gonna be better, some months are gonna be worse. We talk about maintenance with carriers and yeah, sometimes you’re underwater with maintenance one month, but other months you have no cost in maintenance, right?

Speaker: Talk to me about truck payments. Do you own the truck outright or are you financing them?

Speaker 8: We’ve, we’ve, we’re in growth mode this whole time, so we were financing the trucks the whole way. I got some pretty good deals from Mac Financial through the years, so we just always looked at why put money down when they’re giving you such good interest. Back in the day it was pretty much 5% even got a few in the fours there for a while and then things got awful.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 8: Average,

Speaker: run you in a month?

Speaker 8: I got some that are at [00:06:00] 2,800, I got some at 3,200, I got one at 3,700. You know what I mean? It just depends on how late in the game with interest and but I would say the average would be right around 3,100.

Speaker: Okay. Do you have, is that for truck and trailer? Do you or do you own your trailers outright.

Speaker 8: so that’s in the whole way we, would pay cash for trailers. So trailers have been paid off this whole time. But typically spending right around 42 to 45,000 for trailers

Speaker: Okay,

Speaker 8: just depend on what part of the upcycle we were in.

Speaker: sure. Because that’s not a monthly expense here. I’m gonna leave it out, but that’s good information to, to know. How about insurance?

Speaker 8: are hard to

Speaker 8: even quantify. ’cause, with drive vans, you can use ’em for 10 years pretty easily, and no one will bat an eyelash at it for a 10-year-old trailer, even longer if you wanted to. It just comes down to like paper seems like paper. Everybody wants 10 years, a newer trailer.

Speaker 8: It’s, you stretch that out over a 10 year lifespan of a trailer and that number looks pretty small,

Speaker: So we’ve got [00:07:00] trailers paid off. How about insurance? What does insurance run you for? One of your drive vans in a month.

Speaker 8: To break ’em down in a monthly. I know we actually got a really good deal this last time around. We’ve been really fortunate with some great drivers who’ve really done great things. I can’t complain one bit about them.

Speaker: That’s awesome.

Speaker 8: So our rates actually went down this last year. So we’re,

Speaker 8: Right at eight 70 a truck a month,

Speaker: I don’t think I’ve heard that number

Speaker 8: right?

Speaker 8: No.

Speaker: to other carriers. That’s awesome.

Speaker 8: yeah, it was much higher than that prior. So it’s not much higher. It was like at 1100 and then it got down closer to, under a thousand. And then this last time they, gave us a really good deal, like

Speaker: yeah, that’s definitely, I think a unique situation to be in. Talk to me about your drivers. How do you source drivers? How long have they been with you, and why do you think you can get such good talent for your business?

Speaker 8: I’m just. Dumb enough to try it, I dunno, because how does one find drivers? I really, you just put out the vibe, you, you put out that you’re looking. I’m all over social media, so I try everything I can [00:08:00] to put it out there and then advertise the best we can. It comes down to just like fishing with a net, right?

Speaker 8: The bigger the net, the more

Speaker 8: you can catch. But when you’re a small carrier like us, we only have one opening maybe once, maybe twice a year.

Speaker 8: So we’re not really good at recruiting. I will admit that I, I suck at job interviews. I’ve always been the interviewee, not the interviewer, so when it comes time to do an interview it’s not the best.

Speaker 8: But, I just try to get the gist of people. We’ve had a couple guys now for over five years

Speaker 8: Right at the beginning they’ve been a board. Most of the guys have been here three years. The last guy here, I think he’s been here over, everybody’s been here over a year now. As guys also quit with this downturn I sold off equipment, so it just kinda shrank organically just because I knew that it was just really slowing down and, our, the work we were getting is getting smaller and I just thought, this makes sense to kinda sell the stuff that’s paid for.

Speaker 8: We had a few trucks that were paid for, took that money, put it back in. And so recruiting hasn’t been our strong suit. We haven’t really needed to recruit. But I could see that [00:09:00] being a thing if there’s a trick to it somehow. I’d love someone to tell me how to get people interested in trucking.

Speaker 8: I don’t know.

Speaker 8: It’s a huge it issue. Especially when you’re a small carrier, people say that they’re interested in small carriers, but when you’re this small, it’s hard to come up with all the great advantages of a mega fleet. So now, yes, you’re gonna get to drive the one truck the whole time you’re here, you’re not gonna slip seat or anything. Yes, you’re gonna talk to the owner every day because I’m also the dispatcher and I’m also the maintenance guy. So I’m, you get to talk to that guy every day. But with that said, I, we really can’t afford, all the great little things. We do offer health insurance and dental, but that’s about as far as we can go.

Speaker 8: We, we don’t do any 401k matching or anything, anything of that great stuff that a big carrier could probably pull off. We gotta be very mindful of our bottom, our bottom line. We don’t have huge reserves and cash to, to float us, like a, a publicly traded company, could, those guys,

Speaker 8: they can raise funds. I can’t raise funds. All I have are the funds. So that’s the big hurdle. That’s the [00:10:00] big hurdle. So the, I do attract some great people though I will admit. Like we’ve got just some really great guys that used to be owner operators and they’re good operators and we’ve got three young guys that are just new to the industry and they are just phenomenal guys.

Speaker 8: I eager to learn. So that’s why I’m saying like, we’re very fortunate. I can’t complain one bit. If we stay this size forever with these guys I’ll die a happy man.

