Caroline: [00:00:00] Welcome to This Week in Trucking, the podcast that tells you what you need to know about the trucking market for the week in 30 minutes and sometimes more. I used to say 30 minutes or less, but sometimes good things take time.

This week, we’re talking to Dylan, an owner operator, and we’re going to talk to him about his business, how he’s survived in this down market and what he’s doing to save money.

Thanks for being here, Dylan. 

Dylan: Thank you for having me. 

Caroline: All right. Tell me what got you into trucking. How did you end up here? 

Dylan: So what really got me here my son in law needed a job, right? And I had to figure out a way to help with them and how to get, just to have a job. So I started a trucking business, it’s very easy to get into, you fill out some papers, start your LLC, apply for an EIN, get your MC number, and you can buy a truck.

When I first, when I got into it, it was at the height or right before the downfall. So I started in July of 2022 and that’s, and that was right after COVID. So everybody’s getting [00:01:00] super high rates and trucks are really expensive. So I started and my first truck cost 75, 000. You can buy my same truck today for 35, 000.

I was able to recognize the money in the trucking industry and what was available. And it’s just the simplicity of it. Brokers all over the country are talking to shippers. They post loads on the load board. You call in, you get a load and you go and you pick it up, you haul it and you go do the next one.

You just bounce around city to city country, all around the country. Until you work your way back to the house. 

Caroline: So we’re taking a look at the numbers from your business and how much you’ve been making lately as an owner operator, how much it’s costing you to run your business and seeing what the profits look like realistically for a business like yours.

So first of all, thank you for sharing this information with us. Not a lot of people have the guts to do this. We’re using a platform called Trucker Calculator here to calculate the costs and earnings. [00:02:00] Trucker Calculator is a great tool. It’s free for owner operators and it’s really affordable for small fleets as well.

If you haven’t tried it out and you’re watching right now you can test it out for free truckercalculator.com and we’ll talk a little bit more in a future episode about the different features and stuff that are available on Trucker Calculator. But let’s start off with how much you spent. Some people like to start off with how many loads they booked, how much they booked those loads for, the good news and then they start getting into cost.

I want to start with costs up front. Because that is the bad news before the good news approach. So we’re going to start there. Not a lot of people talk about this. And so I just wanted to start out by seeing how much money are we actually spending on this business? So first off the truck payment this is broken down by week.

So I have here that the truck payment is about 350 per week. I assume then that’s about 1, 400 a month. You said it’s a box truck. Can you talk a little bit more about your [00:03:00] truck? When did you buy it and what does this payment look like compared to something that someone would maybe get today?

Dylan: Yep, so I bought this truck, in july of 2022 and it cost 75, 000. I had a I think it was like a six percent interest rate then but my bank all my bank wanted to do one year balloon note. And then after a year, we refinanced out for a five year note. And so my payments have been around 1400 a month between interest and everything.

And so it’s about 350 a week. And then my insurance is also, it’s about 13, 000 a year for almost 14, 000 years. So it’s about 350 a week as well. And so altogether I’ve got just a fixed cost of around 700 a week for trucking insurance. So whether my truck drives or not, I owe 350 a week.

Caroline: That’s on your truck payment. Tell us about the truck. You said it’s a box truck. Where did you get it? And if you had to do it over [00:04:00] again, would you do something differently when buying a truck? 

Dylan: I did. So I just bought it at a dealer in Dallas, Texas. It’s a trucking dealer and they had a whole bunch of them.

Just 26 foot box trucks, straight cabs. If I were to go back, I would get an extended cab and be able to put a bed in the back, almost have a little mini sleeper back there. It’d be way more comfortable. And it’d help on hotel rooms and stuff like that, but. Now there’s just a lot of other places that are trying to sell their trucks like Ryder, Penske, U Haul.

You can, if you don’t want a new truck, so a new truck on posts online and they’re around 150, 000 and they’ve already got the sleeper cab built into them and it’s about 150, 000 to buy a brand new 2025 box truck, but you can get these used ones like the one I have and it’s, you can get them for 35, 000 with 150, 000 miles.

I’m at 365, 000 miles on mine. And other than just the EGR sensors and stuff, I don’t really have [00:05:00] a lot of, my motor’s strong and the truck runs good. I don’t really see any slowing down of it. maintenance. Yep. I get it maintenance. I do every a hundred thousand miles, I’ll go do a transmission flush and I don’t know, I just keep the oil changed and checked regularly.

