Caroline: [00:00:00] Welcome to this weekend 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 am very excited to have the opportunity to talk to motivation and box trucking to tell us all about their business and understand what box truck businesses can do in 2025 to improve their operations and profitability.

Caroline: Thank you so much for being here.

Motivation: Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

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

Motivation: Long story short my husband had his CDL class B. He was already running different things working for a few different companies. And then the pandemic hit. I actually was an interior designer. Nothing to do with, yeah, absolutely nothing to do with trucking. But once the pandemic hit, we realized what was essential and what wasn’t.

Motivation: And interior design is not essential. During that time, my husband was still working for another company. And he was like, I think this is the time to get started on our own. And we took a pretty large leap of faith and he taught me everything I know. So how to drive. And now, I would not do anything [00:01:00] different.

Motivation: I would not want to do anything else besides drive a truck,

Caroline: You wouldn’t go back to interior design.

Motivation: I wouldn’t, and I have a degree in it. I would not.

Caroline: The inside, I bet the inside of your truck looks really nice.

Motivation: This is my house. It’s out of my truck, but. But yes, it is. It is something that I. Didn’t realize I had a passion for it. Allow me the freedom and the flexibility and it’s just something totally different when you hit the road then you know a nine to five which

Caroline: Yeah,

Motivation: you know, it’s pros and cons, I really appreciate my husband doing that because Like I said, I would have never thought that would be the case for us at all

Caroline: that’s awesome. you are pretty lucky to have found your passion. earlier on in life. That’s really cool. Tell me about your operation. How many trucks do you guys have? What kind of loads do you haul? Where do you run?

Motivation: Okay we have, we fluctuate between one and two trucks. Since it’s just the two of us, we do not have any employees. We’ve tried that as a small owner operator situation. It’s not really feasible, especially running Amazon. Some people [00:02:00] may beg to differ, but we found that protecting our score and our count is not feasible.

Motivation: We can only be the only two people running. So we fluctuate between the two. Last year we had two trucks that we owned. We started renting with one truck then two trucks then purchased the truck rented one truck and then Purchased two trucks and then a truck broke down then went to rinsing one truck It’s just always up and down throughout these past four to almost five years now So at this point we’re down to one rental.

Motivation: So that is the long Unfortunately, winters Can be really hard on a truck and we had two really older trucks. i’m talking You 2006. So they did us very well. They lasted long and made plenty of money off of them. But yeah, both of them, unfortunately are no longer with us. So right now we’re down to the one truck.

Motivation: And we run primarily Amazon relay. We have done so since 2020 and haven’t really look back since we started with a little bit of OTR because that’s all you could really do. As a new person, but we got on with Amazon relay back in the day, as they say, when it wasn’t any real barriers to entry.

Motivation: So [00:03:00] we were able to get our authority and then pretty much get started right away. You didn’t have to wait the 180 days we were able to start immediately. And it was, I guess I was doing the pandemic. So freight was extremely high and there was a very high demand for drivers. So we got started back then and.

Motivation: We have not really looked to do any out of state or anything like that. So we run just local home every day Yep, that’s what we do. And then a few other contracts here and there but primarily amazon

Caroline: You’ve alluded a little bit to this. Things have changed for Amazon relay since 2020, right? So you can’t just get your authority and sign up with Amazon anymore. When did that change? Why do you think it changed? And how is it different than to get into the business now for box trucking?

Motivation: Back then, up until 2000 I want to say 20 Three, I believe is when they made the change. Where it might’ve been the beginning of 24, but it was more recent that they decided that they wanted people to have a little bit more experience coming in. Amazon was always thought of as the beginner step.

Motivation: A lot of truckers even say Amazon relay is not real trucking.

Caroline: [00:04:00] Interesting take. Sure.

Motivation: is. I’m like, it’s imaginary money going into my imaginary bank account, but at that point people always have looked down on Amazon because it isn’t like a traditional load board, which made it very good for beginners to come in.

Motivation: You knew you were picking up from a warehouse. You knew you were dropping off at either another warehouse or a post office. So it was very safe. You weren’t going into a lot of unknown territory and definitely for women. There were quite a few. Women when I first started, but at this point, a lot of husband and wives I’ve seen have started to do this where the husband can trust that the wife will be safe, knowing that they’re going to a post office where, normally there’s going to be some staff there or another Amazon facility.

Motivation: So that, that was really. Easy way for people to get their feet wet and they, like I said, they had a really low barrier entry. You didn’t have to have much experience and they were able to get you started immediately and you can make money immediately. So think in doing that because their demand was so high during the pandemic and the internet is just [00:05:00] so wonderful and letting people know that, here’s some way to make money.

Motivation: Hurry up and get into it. Unfortunately, I think a lot of bad actors joined the program. Both box trucks and on the Lion Hall rig side, I think a lot of scammers came through a lot of brokers still in freight carriers, still in freight or misplacing things, delivering things to the wrong post offices.

Motivation: And it just really, I think at this point, Amazon is just overcorrecting for the fact that they had let so many people in. And then a lot of people with the scoring system and everything, as they made them more stringent, people were unfortunately losing their accounts because it was really difficult to keep up with their standards of expectations and stuff of timing and rejections and stuff like that.

Motivation: So it, a lot has changed. I think they’re mellowing out a bit, but it was a drastic change about a year to two years ago, just trying to really cut back on who could come in and who could pull their freight.

Caroline: You mentioned the scores and the maintenance that you have to do with Amazon

Motivation: Yes.

Caroline: [00:06:00] that’s particular to them. Talk a little bit about that. How do you make sure, can you explain what that scoring, how that scoring works and how you make sure that you’re keeping your score high?

Motivation: Amazon pretty much calculates their score off of four categories on time rejections, app usage, and one other thing. I forget. Hold on. I can

Caroline: Maybe safety?

Motivation: No, safety is not towards your score. Oh, it’s disruptions. Sorry. Yes, so disruptions. Essentially, onetime and rejections are the highest.

Motivation: Everything else really doesn’t even change. App usage, It’s pretty much if you’re running your app while you’re taking the load, and then disruptions is if you maybe change a driver or reassign something like that, those can count towards disrupting the app. But the main things that impact your score are being on time and rejecting their loads.