Speaker: That’s so cool. That’s so cool to hear too. Let’s talk about dispatch and other services. It sounds like you dispatch your own truck, so you probably don’t hire a dispatcher or have a dispatching service. Do you have

Speaker 8: We tried that? Yeah.

Speaker 8: we tried that for a minute, for six or seven months there. I tell you what, that was a rough go. ’cause they were, when you’re giving somebody a percentage, not only are they getting a piece of it, but they’re also they don’t care.

Speaker 8: You know what I mean? They’re just in it for the money.

Speaker 8: They don’t care about the driver, they don’t have a relationship with the driver.

Speaker 8: They mainly have a relationship with me calling me and just saying Hey, you wanna do this for this X, Y, Z, and [00:11:00] then they just pull the trigger. The hard part for that was they were always constantly just working people for more money and never really building a relationship or building lanes or, those kind of things. That first year I learned a lot of lessons, the hard way. Thankfully there was money to be made. In those years. So even when you messed up, you didn’t mess up. You know what I mean? It didn’t take you outta business. You just didn’t make maybe the potential you could have made or made the relationships you could have made. So that’s why in the end, I ended up dispatching one point we hired a dispatcher a gal to work with a company that was going out of business. She needed a job, so we hired her. And in, in the end like that, it, even that like times got so lean, we had to, let her go. And I just, now I’m wearing all the hats.

Speaker: Wow. What about safety? I, we talked about a little bit about insurance. But insurance doesn’t go down unless safety scores are really solid. And drivers are really solid in, in everything that has to do with safety and compliance. Do you [00:12:00] have a service that you use to manage safety or are you on top of being the maintenance guy, the dispatcher, the business owner, the payroll?

Speaker: Are you also doing safety and compliance for your business?

Speaker 8: A little bit of safety, but my wife, my business partner she’s the other half of the business as well, so that’s one of her situations. She does the billing, the payroll and safety, so she handles that. But yeah, we, we use Samsara ELD systems, so then that has in it a camera system that also gives everybody a safety score.

Speaker 8: That’s something we talk about with those guys. The different parameters and the, things that make ’em safe. And it’s just part of our, culture. Every trucking company has that kind of thing, right? Like no matter what you do, you can’t escape that. Safety is just a huge monster in our industry.

Speaker 8: And that’s the

Speaker 8: thing. You gotta make sure that monster stays inside. You keep that monster buried, you don’t wanna let ’em out. Yeah.

Speaker: right. Sometimes I think, or I see people talking about how to start a trucking business and they focus so much on the dispatching part that it [00:13:00] almost seems like that’s the main work of a trucking business, when in reality the real workhorse of it is safety. How do you safely get cargo from point A to point B?

Speaker 8: that’s the hard part right there. How to get that balance between the two.

Speaker 8: And if you had an individual person for each one of those tasks, I think it would be a better job if the dispatcher wasn’t also part of safety and the guy that made the money in the end. It would be easier because when I dispatch, I look at how much, I’m always focused on the money and then I gotta go, eh, it is not the safest thing.

Speaker 8: We gotta back off that just a little, you know what I’m saying? There’s always this weird balance. And so instead of it being individuals within the company going back and forth Hey you dispatch this personal too tight should be safe. That’s me at night just sitting there, mentally just having to go over this fight in my head and I’m like, oh lord.

Speaker 8: So

Speaker: instead of different people, it’s your different personalities and voices in your head.

Speaker 8: A hundred percent. It’s all these different hats I wear. I have to have this argument. [00:14:00] Yeah. And with my wife being safety she brings it up too all the time. You know what I mean? We gotta keep an eye on these things. And so we do have a check and balance system here. So it’s not just me running wild,

Speaker: I do. I do wonder though, you said that, it would be, it’ll be a lot easier if they were separate people in the company. I almost wonder though, it certainly would be easier if you didn’t have to wear as many hats as the business owner, but I also think that it actually might be safer that it’s not a bunch of different people.

Speaker: Because I think in, at the end of the day, any business is naturally going to try and increase revenues, reduce costs in an immediate sense, and being the business owner having to play many roles, safety being one of them, you naturally are going to braid those things together. While you’re operating, not that it’s easy on the individual, it’s certainly not easier, it’s certainly much harder.

Speaker: But I wonder if at the end of the day, that’s actually a much more integrated and safer approach to the industry.

Speaker 8: I think [00:15:00] it is as long as you can, as long as you don’t let one per, that pers part of your personality, I don’t know what you’d call it. The, there have been times where I have to remind myself that it’s not a hundred percent about the money.

Speaker 8: You know what I mean? Sometimes you have to just dial it back.

Speaker 8: And that, at first there was times where I was like can’t we just, asking a guy like, Hey, can you just fudge your log book just a little bit for me? And now I gotta be like, Hey, we can’t do it.

Speaker 8: Can’t be done. We’re turning work down. Which was hard, and in today’s world, it’s hard to turn work down, but you just have to admit like, Hey, we, we can’t meet all of these situations.

Speaker 8: And that took me a while to learn that, versus just trying to constantly work guys to death. There was a few guys that got 14,000 mile months in there for a while,

Speaker 8: and they’re like, Hey, can we just back this off a little,

Speaker: a the fact that your drivers are still with you after so many years is a testament to, not getting it perfectly every time, but them being able to come to you and voice that concern instead of just going out and looking for another job.

Speaker 8: We’ve, like I said, we were fortunate enough to find guys too [00:16:00] that have been in the industry a long time.

