Welcome to This Week In Trucking, the podcast that tells you what you need to know about the trucking market for the week.

My name is Caroline.

He is the owner of MKE Logistics, Jose Lozano, and he is going to tell us all about how he runs his very own power-only trucking business.

What does your financial management system look like?

What do you do?

What do you track to make sure that you are making a profit?

Right now, what’s helping me a lot is this dedicated route.

If there are no loads, I go to the other company that I call, the Fisher Bros, and I do the same thing.

I go up, drop off, and I look for another load right away.

I don’t want, I’m dropping off today.

By AM, I must have a load by 11 AM to pick up, and either go to Texas or just go somewhere around.

And then if you had to go, let’s say, from Colorado, I like to go to Chicago, maybe $2,000, not a big deal.

But I go to Wisconsin, there is another company, and they build like a utility trenders, the tractor supplies.

They might pay $5,000 for load, between $3,000 and $6,000 to the average.

So I have a plan.

What am I going from there?

Where to?

It’s just you gotta plan how you go, how you want to come back, and making good money.

So when you are dropping off a load at 9 AM, let’s say you finish unloading at 9, and you’re out looking for a new load, are you calling people that, are you just using the load board?

What’s your system?

What’s your process?

I use the load board, start going to the load board day before, and still going to see what’s going on that day, if I see something for the next day, or basically, sometimes they pop in loads day before for good money.

But I always use the load board before I get any loads to answer the question, basically.

And when you look at that load board, what are you looking for in terms of rate per mile?

There’s two things that I look for.

Basically, first thing is money, how much they pay, and how far you’re going.

And then how much you wait, because I’m not going to pick up the 48,000 pounds of lumber from Colorado down to Houston for 1,000 miles, for 1,000 dollars.

I give up.

I don’t do that.

But there is a lot coming up from Colorado down to San Antonio.

A thousand dollars with 5,000 pounds, maybe.

I might take it because 5,000 pounds doesn’t weight that much for a truck.

Like, okay, deal.

It’s not great.

It’s not.

But it’s okay to say we’ll take it.

But you basically are stealing it from the hatchet.

You got another load, same amount of weight, same amount of money.

You got 2,000 dollars in your way back.

And that’s how you build it, little by little.

So in terms of rate per mile, what do you say is your, let’s say you’re maxing out the weight, but let’s say 30,000 pounds.

What would you hope to get as a rate per mile?

At least 2 dollars per mile.

Right now, the market is 2 dollars, maybe more, but if you can get 2 dollars per mile, it’s good.

But this is a trick though.

This is the problem.

2 dollars per mile, and miles is one thing, but 2 dollars per mile and 3,000 miles is a different thing.

Then pay 2 dollars per mile.

That’s a problem.

They say 2 dollars per mile, like right now, the guy just called me, one more to take a load from San Antonio, Texas, all the way down to Pasco, Washington, which is right in the border between Seattle and Portland.

Almost 2,000 miles.

They paid 4,000 dollars.

It’s not too bad, but it’s not what I wanted.

But the problem is you got to go to Port.

But it’s getting out of there.

Going to Oregon, you got to pay almost 350 dollars per litre.

In and out of Oregon is expensive.

So they pay 4,000 dollars, mainly 350, you basically are 3650, mainly it’s 1,500 dollars in fuel.

Going that way, you’re basically taking home like 2,000 dollars by the time you finish that load.

And how would that take you?

That takes you, that’s 4 days?

Almost 3 days.

3 days?

3 days, yeah.

If you’re doing it legally, legally it’s 3 days, because 60 miles, yeah, you average 700 miles per day, it’s 1960, 1960-something miles, you average 700 miles per day, you make it in 3 days.

Now, if you live today, it’s basically Friday, so Saturday, Sunday, Monday, you get there by Monday, and this place doesn’t matter, because you just go there, drop off the trailer, pick up an empty one.

But between tomorrow and Sunday, there’s no loads posted coming out of that area.

You might see it on Monday morning, but Monday morning, you might be able to get something used between Monday.

But if nothing happens on Monday, nothing happens on Tuesday, you’re losing it.

And now, the only things coming out of that area is lumber.