Motivation: And throughout this past four to five years that we’ve been running with them, a lot of that calculation has changed as well. So at first, on time was I don’t, all time might not have changed as much, but pretty much you have to be on time to destination and then you have to be on time to the origin.

Motivation: So showing up to Amazon on time and [00:07:00] they actually dropping off the freight at the right times in the app and not being late, that’s pretty self explanatory. But then rejections is pretty much if you book a load actually committing to their load and not rejecting it before you actually go to pull it.

Motivation: So those weigh heavily. Amazon

Caroline: can’t say that you want it and then cancel at the last minute because you got something else that was better.

Motivation: And so the way that Amazon works, they put up loads all the time, and I think people were abusing it because they’ll book a low and then they’ll see something better and then they’ll just reject it and then book something different. At first, rejections only counted as one hit to your score, but they eventually change that depending on the timeframe that you reject.

Motivation: So at first, if you reject it anytime, it could be, One minute before the load started it would only count against you as one rejection. So pretty much you just rejected that one load however, they I guess didn’t like people rejecting as many as they were and so now it’s if you reject within Six well outside of six hours before the load it counts as one rejection Within the six hours then it’s four rejections and then it’s like within an hour [00:08:00] or something close then it’s eight rejections So that can make someone’s score go from an A to a C immediately just from one rejection.

Motivation: Say your truck breaks down on the way to the facility and you don’t have anyone else to cover it, then that’s an eight times a rejection. So if you only took six loads that week and you got eight times rejection, that means for that week you have a zero, which then impacts your score. And it’s a rolling six week score.

Motivation: It eventually drops off, but that six weeks is thousands of dollars.

Caroline: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So tell me a little bit about how much you’re making on Amazon. You said that a lot of people like to look down on Amazon but there is a reason that, that it keeps working for y’all. So tell me why, how many loads are you doing? How many miles are you running? And how much is that cost or a rate per mile?

Motivation: It’s a little tricky. I would love to blanket statement. How we run it, but we kind of change depending on the season we change based off of this is if it’s a slow season or if it’s peak season, I would we have totally different strategies for how we pick the loads. The easiest thing to say is [00:09:00] that we really don’t go outside of our 150 air mile radius, and we really don’t even pick loads that are more than.

Motivation: 75. We go very low mileage. My husband and I work together, so it’s a little bit easier than maybe one single owner operator to make as much as we make because we’re able to pass the truck off, work around those hours of service and everything. But we have maintained over 200, 000 each year with the one to two trucks.

Motivation: This year. It was a little bit less than we normally would have done with our situation, but It was a lot going on, but we still made two hundred and twenty thousand and then last year we made two hundred and eighty We averaged I would say about 250 for the past four years and we made our million dollar mark.

Motivation: So

Caroline: Congratulations. That’s a big deal.

Motivation: It’s a huge deal. Yes. A lot of people do feel like Amazon is trash. That’s what the motto is. Amazon is trash. And and I’ve said in plenty of videos, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. And so it’s very difficult, challenging and location is huge.

Motivation: If you’re not in a location [00:10:00] that is close to facilities, then you won’t be able to make that kind of money. Thank you. But I love Amazon because no matter where you are, if there’s an Amazon near you, you can pull from that facility. So you can turn it into OTR. You can turn it into something that allows you to make it back home.

Motivation: If you like do a combination of OTR plus Amazon. Some people run it. as their main source of income. Some people run it as something, they pick up while their other contracts have slowed down. But it’s just so many opportunities if you’re in the right location. And we are just so happy to be in a great location with a sort center and quite a few other fulfillment centers.

Motivation: So we’ve been able to maintain over 200 for the past four years since we started with

Caroline: let’s talk a little bit about that because revenue is one thing, but costs are another, right? One of our goals for this show is to really let people know how much it actually takes to run a business, get one started and be successful in this industry and make a profit. Because one thing, 250, 000 a year can sound really [00:11:00] amazing.

Caroline: But there are costs to running this business too. Let’s talk about that. How much on average, I know that you bought a truck. So if you bought that in cash, then that’s one thing that where you might be able to just split those payments up over 12 months to see how profitable you are that year.

Caroline: Or renting a truck the difference between those two things. Tell me about the cost, the benefits. of the those decisions and how you make them.

Motivation: Okay, so when we first started, we started with the rentals and we saw very little profit. It was amazing to see that much money come into your bank account, but it also left like immediately because the rental, they take their payments every week without hesitation. And then when you rent, you also have to get more expensive insurance because those are newer vehicles.

Motivation: So insurance was like. 1, 500 per truck when, if I’m running like a 2023, 2024, and each time you go back, they give you a brand new truck. So your insurance increases. So that’s another expense that people really [00:12:00] don’t consider when they decide to rent. However, like I said, we have really old trucks. We had a 2005, 2006, and so our insurance was like 700 each truck.

Caroline: And this is per month,

Motivation: yeah, per month. Yeah, per month. So it was like 14, 000, for the whole year, something like that. So when you’re calculating that, those just off the top costs, you can’t get around insurance and you can’t get around the rental costs, then it automatically eats into your profits. Like you have to try to cut that overhead.

Motivation: You have to figure out the balance between how many miles You should run because you pay per mile as well. You try to get the best deal. Ryder does do a pretty decent deal with Amazon accounts. However, everyone has price gouged that pan the pandemic and everyone coming in and flooding the industry, everything went up in insurance, rental price, truck prices, everything just skyrocketed and we’re still in that bubble.

Motivation: And they know that it’s a, a need for people to rent. So they aren’t really budgeting too much on those prices. So if you’re looking to get into the industry, renting, don’t expect a profit too much, especially if you don’t have [00:13:00] a aged authority and you’re taking what you can get, you go where you have to go.

Motivation: You can’t really, you don’t really have as much control over the amount of miles that you run. You just have to pay pretty much pay the cost to be the boss at that point. But owning our trucks, we saw triple the profit that we can actually net. So at that point, Yeah, I miss our trucks

Caroline: Yeah, I bet.

Motivation: even with maintenance, like we got those older trucks.

Motivation: However my husband found really great trucks. So we when we were looking for our trucks, we try auctions, we tried, purchasing from people who may have been, giving up their companies and just selling their trucks. But a lot of times you run into issues with trucks that you get from.