Speaker 8: So they remember the days prior to the ELD. 14,000 miles wasn’t that bad. That was actually a good month, back in the day. Yeah, I’m not gonna incriminate myself, but

Speaker 8: there’s a lot of, yeah, there was a lot more gray areas when you could work with a pen, and a new fresh book.

Speaker 8: But yeah, I think they, they also understood that it’s. We’re a small business and they’re also, they get paid by the mile. So that is the whole reason the pay by the mile structure isn’t it, is the more you work, the more you get paid. It’s an incentive system. I’m also one of those guys that would love to see the day come when we could pay drivers by the hour and they could be, their time more valuable than just their miles.

Speaker 8: I’d love to see that day come. I’ve looked into it a few times just doing the math, but we’re live in such a small, narrow window of profitability that it, it’s just not in the cards right now, but I’m hoping, even I hate the government being involved in any way, but. If they did get this right, and they were to, mandate that people had [00:17:00] to be paid by the hour, then we would all have to switch to that, so then that would change the entire industry, because right now I have to stay competitive with everybody. So that’s our biggest hurdle. I’d love to get to that point someday, but never know could happen.

Speaker: You certainly never know, especially

Speaker 8: know what this administration, what they’re gonna do next. Every day is a new day.

Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. So it sounds like you don’t have a specific sort of safety, cost on a monthly basis. We’ll get to ELDs in a minute.

Speaker 8: would be hard to quantify, really. Obviously I pay my wife and myself, we both get a check, so we could break that down into different segments, if you will.

Speaker: We can probably put that in other expenses. At the bottom if you were to divide it by truck. Or we can just say that whatever is left after all of the costs is what gets split. And we can talk about that in a minute of how to compensate yourself as a business owner.

Speaker: What about factoring? Do you have a factoring service? And if so, how much does it run you?

Speaker 8: we did [00:18:00] at first we did have a company and then eventually just saw that, we were giving out 30 grand a year in factoring, and that, to me, that just didn’t make any sense. You could hire somebody to do your paperwork for you for that.

Speaker 8: So you know when, so when I did bring my wife aboard, she was just communicating with the factoring company and then quickly learned it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Speaker 8: So yeah, now we no longer factor and that’s a huge savings in itself

Speaker: sure.

Speaker 8: float it, that’s the

Speaker 8: thing. We had to get to the enough money in the bank so we could do that.

Speaker 8: And the first two years we did factor. Yep.

Speaker: right, and I think that’s a misconception. A lot of people will say, oh. Factoring business good business owners don’t need factoring. And of course, as of coming from a factoring company’s perspective, grind, that certainly grinds our gears. But I think, yeah, if you don’t need factoring, please don’t use it.

Speaker: Please don’t factor. If you don’t need factoring, that’s, oh, it’s a waste of money if you don’t need it.

Speaker: But there are legitimate business reasons that you would need it.

Speaker 8: No, a hundred percent. And that is our plan B actually.

Speaker: And it’s a great

Speaker 8: that [00:19:00] point. Yeah. if things get to that point we would sell our accounts receivable before we’d go out of business. We’d factor it, and then bring that money into the business so that way we could survive this, great economic downturn, this

Speaker 8: fantastic event.

Speaker: Definitely. All right, let’s talk about driver salary. You talked about, rate per mile. Is that how you’re still compensating drivers then, or is it a percent of

Speaker 8: No we, we do a per mile basis.

Speaker: So how much is that for, on average for your drivers.

Speaker 8: I think, when you include it, it depends. ’cause they get paid for if they load or unload themselves by hand and other things. When you look at the end of the year. With the taxes and the insurance and everything involved, it is closer to 82 cents a mile is what it costs us.

Speaker 8: Now we’re only paying 60 cents, but that’s,

Speaker 8: there’s so many more things attached to that. Your workers’ comp, all that stuff, it ends up working out to be closer to 82 cents.

Speaker: And are there any bonuses that you. Give out at the end of the year maybe? Or is that, maybe that’s just [00:20:00] dependent on how the business has done that year.

Speaker 8: Yeah, we do Christmas bonuses. I got a heart. And they, we do fuel economy bonuses. If guys can get to a certain number, we

Speaker 8: will, give ’em a, a, a. couple of pennies per mile. And then of course at the end of each month we have who got the best fuel of economy? Gets 50 bucks?

Speaker 8: Who got the

Speaker 8: cheapest on the road fuel cost, for the month gets 50 bucks. Like it’s just little things for guys to shoot for. I’m trying to give people a reason to care, about fuel economy and those things is not as easy as it sounds. ‘Cause some people just don’t care and that’s fine.

Speaker 8: That, they’re not in the business of that, but,

Speaker: yeah. As long as they care about safety and taking care of the truck, that’s probably the most, most important things to care about.

Speaker 9: Yeah.

Speaker: I’ll leave this blank because on an aav on an average basis, it sounds like it’s, would be pretty nominal because it’s an average across all eight trucks. Doesn’t sound, you’re not leased on to anyone right now, so you wouldn’t have any deductions here.

Speaker: Let’s talk about fuel. You’ve mentioned it a couple of times. Sounds like fuel efficiency [00:21:00] is a huge part of what you think about in your operation. Do you have an idea of how much you spend in on fuel for a truck per month?

Speaker 8: On average, it’s closer to 52 cents a mile. I got trucks that do closer to 30 cents. I got trucks that do closer to 70 cents. See, so it’s if varies wildly.