Caroline: What kind of fuel mileage do you get on that fuel economy? 

Dylan: So actually with my box truck, I get around nine and a half, almost 10 miles per gallon in my truck. Yep. So it’s way better than a semi cause a semi you’re looking at six and a half to seven miles per gallon. Sure. I can get three miles per gallon.

I can get much better fuel economy. 

Caroline: Yeah. So you already mentioned a little bit about insurance. It costs about 1, 400 a month as well. So it’s about the same as your truck payment. What does that 1, 400 a month cover auto liability, cargo insurance? Is there anything else? 

Dylan: Yep, so my policy, I’ve got a million dollar liability limits.

I’ve got [my truck] valued at 75, 000. I could probably come down to 50, 000 on that because that’s about what I owe on the truck lift. I’ve got [00:06:00] underinsured motorist coverage. So we can talk about that for just a quick second. When I first started in 2022, the first week we’re on the road, everything was going good.

In week two, we’re driving down the road and the tail end of another large carrier hit the front end of my truck. And now I’ve got wheels facing sideways. And so for about three months, my truck was in the shop, getting the whole front end rebuilt. So we called the state troopers.

We told them what happened. The state trooper actually said he saw the truck and tractor that matched the description of what we said up the road a little bit and he wasn’t able to get to them and ask them if they’re okay. We ended up getting an uninsured motorist claim for a hit and run, which is pretty much what it was, and it was also our first week starting out. We signed up for our ELD and we had a dash cam in the mail, so the truck got hit on a Monday and then my dash cam came in on a Wednesday to my house. So I hadn’t actually installed the dash cam, so I [00:07:00] didn’t have any proof of anything and I could not get any license plates on the other truck and we ended up with an insurance claim for a hit and run, but we were not making revenue for four months.

And so I had to make the truck payments, all the insurance payments. And at the time it was pretty expensive and hard. We [weren’t] making any revenue. But I’m still having to pay it and it took about four months to get the truck out of the shop and fixed. That was the uninsured coverage.

But then I don’t have general liability. We should probably get it if you want to do Amazon loads But everything I do is off the spot market and I pick it all up off the load boards So we don’t have general liability, but it’s just truck, comprehensive and collision coverage, uninsured, underinsured motorist coverage, and then liability.

Caroline: Auto liability. So the FMCSA requires 750 K in auto liability, but a lot of brokers won’t work with you unless you have that 1 million coverage. And just for anybody who’s listening who’s in New Jersey right now, they’re upping that to 1. [00:08:00] 5 million. 

So that’s going to be a big shift for New Jersey carriers.

And I wonder if other states are going to move in that direction just because the price of everything has gone up, right? And so to cover enough of what you would need to cover for for some accidents, maybe just to be a lot more expensive for the insurer. And I wonder if they’re going to increase those requirements on a state by state level.

Dylan: So I would imagine. 

Caroline: Yeah. So I noticed you added a driver salary here, 55 cents per mile. Is that what you set aside? So you said that you had driven the truck before. Is that something that you set aside for your salary or is there someone else driving the truck that you set that aside for?

Dylan: That’s what I pay my driver. That’s what, that’s also what I paid myself. I don’t know. You drive down the road and you see all the big trucks and they advertise between 50 and 60 cents a mile. 

Caroline: Yeah. 

Dylan: And so I settled it 55 cents a mile for myself. It’s my son in law driving the truck.

I’ll take care of him as well. At about at [00:09:00] 60 miles an hour 55 cents a mile is around 32 32 dollars an hour. At 75 miles an hour 55 cents a mile is up closer to around 42 dollars an hour Yeah, so it’s a pretty good salary. I mean my driver can make 1500 – 1800 a week pretty, pretty easy.

Caroline: Yeah, that’s good. And I think this is something that A lot of people don’t do is they don’t discount that when they’re an owner operator, if they’re driving the truck, everything, that’s not a direct cost to them is their salary is what they’re making. They’re bringing in all the profit. The folks at Bobtail, we always recommend to drivers, even if you’re the one that owns and drives the truck, that you set aside a cent per mile or a fixed salary per week or per month, just so that you know that you’re covering yourself.