Motivation: Even from rental companies who then lease or sell their vehicles. The price is really high and the mileage is extremely high and it’s a lot of maintenance that goes into that. What we found was that we would go for companies who had box trucks but really didn’t run box truck freight. So our first truck was from a.

Motivation: A safe company and all they did was run local for their business, their [00:14:00] personal safe business. They would run a few safes, maybe to shows or to customer’s houses every once in a while. So it was very low mileage. I believe it may have been like 160 on that one

Caroline: And that was 2005.

Motivation: 2005 right and they had done overhaul on their trucks and everything So it was we got a great deal.

Motivation: That was maybe like 25, 000 that we paid for that we pay for that in cash because at that point we had saved up So we just paid for that straight up. We didn’t have any payments. No monthly payments Our insurance dropped to like I said, like 700 a month. So we were able to pocket all of the money there was no longer a rental charge

Caroline: Tell me what’s the, what, how do you compare that to a rental? How much does that on average? I know it changes month to month with how many miles you run, but on average, how much were you paying for a rental?

Motivation: I would say at the max when we had two, two trucks running the rental with the insurance and everything. It was close to 8, 000 a month. Yeah.

Caroline: Wow. So 4, 000 per truck.

Motivation: Pretty much.

Caroline: Wow. That’s crazy.

Motivation: run very low [00:15:00] mileage, we stay low all the time. If I can get a 35 mile load, I’m grabbing it. Some people prefer to go further, but you got to come back home and those miles count towards you.

Motivation: And diesel is a whole nother ball game. Yeah, so now I’m paying zero for a truck a month. Half the price of insurance.

Motivation: No death as

Caroline: It’s almost half of how much you’re paying. If you take the 25, 000 over 12 months, it’s about 2, 000 or so dollars a little more. So that’s almost double to be depending on a rental.

Motivation: And then it, maintenance comes in there. But like I said, we really didn’t go anywhere. So for To me, my husband and I have discussed trucking like 21st Avenue, and one of the things that we talked about is, how box trucks are really not meant to run OTR. They’re meant to run local, so when you take that truck all across the country, you can expect maintenance to be, like, top dollar.

Motivation: And then say you break down in a state, That isn’t something that you’re familiar with, and then you have to get it towed to a random shop that you don’t know what they’re going to do, what they’re going to say, [00:16:00] then say it doesn’t work, and then you try to get it back home, you got to get it towed all the way back, it’s just it’s so costly, and those are the things that I don’t think people really consider when they’re thinking about Going the box truck route because rigs are built to travel box trucks are local.

Motivation: You get the lift gate you’re dropping off maybe in residential areas and things like that, But you aren’t going far and a lot of the contract box trucks are local contracts, maybe Trastate or something like that, but you’re not going virginia to california

Caroline: Yeah. You might, if you live in a smaller state, Like Maryland, and yeah, you’re probably going out of state, or you’re in Michigan where I’m at in South, Southwest Michigan, you might be going to Chicago, and back, but, and so that crosses states, but so not necessarily that you’re not going to be interstate, but local within 150 miles is probably the way to go.

Caroline: Interesting. I understand you don’t have a dispatch service. Have you ever had a dispatch service? Okay. Tell me about that. How was that experience?

Motivation: When we first started, we grabbed the whole box truck package deal, go with a factoring company, go get your EOD and they’ll hook you up with the [00:17:00] dispatcher. And it was all of that, which we honestly found a No use of any of them. We, by the time we started running Amazon, there was no need for a factoring company at that point.

Motivation: They actually used to do instant pay for certain loads. You can get paid next day. They stopped that, but you still get paid weekly. We didn’t need a after doing my 1st audit and talking to. The, the auditor, he explained if you’re staying within the 150 air mile radius, all you need is paper logs.

Motivation: It wasn’t a need for my ELD. We weren’t even leaving Virginia. Every once in a while we may go to Maryland, but yeah we don’t leave Virginia. We don’t go anywhere. We’re home, we return our truck back to where we start in the morning. There’s no need for an ELD. And then also with the dispatching, I’m booking my own loads off of Amazon relay.

Motivation: I don’t need to factor that or pay someone else to do so for me. So all of those costs that, that box truck bundle usually starts with, I found in the beginning, since we were new we did do quite a bit of what I would consider OTR. We went, our first low was to Atlanta, Georgia. Can you still see me?

Motivation: [00:18:00] Okay. Okay.

Caroline: Oh.

Motivation: You can’t. Okay.

Caroline: It just went out.

Motivation: Yeah. Sorry. One second.

Caroline: That’s alright.

Motivation: If it’s not one thing, it’s another.

Caroline: Isn’t that the truth?

Motivation: I should be popping back up in a second.

Caroline: Yeah, there you are.

Motivation: I at least know how to fix that

Caroline: won’t believe it. I was Are you familiar with Edison Motors?

Caroline: They’re They’re making hybrid diesel electric trucks in Canada. Mostly in Canada. What do they call them? Like for they’re making a logging truck. I think they’re working on some dump trucks, but they’re many occupational trucks.

Caroline: And so we were talking about the switch to electric and what the electrification of trucking is going to look like. And. And he was saying, Hey, yeah, I I just don’t think that you can make truck and go a hundred percent electric because what happens in, big storm, hurricanes, fires, electric, electricity goes out.

Caroline: And you still need to get stuff places. So you still need a mix. You’re going to need a mix and hybrid. That’s why hybrid technology is really important.

Caroline: And. As soon as he said that his electricity went out

Motivation: Exactly.

Caroline: and it cut out. And I was like, wait a minute, where are you? And then he reconnected about two minutes [00:19:00] later going, see, this is what I’m talking about. So it was just

Motivation: Yes. Imagine being on the highway and that happens. What do you do then? No.

Caroline: Or you’re in a remote or you’re in a more remote place or, every technology. Has its place. But yes, we’re talking about that. We were talking about your experience using a dispatcher. You were saying that you went to Georgia, to Atlanta for your first load.

Caroline: So you did start off doing some OTR.

Motivation: We did the first one was to Georgia. It was a little outside of Atlanta. It was a a military base down there in the low actually paid great since it was a military base. And I don’t know how that dispatcher did that. She worked at an amazing job doing that, but she just wasn’t reliable. And then she switched over to her husband and then her husband was just non existent.