Speaker 8: And that’s, it’s a huge number when it varies that much. So I would caution anyone who’s a single truck owner operator to get EV as fuel efficient aerodynamic truck as possible and makes a huge difference.

Speaker: So does this, 5,980, does that sound right to you?

Speaker 8: Yeah. Yeah. I say it’s typically over five.

Speaker: So I’m just gonna do a little kind of back of the napkin math here. Where do you usually fuel, what’s your, what are the states that you’re usually fueling in?

Speaker 8: So we run primarily the upper Midwest, so it’s gonna be that Dakota is Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, that kind of, that general area. But we branch out everywhere. Like right now, I got a guy that’s out in Montana, another guy in [00:22:00] Washington, another guy in Texas. So we’re fueling everywhere.

Speaker 6: Sure.

Speaker 8: So that varies wildly too, the tax, got a

Speaker 8: guy down in Texas who just paid two 80 a gallon, for fuel.

Speaker 8: So it, it’s

Speaker: does three. I’m looking at the most recent on Highway D diesel fuel prices. It looks like as of April 28th, it was 3 51 across the us, a little bit less, 3 47 in the Midwest. But you said you also get to the Gulf Coast. Would you say three 40 might be a good ballpark of how much you’re spending per gallon?

Speaker 8: we do we have a fuel card

Speaker 8: that we get a discount on. I would say our average is closer probably to 3 0 5 to 3 0 8 a gallon right now.

Speaker: Okay, so then that means. 1,960 gallons in a

Speaker 8: Yeah, our fleet average is a little better than that, but

Speaker: Okay,

Speaker 8: I was using last year’s numbers for, yeah, no, our fleet average is like 7.8.

Speaker 8: So our, I [00:23:00] was, I’m quoting numbers from last year,

Speaker 8: so you’re, you got the beginning of the year that were, where fuel was quite a bit higher. You got a lot of idling due to, cold months in the winter, stuff like that.

Speaker 8: So there’s a whole

Speaker 8: gambit of reasons I like to speak in averages

Speaker 8: simply because every single month is just,

Speaker: and to be conservative, right? What is the bottom range of fuel efficiency, that’s probably where what you should, plan for the worst, hope, for the best

Speaker 8: yeah. So you could use the three 50 a gallon if you wanted to use the average for last year, because last year, it started

Speaker 8: off way higher than it ended,

Speaker 8: And then it’s even going down even further this year. Like it, it continues to trickle down.

Speaker 8: I don’t think we’ve even, we’ve only seen what, a couple of upward trends this year,

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 8: every week it goes down,

Speaker: Yeah. I just redid the calculation with three 50 as the average, and that took it down to 17, about 1700. So that’s gonna take you up to closer to seven miles per gallon. There.

Speaker 9: Yeah.

Speaker: Probably more accurate across the year.

Speaker 9: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: How about tolls? Sounds like you’re not operating many places where [00:24:00] there would

Speaker 8: see a fair amount of tolls.

Speaker 8: I would say on the average we’re spending, I have, that’s not a number I focus on ’cause it is hard to change that number,

Speaker 8: I try to focus on numbers you can really work with to change. Like I don’t spend a lot of time focusing on truck payments

Speaker 8: because once you’ve signed the contract’s contract, it’s a fixed cost.

Speaker 8: So I no longer focus on it. Tolls, obviously you can skip a toll road, but drivers don’t like skipping toll roads ’cause they like to go as fast as they can through you. It’s, you can get around Chicago without taking a toll road, but it ain’t easy,

Speaker 8: I’ll tell you that. You know what I mean? You gotta take a few, two lane roads, if you will, to get through it. On average I’d say we’re spending. Per truck. It’s probably under $300, on any given month we could spend $1,500,

Speaker 8: Take one trip to, New Jersey and, that’s $500 one way.

Speaker 8: You know what I mean? So it’s, it just depends. And then there’s months where we don’t hardly spend any. So I would say on average truck is probably spending close to 300 bucks a month.

Speaker: Let’s talk about maintenance. You said you are your own maintenance guy. Does that mean that you work on the trucks [00:25:00] yourself?

Speaker 8: Not a lot. I will say that I am fortunate enough I’ve got some great relationship with Mack dealerships. Primarily do most of our stuff with them. And then we, I do the little things. And little things, the grease job, sometimes the guys will grease their trucks too by themselves and I’ll give ’em 25 bucks to, to grease their truck, stuff like that.

Speaker 8: To keep the cost as low and as quick and easy as possible. Last year we did a really fantastic job. Now this maintenance cost does not include tires. So if we put tires and maintenance together, it worked out to 8 cents a mile for the entire fleet. Still a fantastic number, but just the trucks alone were 5 cents.

Speaker 8: So it was actually a really good number. But you gotta figure in tires with your guys’. I like to break those two numbers out ‘ cause they’re, again, I put tires on trailers, so I like to focus on trucks separately. I like to look at true cost of ownership of a truck, and. Tires are a wear item and it’s hard for us to break out. We could, we really could, as small as we are, we could break out trailer tire versus truck tire. But there again, [00:26:00] at some point we gotta you gotta pick your battles on how much work you wanna do with your day. Like how much do you wanna really break this thing down? So we do have just a separate tire category,

Speaker 8: so

Speaker: But that 8 cents per mile includes the tires.

Speaker 8: yes. Yeah. That’s all in.

Speaker: And how do you manage this throughout the year? Do you, when, say a month where you didn’t have a lot of maintenance issues, do you always set aside a certain amount in a different account to make sure that you have enough to cover big maintenance jumps?