And even if you go in the red, that you pay yourself that salary and that you have that set aside so that that you’re covering your own expenses, right? Your own personal stuff, and it’s not getting in the way of your own personal life. I think that’s really [00:10:00] important to separate those two things out for sure. Okay, so we talked about fixed costs. Let’s talk about variable costs. For those listening who aren’t familiar with it, variable cost is something that changes with how much you use the truck or how much you work. So you fueled for a little over a thousand dollars, meaning that you got 9 miles to the gallon. Now, when I saw that, I was like, whoa, that’s unbelievable. But for a box truck, I think, is that pretty standard or do you think that you’re getting a particularly good fuel economy with this truck? 

Dylan: So I think it is pretty standard. You’ve got a 26, 000 [00:11:00] pound gross vehicle weight limit and it’s got with the, it’s got a six, seven Cummins in it. So I think that’s just pretty, pretty standard. average for that motor. Whenever you go online and Google other trucks, they’ll say around the same, between nine and 10. And then I have gotten down into the eights before, but that’s pulling a full truck load and going through the mountains and stuff. But generally on open highway at 70 miles an hour, I’m getting almost 10 miles per gallon. 

Caroline: Totally. So I noticed actually that you didn’t put maintenance in this particular week.

Caroline: So potentially there just weren’t any maintenance costs that week. What do you usually set aside for maintenance? So even if you have a week or a month where you don’t have to do any big maintenance, is there an amount that you set aside so that you save up for maintenance costs in the future? 

Dylan: I would like to think about 500 a week.

Dylan: Or 500 a month. That’s 500 a month, 6, 000 a year for maintenance.

Caroline: Yeah, that makes sense. Is it a particular percentage or that’s just what, your truck will need? 

Dylan: It’s hard to really know. You could pull into a, so I got an international truck and if you go to an international dealer, they’ve got different rates, in, in Denver, [00:20:00] it’s 250 an hour.

Dylan: Whereas in new Orleans, it’s 140 an hour. Yeah, so so I mean if you change out a sensor I had to get a sensor changed in new orleans It was over two thousand dollars and it wasn’t but a couple hours of work But whenever they hook their computers up to the truck and they run all their diagnostics, you know I mean they get five hours of computer time you’re paying 250 an hour for that or 140 It depends where you go So you really want to be able to find a good mechanic and find somebody that you can trust to help you with your Vehicle and keep it maintained.

Caroline: That’s great advice

Let’s now talk about what you made. What kind of freight are you hauling normally and where do you usually travel? 

Dylan: I go in wherever they send me and I’ll haul whatever they stick in the back. We do stuff is like a lot of gaming machines like for casinos. Okay. They’re slot machines. I’ve done MRI and medical equipment. I’ve done the carpet and rugs for different trade shows. And I’ve, I’ve picked up a lot of different new products that companies are making and delivered to and from trade shows.

I had something I thought was cool. There was a brand new motorcycle that’s not been revealed yet for one of [00:14:00] the big motorcycle carriers. So I picked it up and I delivered it and it’s not even for sale. It was just going to display well, different different motorcycle dealerships. That’s pretty cool.

Caroline: That’s awesome. 

Dylan: Yeah. Your box truck stuff is more it’s to me. It’s custom loads. There’s a lot of LTL stuff less than trailer load. So stuff that will be that won’t fill up a big truck They won’t you know a 53 foot but there’s also a lot of like little stuff. I’ve done one time I was in Idaho and I picked up three boxes that weighed less than a hundred pounds and I picked it up at the air force base and it was airplane parts and I delivered it to Sacramento, California, and it paid pretty good. And it was just three little boxes that fit in the front corner of my truck, 

Caroline: wow. That’s wild. Yeah. So you grossed 4, 150 and it says you drove about 2, 465 miles which comes out to 168 per mile This was the first or the second [00:15:00] week of June, I believe and in the first two weeks of June the spot market was pretty rough for most people spot rates had been have been going up a little bit week over week since then. Have you seen any change in your in the rate per mile that you’re getting since then or is this kind of staying steady?

Dylan: Yep, so so my goal is to be at around a dollar fifty a mile or a little or better. And if the spot rate doesn’t quite fit that I mean I try to skip those loads because i’m not here to lose a bunch of money, we have to make some money and so when i’m picking my loads, I try to get everything at least a dollar 50 or within a dollar 45 i’ll take five cents a mile, you know a dollar 45, but I can generally find freight at a dollar 50 or better.