Motivation: And so at that point we had done a few other things. Like I had worked off the debt board We took one to Colorado and this is really what was the determining factor that we need to find something that was local and that is really what catapulted us into actually signing up for Amazon.

Motivation: We went to Colorado and it was a snowstorm and we [00:20:00] are from Virginia and it was like

Caroline: Yes, snow in Colorado is different than snow in Virginia.

Motivation: Yes I’m used to a little sprinkling everything shutting down saying oh my gosh can’t even open up schools nothing to like feet of snow And trucks just sliding off the highway. We were trying so hard to fight our way back before this, like we were the snowstorm was trailing us.

Motivation: And I said, both of us cannot die out here. We have three children. I said, both of us cannot die out here. So we said, we have to find something that is closer. And so that’s pretty much, sorry. That’s pretty much where we went. Can you see, still

Caroline: Yeah. I can. I

Motivation: they’ll just cut that

Caroline: That’s alright. Yeah. She’ll fix it. It’ll be fine. We’re not.

Motivation: Okay.

Caroline: We’re pretty low. We’re pretty low budget production here, so we have, we don’t have high expectations. It’s all good.

Motivation: I’m just trying to block my room at this point, but it’s fine if you see a little something. It’s a, I think you

Caroline: It’s all good.

Motivation: on the floor. But yeah, so pretty much with the dispatcher, I found that they prioritize rigs over box trucks. So it was so much easier for them to make that money just rolling with [00:21:00] rigs.

Motivation: That work came a lot easier for a dispatcher to find that type of work. So we weren’t prioritized, and I said, if that’s the case, I’m not gonna give 10, 15, whatever percent of what we do make, plus whatever the factoring company has to take. I’ll just try to find the loads ourselves. And then once we signed up for Amazon, like I said, there was no need for any of those third parties.

Caroline: Yeah, especially if you want to stay local, because like you said, a dispatcher is going to make about, it shouldn’t be 15, it should be about, 8 to 10 percent of whatever loads they’re getting you. And so they’re not really incentivized to keep you local. They are, they’re going to look at the bigger number, right?

Caroline: Because it takes about the same amount of time to book a, a dispatcher. 4, 000 load as a 400 load, right? And so if they’re making 10%, then they’re going to want you to take the 4, 000 load, not the 400 load takes about the same amount of time to make that call. So it really doesn’t incentivize.

Caroline: It’s probably why they’re mainly prioritizing those [00:22:00] OTR businesses and bigger rigs.

Motivation: And for this for us staying local, another aspect of that talking about profitability and eating into your cost a lot of the times when you’re out on the road you have to sleep somewhere and it’s illegal to sleep in your box truck. I know a lot of people do it, but if you don’t have a sleeper, then you’re not supposed to be sleeping in your box truck.

Motivation: So that means you have to pay for. Yeah, you’re not supposed to be doing that. You can get a ticket or a fine or whatever the case may be if you’re found sleeping in your truck. So you should get a hotel room, which means now I have to pay for hotels. You have to eat. You have to, and I know for us running Amazon overnight, Our meals were pretty much Wawa gas stations.

Motivation: That already was a minor cost, but imagine having to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, not just snacks, between making it back to your house. Those costs by staying local, we were able to avoid. And also just the safety of it as well. I could do the same thing my husband was doing.

Motivation: I could pick up where he leaves off because of the safety of the Amazon versus he’s all the way out in Michigan. If something [00:23:00] happens, I can’t pick up. Where he left off, he’s just stuck out there. And it may change, who knows? We may decide to do something different, but as of right now the formula that we’ve stuck with has just worked for us.

Motivation: I won’t tell everyone that will work for them. On our channel we’ve taken a lot of our Patreon because. That’s probably another reason why Amazon had to make so many changes. I think people who just wanted to make money but didn’t really want to work were watching those type of videos.

Motivation: And because box trucking is non cdl, really everyone’s going to YouTube University or Instagram, whatever the case may be, different social media platforms, it’s not people who are really Interested in the trucking industry. They’re more interested in some type of business to make money. So unfortunately, a lot of people got in, got hooked with the promotion of it being like easy money,

Caroline: Yeah. Whatever box truck guru told them, whatever. 

Motivation: And so between that and then the whole box truck bundle of getting all that, that cost up front, a lot of [00:24:00] people took a lot of their hard earned money and dumped it into something that they thought was going to be quick return and realized that it wasn’t as easy as they thought it was. And yeah even dispatchers came out of the woodwork, anything that doesn’t have a high barrier of entry, you just it comes with the territory.

Motivation: Yeah, it. Now, at this point, we just don’t, now that we’ve been in the industry long enough, we realized that there’s a lot of middlemen in the trucking industry. So dispatchers, factoring companies and things like that, unless you have, are running a lane that requires that we found that, just don’t utilize it because it turns out to be eating into your profits, which is

Motivation: At that point, why run the truck?

Caroline: Absolutely. Yeah. I think coming from the side of one of those companies that offer services like that, so Bob Tilts, Factoring, Fuel Card, and that’s the reason why we’ve structured our service the way we’ve structured it, which is to not, we don’t lock anybody in. So if you start off with your box truck going OTR and you realize that you don’t actually need or want to run your business like that, and you want to go local and you [00:25:00] want to sign up with Amazon, you want to get paid weekly.

Caroline: You are free to do that. You don’t have to, you don’t have to factor every broker or load that You know, get with us. You want to stop factoring your freight. You stop factoring with a 30 day notice. We don’t charge you anything additionally, but so many of these other companies sign you up for a year, two years, three years sometimes.

Caroline: For a rate that seems good, but then all of a sudden, six months later, you actually are looking into it. You finally get the time to look into the details and see all of these extra charges on here. And you’re going, eh, it really doesn’t make sense. Most of my loads are local anyway. I want to get out of this.

Caroline: Sorry, you can’t get out of it for another six months minimum. And, and then you have to send a message by email. Email, physical letter, carrier pigeon to get them to give you a letter of release. It’s just madness. It doesn’t make any sense. If you don’t need a service for your business, then you shouldn’t have to pay for that service for your business.