Speaker 8: If I was a smaller company, maybe I would do, like back in the day I definitely did that when it was just me.

Speaker 8: I had on a maintenance count that I always scrolled money off to. But now, we just got one big S count that we just throw everything in payroll, the whole enchilada just for ease of use. But there might come a day where we set up a separate maintenance account, but not right now. It would just be one more thing for us to move and, like you

Speaker 8: constantly trying to monitor it and then move back money in as you write the check or the credit card or, like you just constantly moving stuff back and forth. So yeah, we just [00:27:00] leave it all in one. But as a single truck operator, I would probably and have had separate accounts for maintenance.

Speaker: How do you manage preventative maintenance in your fleet?

Speaker 8: As, as far as PMs and stuff like like I said, I’ve got some great working relationships with Mack trucks. The dealership network is pretty awesome. There are a lot of small dealers, really easy to get to, really focused on single truck operators. That’s the one thing people are like, Mac is owned by Volvo Group, so it’s just a Volvo.

Speaker 8: And I always tell ’em, no, it’s really not. They might be owned by Volvo Group, but that doesn’t mean the dealerships are, they’re still the same dealers.

Speaker 8: They’ve got dealers from the nine, the early 19 hundreds when Mac was first born, so these dealers have been around for, over a century. They’re small. They’re mom and pops as well. So like you can establish a great relationship with them

Speaker 8: and especially if they’re a your local dealer, you can just literally call ’em up Hey, I’m in town, and they just sure, let’s do your oil change real quick and let’s, do a quick, inspection of the truck. I have been negotiating with them as well. Mac is coming out with a a service contract, so where you can just [00:28:00] literally pay per month to have your maintenance as a fixed cost.

Speaker 8: And they will do all your preventative maintenance stuff, including oil changes, but, overheads that you would run on the engine, any kind of transmission, rear end ratio, all that stuff you’re gonna, falls underneath this $1 amount that you’re gonna spend.

Speaker 8: So it’ll never go up, it’ll never go down as inflation increases or decreases, this will just stay the same the whole time. So you can just make a business plan. They’ve been talking and I’ve been talking to ’em about that. That might be something we do in the future as well, just to kinda have a rock solid, like just square line, just like your your truck payment.

Speaker 8: It’s just, you know what it is going to be every month. Yeah,

Speaker: That’s gonna make it a lot easier to manage the finances of your business if that’s predictable. ’cause that’s probably one of the, even fuel, you can predict that the price of fuel doesn’t change that drastically month to month where you can’t plan but maintenance needs, you never know when something big is gonna hit.

Speaker 8: yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that’s for sure. Like it can swing pretty wildly.

Speaker: Definitely. You said you use Samsara for [00:29:00] ELD. What does that cost you? Per truck Per

Speaker 8: How about $75 a month?

Speaker: And then you also talked about taxes, fuel taxes and obviously going OTR you need if to decals and license and to pay those on a quarterly basis. If you were to average out, are you usually getting money back from ifta, paying money into ifta?

Speaker 8: Typically every quarter we play in about $1,200. So you gotta divide that by every truck and then you know, it, the math gets complicated.

Speaker: I see. So $400 per month with eight trucks, 50 bucks per truck. Does that sound right?

Speaker 8: yeah. That’s quick and easy math. I like it.

Speaker: Yes, it is. Let’s add here. You said that I do always ask this to business owners, if they write themselves a check each month as a, an employee of the business, sounds like that’s something that you do for both yourself and your wife that helps you run the business and the financial and human resources side of things.

Speaker: What does that look like? Is that something that you take out after you already see how the [00:30:00] month went, or is it a fixed cost that you work in to the cost of running your business?

Speaker 8: We’re both employees, so we get an employee check just like everybody else. There have been months where we haven’t paid ourselves, just to stay, keep rolling. Eventually you have to pay yourself. You can

Speaker 8: only go without for so long. So yeah no we, we each have a payroll expense.

Speaker 8: So yeah,

Speaker: How much does that run per month? And then we can break it down by truck.

Speaker 8: number would be gonna make me do math. ’cause I don’t have that off the top of my head. That honestly, that’s one thing I don’t

Speaker: That’s interesting.

Speaker 8: cost,

Speaker: That might be a, that’s an interesting psychological issue that you might wanna think about. Jamie, why is that the only expense you’re paying

Speaker 9: parameter.

Speaker: The only parameter that you can’t, that you don’t have memorized that’s so typical of a business owner.

Speaker 8: Yeah. When you put in our payroll, the numbers get really. Interesting. And there’s why we haven’t paid ourselves sometimes.

Speaker: Yeah, sure. If we work it out

Speaker 8: divide that per,

Speaker: oh, go ahead.

Speaker 8: if you divide that by each truck, [00:31:00] now, see that’s just it. It was great when there was more trucks, ’cause you could divide it out per truck.

Speaker 8: More trucks means the number got actually lower. So the smaller we shrink, the actually more in danger we become of of us getting too small for

Speaker 8: us to be able to afford having two people in the office. Right now, I’d say we’re, I guess if you’re, do you want this per mile or per month?

Speaker: It can be per mile or fixed,

Speaker 8: So you’d p

Speaker: or a percentage,

Speaker 8: Yeah, it’d be $1,350 per truck.

Speaker: 12 cents per mile. Does that sound

Speaker 9: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: All right, so we got our numbers here. Is there anything else in the other section that I should be thinking about it?