Caroline: And is that, how has it been changing over the last month or so? Have you been getting better rates than in June? 

Dylan: It has been harder, especially this year. Spring hit and you [00:16:00] expect the your slower months to be October, November, December, January, February, but then when spring hits in March, April, May, a lot of shippers don’t want to put their freight on the road as much in the winter because of all the storms and the ice and snow and getting their stuff caught up in snow storms or things that could happen.

They don’t people don’t want a lot of claims So it’s some it’s harder and slower in the winter to find freight And I really expected it to take off and boom in the spring. But this year it didn’t, not like it did last year. Last year I was getting around 1.75 a mile. 

Caroline: So this is, that’s a pretty significant drop then.

Dylan: It is. Now, also at that time I was using a dispatcher. They told me they had over 350 trucks running. And so I think they had a little better freight, they had they’d already built their network. I don’t know how much spot market they were using, but you know, I was using a dispatcher and I was paying them 10% of everything, so a dollar 1.75 and then 17 and a [00:17:00] half percent of that is going to them.

So i’m really down closer to 1.60 a mile anyways, 1.58. So I mean it was still about the same it took away some of the stuff that I did You know, it’s what they say when you start out, whenever you start out, it’s hard to find freight within your first six months or a year.

And at the time I was I was a receiving manager for a big Lowe’s, but I was the shipping manager at their distribution center. And then I knew that I wouldn’t be available to manage my truck properly. So I ended up hiring them. Now I’m full time with the trucking company and growing in this industry.

I’m able to do what they were doing. 

Caroline: Yeah. So what are your future plans for your business? 

Dylan: So my goal for what I want to do, I want to be a fleet management kind of like my dispatcher had. My goal is to inspire entrepreneurs through the traditions of American trucking to own their own business and to be their own [00:18:00] boss and grow their own company and do what they want and show them how that they can make a 250, 000 a year business off of one truck.

And if they want to grow beyond that, and I’m going to help them understand the hours of service requirements. I help with fuel and just help them understand their numbers and how to be profitable in this industry. 

Caroline: If you had any advice for someone starting out about how to be profitable or how to do the best that they can in that first year what advice would you give them?

Dylan: My advice would be really to understand the truck and get a feel for it because your maintenance is very important. Your physical assets and you’ve got to learn how to take care of it and figure out some of the stuff you can do on your own. An oil change at one of these big, over the road places can cost $500. You could pull into a Walmart or something and buy all your own stuff and you can change the oil in 30 minutes yourself for a hundred dollars. But really just figure out some of the stuff you can do [00:19:00] and be hands on because this is your business and you’ve really got to own it, and sometimes you gotta get your hands dirty and do the stuff.

But when you’re over the road, a $500 oil change is pretty expensive when you can do it for a hundred. 

Caroline: Ah, yeah, totally. Who wouldn’t want an extra 400 in their pocket? 

Dylan: I know it. I know it. For 30 minutes. For 30 minutes. 

Caroline: Awesome. Anything else that you would like to share with other small carriers? 

Dylan: I think it’s so the way the market is right now we everybody’s going to tell you that the market’s down and it is and there’s a lot of freight out there. It’s not paying very well, but I would say that if you started now, your truck’s going to be a lot cheaper, because I started whenever the freight was pretty good, but my truck was almost two times more than what they are now.

So there’s risk and everything, right now, if [00:21:00] someone were to get in it, they could get the most expensive pieces: the truck. And so if you can get in now and buy your truck at the rates that they are today, then it would really help you in a year or two.

Cause I believe that the market rates will come back 

Caroline: For sure. Yeah, that’s always the case, right? When the freight is paying really well, lots of people want to buy trucks. And so the demand for trucks goes up and so does the prices. And now when freight is lower and not many people are buying trucks, shoot, this is the time to buy because they’re a really good deal.

Dylan: That’s right. That’s what I’ve noticed. 

Caroline: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Dylan, for joining us on this Week in Trucking. Really appreciate your time. Really appreciate your transparency in showing us what kind of rates per mile you’re getting and what you’re spending on your business. I think this is going to help a lot of people.

Dylan: I hope so. And I’m glad I could help. Awesome.