Caroline: [00:26:00] Especially if As a solopreneur, which so many people are small family businesses or just people on their own running their businesses,

Motivation: Yes. And I will say there is a need for it. It’s not if you’re, definitely if you’re one person, you physically cannot do all of it.

Caroline: right.

Motivation: then, definitely for factory companies, if you’re running those outside of Amazon who do take longer to pay out, there Then, you can’t continue to run if you haven’t made any money.

Motivation: So there is a need for all of those. However, you should always reevaluate your company. Like you said, if your business doesn’t need it, then you should cut that cost. Overhead is everything in the trucking industry. And as low as you can keep your overhead, the more money you can keep in your pocket. And so you have to just. It’s an experience thing. Whatever works for you, though, works for you. So listening to other people tell you how they run, because it’s not like it’s a corporation that we’re running for as an owner operator, you’re literally, you can do whatever you want. and whatever state you want, whatever you want to run.

Motivation: So it’s no box of box trucking. Whatever works for you. [00:27:00] And I think people some people like sign up for box trucking just to do Amazon. And at this point I say, no, don’t do that.

Caroline: Especially not in the beginning, cause you’re going to have to wait 180 days 

Motivation: Exactly.

Caroline: just to be able to haul one load for them.

Motivation: And don’t do it. There was a point where that was something that you could do, but now it’s not. If you don’t think that there’s any other need for a box truck in your area, then don’t get a box truck. Logistics is more than just box trucking. You could ride a bike, you could, have a van that’s transportation for people or medical supplies.

Motivation: Once you start your logistics company and get a DLT, you can figure out what works in your area and what actually makes you money and then transition between whatever vehicle works best instead of shutting down your whole company, cause Amazon didn’t work out for you. You didn’t want to keep being away from home.

Motivation: You weren’t making any money. And then You just shut your whole business down, but look outside of that for logistics, not just, the trucking, box trucking.

Caroline: And certainly owning your own business isn’t for everybody. People might try it out and then realize it’s not for them. Sell their truck and get a, Job as [00:28:00] a company driver and be perfectly happy. There’s a real need for good drivers. And if you can find a good place hiring, then that can often be the best option for a lot of people.

Caroline: Tell me about compliance. You already alluded to this a little bit when you said that your company doesn’t use ELDs because you’re in that 150 mile radius. Tell me more about compliance and trucking the scales, the everything that, that goes into managing compliance and safety scores.

Caroline: How do you think about that structure? It do it on a day to day basis.

Motivation: Once again, non CDL, we fly under the radar compared to Class A’s where you have no choice in a lot of the things that would allow you to remain compliant. For non CDL we don’t have to do the clearinghouse. We don’t have to do you should do scales every once in a while just so that you can get some type of inspection or something done, but even that’s not Mandatory depending on your state, Virginia, we have state inspections and you can do DLT inspections.

Motivation: And if I want something to go [00:29:00] to the FMCSA, I can, but like I said, it’s non CDL. So they’re not really looking for all of that compliance as they would from anyone, even with the class B running a box truck. We run non CDL box trucks as well. So box trucks come in different weight classes. So if you’re running a class B. truck, then yes, you would have to do more compliance with the FMCSA, your local and your state and the federal DOTs expect something different from you. So for us, that’s not something that we necessarily have ever faced. We run overnight primarily. So in Virginia, there’s no one on the road. Scales are usually closed.

Motivation: You may catch one that’s on the way back home, but at that point you’re empty. There’s very little, there’s very little to worry about. And I hate to say it like that because I know DOT, I’m sorry, FMCSA is constantly reviewing what they need to regulate. And

Caroline: So if you’re watching this six months after we said all of this, please go back and again because they’re always changing stuff.

Motivation: Yes.

Motivation: And I think definitely with the influx of non CDL that [00:30:00] regulations are going to come. There’s so much on the class a side that kind of flooded over there. We remain in the shadows, but as of right now the regulations don’t hit us as hard. And. That’s a good thing, because I think even more businesses would be out of business if we had to face the as stringent requirements as the actual commercial vehicles have to do.

Motivation: For non CDO though in Virginia, other states and depending on the time of day that you run, like if you’re running like New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, I’ve heard they are constantly on watch, box trucks and everyone. So They, you all get it, but Virginia, we’re a little bit more relaxed at the moment.

Motivation: And you rarely see a truck get pulled over even rigs. Like usually if a officer’s behind someone is because their truck broke down or something. So Virginia is not one of those States that you have to really worry about too much of compliance officers, like beating down, chasing you down on, in your truck.

Caroline: Yeah.

Motivation: yeah. 

Caroline: Where do you feel, where do you like to fuel? How do you choose where you go to fuel and how do you save money?

Motivation: That has changed since the [00:31:00] beginning of us running. Like I said, the whole package deal, fuel cards and everything were included with that. And then we realized that we really didn’t need that. And then now we just run pretty much wah. That’s where we stop. They usually, Wawa and Sheetz usually have good diesel prices versus truck stops.

Motivation: I don’t know why, but truck stops are usually more expensive. And we just, are able to get like a Wawa card and still get discounts on, snacks and diesel, whatever the case may be, at Sheetz and things like that. And these are local. I don’t know if there’s other it’s if you’re in another state and you don’t know what wild wine sheets are.

Motivation: So Bucky’s or I don’t know, a Royal Farms.

Caroline: Roadies,

Motivation: Yeah, things like that. Cause I know it’s not everywhere, those kind of middle, middle of the road. It’s not a mom and pop gas station

Caroline: So it’s not TA, Petro Pilot, but it’s Loves, but it’s also not Shell 

Motivation: right. Yeah.

Caroline: a mom and pop station.

Motivation: Exactly. It’s just somewhere in the middle where they’re usually easy to find there. There’s one pretty much every other exit. So we really don’t have to worry about the 24 hours being able to get the diesel since we do run [00:32:00] overnight. Those are usually the ones that are open.

Motivation: But TA, we used to do TA and pilot and everything like that. But like I said in terms of the amount of diesel that we actually have to purchase. It’s not necessary for us to get a fuel card. We just use our credit cards and just or debit card, whatever the case may be. Normally on average I say we do about seven hundred to eight hundred dollars a week in diesel so Like I said, we stay very close

Caroline: Yeah. And

Motivation: spend as

Caroline: fuel mileage does your, do your trucks get? I guess it depends. If you’re renting a newer one, then it gets better mileage.