Speaker 8: You can quantify a trailer cost in there. There’s replacement costs, if you will. This. Is it I always look at it like, even, you talk to your accountant and he doesn’t like speaking in truck payments. He likes to speak in depreciation.

Speaker 6: You

Speaker 8: This is how much you’re depreciating, and. That number is actually much larger than your truck. ’cause you can only depreciate a truck over three years. And if you finance the truck for 60 months, five years, there’s two years of making a [00:32:00] payment, but you’re not getting any depreciation.

Speaker 8: And that’s why you see the three year trade cycle, which I find foolish. Why you can’t, expense something out for five years versus three. And, that’s why you see some people do leases and those kind of things, but yeah. I don’t even know how, I do break it down. We do have like a trailer pool that we put all them in. And then we also add the maintenance cost to that. And at the end of the year, and I, off the top of my head, I couldn’t say that number, but I’m sure it’s gotta be close to 500 a month in that range

Speaker 8: that you would

Speaker: add that to

Speaker 8: Yeah.

Speaker: the trailer, we can just make that the sort of the trailer payment here, even though it’s not really a payment.

Speaker 9: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: All right. Anything else that we didn’t cover in this list?

Speaker 8: I don’t know how, what does one put on emotional trauma? Is there a line for that?

Speaker: Do you have therapy sessions?

Speaker 8: You gotta have a therapist on

Speaker 8: hand,

Speaker: that covered by insurance? Actually that’s a, that’s an interesting piece. You talked about it a little bit but that you do have health and dental insurance for your drivers. Is that [00:33:00] included in their, in this cost for the driver pay?

Speaker 8: Yeah. That’s all rolled in there. Yeah.

Speaker: And I assume you have insurance payments for yourself as well, and that’s rolled here in, in other

Speaker 8: I didn’t actually include that. Now that I’m thinking about it, we’d have to put a little more on top of

Speaker 8: that. Insurance costs.

Speaker: Maybe like another 200.

Speaker 8: right? I was gonna say,

Speaker: I’m trying to think of

Speaker 8: yeah. Another,

Speaker: health insurance

Speaker 8: yeah, Another two and a quarter. Yeah.

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: Health insurance, super important and something that not a lot of drivers actually have access to,

Speaker 10: Yeah.

Speaker: especially when they’re starting out and running their own business. It’s something that often

Speaker 8: For the first years I did not have any health insurance. It wasn’t until my wife came aboard and she, she’s always been an employee and she’s I’m gonna need health insurance if you want me to come aboard.

Speaker: Smart.

Speaker 8: so yeah, that was like the first thing we did when she came aboard.

Speaker 8: Yeah,

Speaker: She sounds like a very smart person.

Speaker 8: she is, yeah, and she came from the trucking side of it too working for a company that did truck maintenance.

Speaker 8: So she did a lot of data mining [00:34:00] for them and stuff, and marketing. So for her, this wasn’t a big leap. Trucking wasn’t a big leap, so that helped a lot. And she got up to speed with compliance quickly prior to her coming aboard Express might not have been able to pass a. Federal DOT inspection, like

Speaker 8: the after you get your, it’s super easy to get a DOT number by the way. I

Speaker 8: would’ve never guessed how easy it is to get that number. And then they just kinda let you do whatever for the first year before they ever like, check compliance. Thank the good lord she come aboard about that time and she’s you don’t have any of this in order.

Speaker 8: And I’m like hiring people you’re supposed to have an application on hand. I didn’t know that. I just hired a guy, shook his hand and I’m like, what’s your,

Speaker 8: what’s Your bank account number? ’cause I’m gonna pay you. Yeah. That’s all I knew. I didn’t know I had to follow up on everything.

Speaker 8: So then she quickly got us up to speed on that. And that was a huge godsend as well. So that’s something people don’t take into factor when you start adding trucks.

Speaker 8: I didn’t have, you don’t have to have any of this stuff when you’re self-employed. The government doesn’t care the minute you start hiring people.

Speaker 8: [00:35:00] You need all of these things and

Speaker 8: everything changes quickly. When I was at the MidAmerica truck show, somebody asked me, how did you get from one truck to all of these? And I said, it was a by accident. We talked about the beginning with COVID happening and me buying that extra truck and the striking out on my own. And then as that grew, I just bought trucks ’cause I could and hired drivers. And that’s when I learned, all these other nuances. The more trucks you have, you gotta park these trucks somewhere.

Speaker 8: So there’s an expense that we don’t talk about is parking.

Speaker 8: Parking’s actually a decent sized expense as it turns out.

Speaker 8: You can’t just park ’em at a truck stop and expect ’em to be there when you come back the next day,

Speaker 8: So we pay, we have right now. Would that be $2,200 a month in rent. So you divide that by eight trucks, that’s 2 75 a truck just to park trucks,

Speaker: yeah

Speaker 8: and that’s just home base that is not out on the road.

Speaker 8: We also, yeah, we also pay for all parking for guys out on the road, and I would say that probably adds up to 150, another 150 bucks a month. [00:36:00] And just that expense.

Speaker: talking about 4 25.

Speaker 9: Yeah.

Speaker: Do you use any apps like truck parking club or do you just have a kind of a favorite truck stop brand that you like parking at?

Speaker 8: We primarily use TPC, use those guys a lot, but then we also use Ta Petro, those guys use them.

Speaker 8: And then there’s just a couple we got one driver that’s based outta Chicago, so he has a favorite place that he likes to park that charges, but yeah.

Speaker: Nice. And not to mention that when you do have your trucks parked, that some insurance policies will require that you have certain things in place in your parking location like security or fencing or what have you, to prevent any of those any adverse events that you might need to make claims on your insurance for.

Speaker 9: Yeah. Yep.

Speaker: All right. I think then that about covers and actually parking was not something that I’ve asked other people about before. So this is the first time we’re putting parking in here. So I have to go back and revisit all of our videos

Speaker 8: that was, yeah, that was [00:37:00] something that kind of threw me for a loop. ’cause the more trucks we added and suddenly you’re like, wait a minute,

Speaker 8: we need land. And as it turns out, that’s in a real expense.

Speaker 8: That’s not something cheap. We take that for granted as drivers ’cause we’re always parking in truck stops.

Speaker 8: But when you have a lot of trucks, you can’t necessarily

Speaker 8: just go park ’em all at the loves.

Speaker: So it looks like here we have overall on average a two 17 per mile rate per mile, and a cost per mile of 2 0 2. So on an average month, looks like we’re still. Profitable at about a 7% profit margin. Does any of this, is this pretty close to what, to the numbers that you’ve run on your business recent, recently?

Speaker 8: Yeah, it would be darn close to last year. Yeah. Yeah. There’s times where that number’s better. There’s times where that number’s incredibly lower. We’ve lost money in months.

Speaker 6: Sure.

Speaker 8: So it’s just depends. So it would, an average is out, I’d say on average. We’re close to that. That number. Yeah.

Speaker: Awesome. Thank you for letting us intrude on your business. Really cool that you have all of [00:38:00] that data handy. Most people do when we ask them about it. And the reason that we’re doing this, because we notice that there’s a lot of information in on social media about how much you can make.

Speaker: With a truck, but not a lot about how much it costs to run a truck, and that’s incredibly important if you want to actually make any money at the end of the day.

Speaker 8: Yeah. Nobody shares that with you, do they? I remember starting in this, organization, trucking in the nineties, nobody really talked about any of It

Speaker 8: It was all a mystery. It was a learn as you go a thing. Yeah. Yeah, it’s nice that is getting out there.

Speaker 8: And I think that’s a surge too with people talking about how Easy Money Trucking was. It’s just and during 21 and 22, it, trucking was easy money. And that, that has gone away. It’s not easy money anymore. It’s back to regular trucking now. Like it’s always been like this with just a game of pennies. You look at how small our profit margins get. We have a business coach that we work with every once in a while and he looks at other [00:39:00] businesses and he looks at ours and he is yeah. He goes, you guys got a really small margin. He goes, most companies don’t operate in such small margin,

Speaker 8: If you have a restaurant or, whatever you do for a business, their margins aren’t that. Extremely narrow. And I said, yeah, that’s trucking.

Speaker 8: There’s a reason why you don’t see huge corporations buy trucking companies. You do now, but not prior to these last five years. You didn’t see big privately held mega corporations. You do now. But, and even then, you look at those, look at hard land, they, those guys are struggling mightily.

Speaker 8: They’re losing money every quarter now. How long can they, will their investors wanna lose money?

Speaker: Those bigger those bigger companies have, more cushion to lay back on, month to month. But it only goes so far

Speaker 8: yeah,

Speaker: at the end of the day. It’s arithmetic of how much money you’re bringing in and how much money you’re paying out. And maybe the bigger companies can last a little bit longer losing money, but,

Speaker 8: With single truck operators, it is, you have such a great competitive advantage to larger companies

Speaker 8: because you can shave in [00:40:00] areas. They cannot, you can make really great decisions for fuel efficiency that they can, ‘ cause they have a, scale issue, they mean they have to have a certain

Speaker 8: truck that works for everybody. Whereas you can really specialize your equipment to your exact parameters for what you are doing, for whether you’re doing open deck, reefer, van, tank, whatever it is that you pull behind you, you can really specialize your equipment right down to the exact scenario and you can do all kinds of things. To shave money off of, whereas a big corporation, or even myself, like I said, I got a place to park trucks that takes a lot of money and a lot of space.

Speaker 8: One truck and one trailer doesn’t take up that much space. I’m not saying you can just park it in your front yard, but you could still pull off something that isn’t too crazy money. Whereas, and we had a dispatcher, but we got rid of her because of the situation we’re in right now. We had to

Speaker 8: get really lean to make it, whereas a large corporation cannot, they,

Speaker 8: We’re not gonna see anybody at the CEO level down there, taking phone calls.

Speaker: Yeah, that

Speaker 8: where I always see small [00:41:00] companies having the advantage in

Speaker 8: this marketplace right now.

Speaker: yeah. Really interesting. Do you have any advice for someone who is getting started as an owner operator or trying to start their own fleet in this time?

Speaker 8: Yeah, I was on a podcast too, not too long ago on that. My, my piece of advice this might have been what I said at Matt’s too, was make sure you’ve got a good mental health professional in your pocket. You know what I mean? ‘Cause it’s strenuous. This is a

Speaker 8: very strenuous in today’s world of, we have to admit, there’s times where, you know we need a little tuneup from an outside person. Trucking is hard. So the biggest thing is focusing on numbers like we just did.

Speaker 8: A lot of guys don’t wanna focus on that. That’s not sexy. Everyone wants to buy the truck. That’s the sexy part. You know what I mean? Like you want to buy the truck. You’ve always wanted to drive,

Speaker 8: so you just go out and that’s what you focus on, right?