Motivation: Right now I haven’t even paid attention to the fuel mileage for the rental and it’s been extremely slow. With Amazon, even peak season was very slow this year, so we didn’t run that much. We took a lot of days off around the Christmas holidays. It just wasn’t worth it. The peak season didn’t peak like that.

Motivation: And when you run year round with Amazon, then, you’re like, I don’t want to fight everyone who comes in just for this season. Just I use that for vacation time. But at this point things are picking up a bit more. [00:33:00] So I would say my husband could probably tell me something a little bit better.

Motivation: But our personal trucks used to get maybe eight, seven to eight miles per gallon. And this one may get like 10 on the rental, something like that. But yeah.

Caroline: Do you have tolls in Virginia? Are there any other kind of miscellaneous expenses?

Motivation: We have very few tolls in Virginia. Like E ZPass and stuff, as you get into northern Virginia, those get extremely expensive, especially when it bases it off of the size of your vehicle. That’s why we avoid that area.

Caroline: Okay.

Motivation: We stay central Virginia. We may go west into the mountains like Harrisonburg, Down like I would say up to 81 highway 81 and then we pretty much go down to the beach area so There’s no tolls in those directions maybe a few in richmond, but I mean it’s like a dollar Two dollars or something.

Motivation: It’s nothing like the new yorkers yeah Right

Caroline: And then finally, what about, I know driver salaries, you don’t employ drivers, you are the drivers, [00:34:00] but do you set aside a salary for yourself and your husband? So that you know you’ve got the bills paid, and then you take whatever comes off the top after that? Or how do you think about paying yourself for all the work you’re doing?

Motivation: That changes as well, depending on, where we are in life and what bills have come up. Whether maintenance has eaten into some of that or not, but we try to structure it. At some point we did have W 2s and I had payroll through ADP. But we found that with just the two of us, it’s way more expensive to run that payroll than to just pay the taxes at the end of the year.

Motivation: We just go back and forth with that. But when you need to buy something like a house or a car and they’re asking for W 2s, then to have that, it was easier for us to get stuff. And so it depends on where you are in life. Since we’ve already made those type of purchases, now we’ve put ADP to the side.

Motivation: We only use them occasionally for tax purposes, if they have certain forms and things that they can submit for us. But overall, we just pretty much just divvy it out, knowing what expenses we [00:35:00] have. And Sometimes it’s off the top. Sometimes it’s the entire check. It depends on what it is for us.

Motivation: But our accountant and our bookkeeper also keep us on track for that too. But,

Caroline: Okay. So you do have an accountant that you work with to make sure you’re getting everything staying on track and making sure, what’s supposed to be paid in taxes and keeping the business on track. That’s good to know. How much does that cost to have a accountant? Do you just pay that once a year?

Caroline: Do you pay it per month?

Motivation: For our account, it’s the one time payment to pretty much procure him for the entire year. And then once they actually file out taxes, it’s another payment. So I believe it’s 470 or 450 for the year for the business and then like three something for personal taxes. And then once he actually founds our taxes, another payment of something similar.

Motivation: I can’t remember the exact number, but that’s coming up pretty soon.

Caroline: Yeah.

Motivation: But yeah, I would say about a thousand dollars, 1, 500. For personal and business and for them to actually file it for us and to hopefully have us pay as little as possible in business taxes on the [00:36:00] personal side that fluctuates once again based off of what we were able to actually profit after all the business expenses.

Motivation: So overall, if you’re running a trucking company, I would suggest getting at least the

Caroline: That’s worth it. Yeah.

Motivation: It’s definitely worth it. Yeah.

Caroline: between a thousand and 1, 500 for a year. That’s pretty great. If you can find a deal like that.

Motivation: When you’re doing a business is best to have someone who can actually understand all of the business codes. A lot of times your purchases and things. Like purchasing a vehicle, definitely with the amount of cars and trucks and things that you may utilize as a trucking company.

Motivation: Like what to put under your business versus what to put under your personal name and how it’s used. They can help you separate those two in case you ever get audited, that you’re actually filing it appropriately. Because a lot of people I know personally that run trucks don’t, they don’t do all of that.

Caroline: Yeah, good advice. Last thing is maintenance. How do you deal with maintenance? Do you reserve a certain amount per mile or per month to make sure that you have enough in case truck breaks down or and I suppose with renting a truck, it’s a [00:37:00] little bit different.

Motivation: That is one thing that we When we had to get the rental back, as unfortunate as that was one side of relief that we didn’t have to worry about maintenance again. When we had our own personal trucks, since we don’t, since we didn’t run high mileage, there was very little besides PMs that we had to really do for our trucks.

Motivation: And when we did our PMs, our for one, we have a trusted mechanic. People say that they’re a little bit more on the expensive side, but at this point we’ve been with them since we were renting. It was the company that enterprise used in the beginning, one of our local companies and they’re like a small mom and pop, a few, maybe five or six mechanics there.

Motivation: But now they’re like family. We give them Christmas bonuses. We pass out gift cards. We do stuff like that. Baby showers for them. Yeah, we’ve become very close with them because they, yes, like they have kept us on the road. You have to have a trusted mechanic because now it’s not like your car.

Motivation: You can’t just throw something together and get back on the road or find like a sat, you could find a sound mechanic, but you will probably be back pretty soon in that going [00:38:00] back and forth adds up. So I’ll trust it mechanic when we had our trucks the most, I would say. We had to pay in maintenance one year out.

Motivation: Our truck needed that was actually at the beginning of 2024. One of our trucks needed spark plugs. Something major. It was like 9, 000 in, in January of all time.

Caroline: Ouch. The worst month for trucking.

Motivation: Yes, it was very tough. I would suggest doing the credit card aspect versus pulling everything out of your business checking account because you never know when you need the liquid cash and Maintenance could be five, 6, 000.

Motivation: It’s nothing for that for a truck. So just to have something where you don’t have to come straight out of pocket with that is extremely helpful.

Caroline: If you were to say, on average, how much did you usually set aside for maintenance, including PMs and maybe things that came up?