Speaker 8: You focus on the, how much horsepower it’s got and how much polishes it’s got and the right color, all that stuff. That doesn’t make you a dime, that’s the thing guys get so focused on their [00:42:00] feelings on what they want. They forget that it is a business. It’s not about your feelings, f your feelings, that’s always been my policy.

Speaker 8: You gotta focus on The Exactly. numbers don’t care.

Speaker 8: at all. So go through exactly what you just did with numbers. My, my numbers are good loose numbers, those are, you can cut off of that. I could shave all day long if it was, if I was a single truck guy,

Speaker 8: I could shave those numbers down and get

Speaker 8: my expenses way under a dollar 50. But I have to have scale. I have to have people, I gotta, all these things that, workers’ comp, there’s something I didn’t know I needed until I started hiring people. And then one day they’re like where’s your workers’ comp policy? And I’m like, what policy?

Speaker 5: right.

Speaker 8: Next thing you know, I’m writing a check for 50 K because I hadn’t had

Speaker 8: one for a while and I was supposed to have one and all, all these things just

Speaker 8: Happen overnight. And those are the things you don’t f you know, you don’t understand when you’re a single truck operator, you don’t need workers’ comp, but you should probably get some kind of occupational health thing, whether it be Aflac or something like that, just to help you out in case something did go wrong. But those are the things people don’t think about. So when you’re billing a small fleet, [00:43:00] it’s gonna take cash flow it’s gonna take dedication as you’re scaling up. You’re gonna do every single job. You’re going to be everything to everybody, and it’s gonna be seven days a week. ’cause trucks don’t stop. They’re all day, they’re all night. So it’s gonna work on you mentally. There was times where I literally contemplated like, what in the hell am I doing? This isn’t worth it. This is a job that I thought from a driver’s point of view, looks super easy. All I was gonna do is cash checks.

Speaker 8: That was the point of this. Jamie started, hell Bend Express. ’cause I was gonna cash checks. Guess what? I don’t cash a lot of checks. I work a lot of hours. But it, you have to have a passion for it

Speaker 8: because there’s gonna come a day where it doesn’t make you any money.

Speaker 8: That was the one thing, my wife, she’s always worked for somebody. She come in here and. One day she was crying and I’m like, why are you crying? She’s we’re working for free. I used to get a check no matter what.

Speaker 8: Like we are literally working for nothing right now. And I’m like yeah. Welcome to ownership. You didn’t complain in 22 and 23 when we were, making $200,000 a year, like we [00:44:00] were cashing checks.

Speaker 8: Now those days are gone. Now we’re back to the regular trucking that I grew up with in the

Speaker 8: nineties. It, it’s just what you do. So that’s why I tell guys that don’t fall for the easy money thing. This is, you’re just starting a business and there’s a low barrier to entry so you can start a business easily here. You know what I mean? You don’t have to go get if you start a restaurant, you got health inspections, you got all these

Speaker 8: different things. Trucking company, you just start owner, you can lease to somebody even easier yet, but if you decide to go get your own DOT number, that it’s just a form you fill out and pup, they give you one.

Speaker 8: You go buy insurance, it’s active. That’s it. They don’t care. You know

Speaker 8: what, there’s no qualification for it of any kind. They just give it to you. So that’s, it’s super low barrier entry. So anyone can do it, but only good ones survive. And the good ones pay attention to numbers. So that’s always been my advice, numbers. Watch the numbers, treat it like a business, have a ledger. Even when I didn’t know anything about computers, I wasn’t a computer guy, I was always driving a truck, so I knew to I just went and bought a ledger from, OfficeMax and [00:45:00] I just hand wrote all my expenses like you did

Speaker 8: there every single month.

Speaker 8: I just filled out a ledger, and that’s how I did things until I got to the fourth truck. And that’s when things got way out of hand. I’m just filling out all these forms and I’m like, oh my gosh. And then at the end of the year, you’re filling out quarterly and everything, and I’m like, we’re a computer just does it automatically for you, yeah, that’s what I would tell guys or gals, anybody that wants to get into it, is just to focus on the numbers and treat it like a business. Get in there and and focus on that.

Speaker 8: Do whatever you can to shave money when you can, and then when things are great, save it. Don’t get crazy and, just because you want $6,000 worth of exhaust stacks on your truck don’t do it. You might need that $6,000 someday.

Speaker 4: right.

Speaker 8: Just get the bare minimum for right now. There might come a day where you’ve got so much money you don’t know what to do with it. That day might come and then you get the truck of your dreams of the color you want and all that stuff. But until that day comes focus on the money.

Speaker: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Jamie, for joining us. This was super helpful. I’m sure our listeners and viewers are gonna get a lot out of this. Really [00:46:00] appreciate you. I’m going to, make sure that we get any questions from the comments to you. So folks who are listening, if you have any questions for Jamie or about Hal Ben Express or about starting your own trucking business, or just how a trucking business operates and works, and what it takes financially to have one above water, Jamie is a great person to ask.

Speaker: So leave your questions for him down in the comments and I will get them to Jamie. And again, Jamie, thank you so much. This was incredibly valuable and I hope you don’t mind if we catch up with you in six months, six to 12 months maybe, and see how you’re doing then.

Speaker 8: Yeah, sure. Why not?

Speaker: All

Speaker 8: back with me and see how this thing is still going.

Speaker: We’ll see. We’ll see. You never know what could happen, especially these days.

Speaker 8: Yeah,

Speaker: alright, thanks everyone and drive safe.