Motivation: On a monthly basis or monthly, I would say maybe like a thousand to 2, 000 maybe. I mean for yeah. I would say about 1, 000 to 2, 000 on a monthly basis. But like I said, I hate throwing a blanket statement out there because our [00:39:00] situation, like I said, we really didn’t go anywhere for someone who knows they travel further.

Motivation: You also have to account for toe. You also have to account for, everything else that, that may come up that needs to be replaced more often, by us staying local. I would say we run maybe at the most 5, 000 miles a month, like very low. So that, that really extended the life of our trucks so that we didn’t have to dump money into it.

Caroline: Okay. Okay. So I’m going to go ahead and of all of the numbers that you’ve given me. We have a really cool platform here that we like to use called Trucker Calculator. Have you ever heard of it?

Motivation: Okay. Not, maybe not the specific one that you’re doing, but yes, I would love to see.

Caroline: It’s a cool, it’s a cool little calculator here. Oops. So it’s a cool platform. This is just giving us an idea, right? So I’m gonna go ahead and delete all these. We said about 5, 000 miles, right? That’s on the high end. So maybe four,

Motivation: Keep it at

Caroline: five.

Motivation: Yeah, keep

Caroline: And then you said that it was two 220 [00:40:00] last year, right?

Caroline: So that would be about 18, 300.

Motivation: Oh, per month? 

Caroline: Huh. So that’s on average, right? Let’s say 22. How many days a week do you work?

Caroline: The truck working? Let’s say.

Motivation: We were running seven days a week, up until this year, now we take weekends off. But, holidays come up, all types of things come up, so we, of course we didn’t run 365, but I would say we, 20, 25 days is fair. Yeah. 25 days. Yeah.

Caroline: So let’s talk first renting the truck. So you said it was about 4, 000 per truck

Caroline: Per month. You don’t have a trailer payment because it’s a box truck. You have insurance though. And this was, let’s see, we said insurance for rentals was 1500 a month

Caroline: And then no trailer insurance. Obviously you don’t do dispatch. You don’t have anything for safety or factoring because you’re just running Amazon. We’ll take out driver salary for now and just say that the profit is our

Motivation: It’s a salary. Yeah.

Caroline: You obviously don’t need deductions because you’re not running under somebody else’s authority.

Caroline: And [00:41:00] then we said that this was, that you were getting, let’s see, with the rental, it would have been 10, 000.

Motivation: Somewhere around that. Yeah. Like probably nine to

Caroline: 10 miles a gallon.

Motivation: 10 miles per gallon. 

Caroline: If we’re doing 5, 000 miles, then that means you have to buy 500 gallons of diesel.

Motivation: Okay. Sounds about right.

Caroline: And then fuel let’s see.

Motivation: I would say seven 50

Caroline: 750 a week though, right?

Motivation: a week. Is this for the month?

Caroline: 000,

Motivation: Okay. Yeah. 

Caroline: Right? Is that

Caroline: Yeah, I think that’s right. And then no, nothing on tolls. Maintenance, you said between 1 so I’m just going to put 1, 500.

Motivation: are we

Caroline: I guess for renting, for renting, you don’t have anything, right?

Motivation: Yeah,

Caroline: do they, they pay for absolutely everything on maintenance or are there still a couple of things that you have to pay for?

Motivation: So far all PM stuff is paid for through them. And if something else breaks you, they usually just swap out the truck for you. So you really aren’t paying for anything

Caroline: So really nothing.

Motivation: unless you completely damage it. Like I’ve run under a [00:42:00] bridge, a low clearance or something,

Caroline: Oops.

Motivation: happened, but it’s possible, something damaged like that.

Caroline: can, it can happen. Can always happen. You aren’t leaving Virginia. So I assume you’re not paying anything in IFTA.

Motivation: I

Caroline: And then I can’t, I don’t think we had anything else that we talked about. Nope.

Motivation: mean, if you want to include maybe like food while you’re out. But yeah, there is no lodging. So maybe food, I’ll say 300, 400 or something. I don’t know. Something minute.

Caroline: All right. So now we’ve calculated that’s 366 per mile on average and a cost per mile of 176. Now this is pretty sweet. Even with your 400, 4, 000 a month truck payment, which for us right now is your rental payment. 

Motivation: If we could change that, cause I do want it to be a little bit more realistic if we’re talking renting. So I would go, I would say on average, it’s like 1, 300 a week is where we’re landing.

Caroline: Got it. So maybe that’s

Motivation: rental deal.

Caroline: got it.

Motivation: I want to make that a little bit more realistic.

Caroline: Got it. Got it. Okay. [00:43:00] So let’s say 6, 500 a month for one truck. And then, so that brings us up to 2. 26 per mile. So that’s above 2 a mile, which is high, but I think mostly, most of that is because of the truck payment. Trucking insurance,

Motivation: Yes, it is the truck. 

Caroline: You’re making an average of 3 66 per mile. Now, again, this is average overall the whole year, right?

Caroline: So some months might’ve been way fewer miles and even less per mile, but other months, maybe getting into peak season, September, October. You’re, you might be able to make more. Those seasons didn’t really play out this year how they usually play out. We, but we generally know what months are low and what months are higher.

Caroline: So that’s netting 7, 000 per month. Let’s say that’s both you and your husband. Would you say that both of you are working full time for the business?

Motivation: I would say, honestly, neither one of us really worked full

Caroline: So this is both, maybe one, 125% Of time, but between the two of you. So maybe,

Motivation: Yeah, my husband is taking more of it this year, but if we’re basing this kind of off [00:44:00] of last year, then yeah, that’s how you want to split it.

Caroline: Yeah. So this is what that looks like for renting a box truck. Let’s look at what it looks like. If you were to own your own box truck, you said that you bought a truck for 25, 000. Do you think if the next time, if you decide to go ahead and buy another truck, would you try to invest a little bit more, maybe get something a little bit newer?

Caroline: Do you think you maybe try to get the same around the same price range? What are you thinking now?

Motivation: That was our first, the first truck was a 25, 000. The second truck was only 15. So yeah, so I would try to stick within that as long as CARB compliance does not make its way to Virginia, then we can do that. Because like I said, those 2005, 2006, you can’t get away with that anywhere that is CARB compliant because we didn’t even have death, no death system.

Motivation: I would hope that is still a reality for us. But we are we understand that the market right now for a used truck Is about 30, 000. So if we got something that was a little bit newer, that’s the range that we would want to [00:45:00] stay in. We would probably finance versus pay straight up, which is what we did with the other two pay straight up.

Motivation: Things always just change a little bit, but if we do a truck, actual truck payment, we’re looking to do no more than like maybe a thousand a month in that,

Caroline: For your monthly payment.

Motivation: for the monthly payment, but for last year, the majority of the year up until maybe. November is when we started renting right before as peak season started.

Motivation: Unfortunately, that’s when we’re renting So up until then we had no truck payment.

Caroline: Let’s say that, let’s be a little more conservative. Let’s say 1, 500 a month would be your truck payment just to see, what we get here. We always want to be more conservative when we’re when we’re looking at budgets. But you said that truck insurance would be much lower because the truck would be older, right?

Caroline: You’ve said 700 a month. Do you think that’s reasonable, realistic for insurance nowadays?

Motivation: Depending because we owned our truck like we paid cash straight up We could tell them the value of our truck, which is what makes the truck insurance go down So if we’re still making payments on a finance vehicle, then I’m pretty sure whatever they value the truck [00:46:00] at is going to determine what your insurance payment is going to be.

Motivation: It’s not until you actually, own the vehicle that you determine what you want that payout safe. If something happens, that’s what they’ll value the truck at. I would say it would probably be like 900 to a thousand versus my set current 700, because if it’s newer, I’m sure it’s going to cost a little bit more.

Caroline: Yeah, so let’s say a thousand, and then everything else should be about The same except for maintenance. Now, you said that with an older, obviously, if you get an older vehicle, that means it’s going to be more. So you said between 1 and 2000 a month for maintenance. So let’s put another 1500 there.

Caroline: And really, if you look at it, Okay. This comes then comes up truck payment and plus maintenance 3, 000. And that’s what you can compare them to your rental, right? Because if you’re the rental includes maintenance, and so you have to take those two together and then see what the difference is on your truck insurance.

Caroline: But that brings the cost per mile down significantly.

Motivation: Oh yeah, definitely.

Caroline: And you [00:47:00] also have to think about when you’re, when you have an older truck, if it needs, if it doesn’t need more maintenance or things break down, you might not be able to go as many miles. Or you might not be able to take as many loads

Motivation: and you might be out of commission completely, which then leads you to have to rent anyway. While you’re waiting on the maintenance to be completed. So sometimes

Caroline: paying that truck payment, even if you’re going to rent.

Motivation: exactly. So if, things always occur with maintenance, you can’t really plan that you can anticipate plan for the worst, but you just never know when it’s going to hit you.

Motivation: So sometimes even with that maintenance set aside, even if it doesn’t take all of that money for maintenance, it could then be used towards a rental so that you can at least keep running. To make some money. Yeah. 

Caroline: Right. That is what that looks like. Your cost per mile and your rate per mile. How does that, you might be in the process of doing this planning. It’s January. So that, that’s what that that’s what that would look like. Did any of these numbers, once we put them all together, did anything surprise you or make you think about it a little bit differently?

Caroline: Or you’ve run these numbers before.

Motivation: run these numbers all the time. [00:48:00] We.

Caroline: on a monthly basis or quarter?

Motivation: Not monthly. Maybe quarterly. Every once in a while we’ll sit down and talk about it to figure out like what we are trying to do for the business or personally rearrange our goals.

Motivation: The only real numbers that Stick out right now is I just hate to see that rental payment. Just

Caroline: Yeah. That’s 6, 500 is so brutal, but it also does for someone who maybe, it might be worth it for somebody who doesn’t really know a lot about maintenance.

Caroline: It might be worth it to do that just because then you don’t have to worry about it and you can think about other things, but yeah. Oh boy.

Caroline: Unless you have, because if you’re just starting out too, there’s no way that you’re going to get over 3 a mile on a box truck,

Motivation: No, and And it’s going to be hard to do that anyway, because a lot of areas are saturated with drivers running the rates down even lower, because even with Amazon, a lot of people have began to run it out of desperation because they are the so consistent on a daily basis. They have loads and instead of sitting there, they just grab whatever.

Motivation: And so it makes it really [00:49:00] difficult to maintain that price per mile. But if you can. That’s what you hope for. It’s definitely worth it. But yeah, it’s ups and downs. Be ready for those ups and downs.

Caroline: for sure. So tell us if someone is thinking about starting a box truck business or any trucking business, any logistics business in 2025, what kind of advice do you have for them? 

Motivation: Would definitely say be patient. If you’re just starting, the barrier of entry has increased significantly. So you have to be able to not expect to make money when you first start. It is worth it once you figure out your area and once you understand and get, network and everything. But yes, just be very patient looking for profits to, to increase.

Motivation: Also networking is extremely important. As carriers, it’s like a loner type of business. Everyone’s out there on their own and dog eat dog. It is true, but you have to at least have someone that you can rely on as loyal. You don’t have to become business partners with them, in case something pops up and you need someone to cover something for you, or if someone’s running something a [00:50:00] little different than what you are, just to have someone that you can know what’s going on in your area. On our channel I have this state trucking series and the main thing that I focus on at the end of each video is saying join your trucker association in your state because those are going to be the people who actually know what’s going on in your area versus You know just going online and trying to figure out what’s happening.

Motivation: They have more connections be willing to talk because a closed mouth doesn’t get fed So yes, that would be it. Patience and networking is what I would suggest to you.

Caroline: to talk to us on this lovely, fine winter day. And thanks again. And I hope that it’s okay to hit you up in six months for an update on how your business is doing.

Motivation: I will be here. I’ll be glad to have the conversation with you. And if you want to come over to Motivational Box Trucking, you’re more than welcome to come over and definitely explain the side of the factoring and the all of the opportunities that you have for people to increase. The business with [00:51:00] you and just grow their business as well.

Motivation: You know across the platforms We need to keep having this conversation so that everyone can make more money

Caroline: Yeah, absolutely. Cheers to that. All right. Thank you so much.

Motivation: All right, you’re welcome. See you next time

Caroline: Drive safe, everybody.