48,000 pounds, paying $3,500.

You call for more money, they say, get three people in the line.

Do you want it?

Oh, I passed.

Yeah, I’ve heard lumber is not, it’s not a great business to be in right now for trucking.

But if you go to Home Depot, any other stores trying to buy a piece of lumber, two by fours, how much they are, $5.

How many pieces you put in your truck?

It makes no sense, honestly.

Makes no sense how they do their things like that.

Yeah, so if you’ve been to Home Depot and been appalled by the prices, just know that it’s not because of the trucking.

It’s not our fault, because we’re not getting paid.

Like before, last lumber lot that I took up out of that area, I’ll tell you something.

Two years ago, I went to Asko, Washington, the same lot, exactly the same lot.

They paid me $8,000.

Wow.

And I came back with a $6,000 lumber, but now you go $4,000, they want you to come back with $3,500.

It’s a big difference.

Huge.

Do you feel it’s dollar difference, dollar less in Pasco?

It’s a dollar more than Texas, it was like $4.50 per gallon, and even before was like $5.50.

So it’s like balanced and not balanced.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Let’s talk about the costs.

So one of the benefits of being power only is that you don’t have to be paying for a trailer, but obviously there’s still a lot of other costs involved in this.

So let’s first talk about the truck.

What does your truck payment look like?

Mine is $2,400 a month.

And then how much do you pay on insurance in that?

My insurance is for the whole year is $24,000.

So $2,000 a month.

How does that insurance and truck payment, based on what you’ve heard from other people, how does that measure up?

Is it higher than you’ve heard?

Is it lower?

The truck is average, because that’s basically when you pay for about 130 deal, which is only $70,000 deal.

And this is how business make their money.

Insurance wise are between $16,000 to $40,000 per year.

So that variance a lot depends on your company, your driving record, your safeties.

And a lot of things they say, oh, we want to look for what you have the worst, what you had the best, and then we combine it and we give you a great number.

You know what I mean?

It’s crazy.

$2,000 a month or $24,000 a year, it’s not the highest that I’ve seen.

I’ve also heard $36,000 a year.

Yeah, exactly.

For newer folks in the industry, which is just brutal.

It is.

The other thing that I’ve heard that can really impact this is, like you said, your safety scores, your compliance.

How do you manage that?

Do you have a service that helps you manage compliance and safety?

Or do you just do it yourself?

And how do you manage it?

I do myself and every three months, I take my truck to the LOBS or any truck stops that they can do maintenance, they call inspection, DOT inspection.

They go to the inspection.

They say, you have to fix these few things.

You can fix those ones and get rid of that problem.

But it doesn’t matter because you fix those little things out there.

When you go to the scale, the way station, they put you in.

They might find exactly the same things you just fixed.

And there is to take, they might give you a violation.

They might give warning and they might let you go.

And that’s how you score.

It goes up or goes down.

It’s like playing golf.

Basically, you know how you play.

You know how to play golf.

You know how numbers variance.

If you hit the ball too many times, you lose a lot of points.

And the truck’s safety, same thing.

If you get a lot of points, you get too many violations.

It’s not good.

If you got none, you got to have at least three passes in a year, two to three passes in a year to have a good safety score.

How much do you pay for those inspections or those inspection reviews at LUFS?

$150.

Okay, that’s not bad.

Not much, though.

What if you need to do some repair?

I’d say, no, leave it like that.

And I take it over to somebody that I know that it can.

I mean, there’s people work, help people in trucking industry.

They do their job for a reason, for a good price of money.

Somewheres they know you’re a trucker, they want to take so much money out of you.

That’s a problem.

Yeah.

Like it’s just crazy.

Do the right thing.

Yeah, some people will say, that’s the business, right?

There are some businesses that have strong ethics, that want to do well, right?

You can do business in anything.

So why are you a mechanic or why are you a carrier?

Why are you a broker?

Why do you do those things?

Because you have good skills.

You want to make a difference.

Yep.

But some people take an opportunity to take advantage.

And that happens in the middle of the night and in the middle of nowhere.

That’s the worst thing that can ever happen to you.

Flat tire in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere.

We’re talking about almost $2,000.

Yikes.

Depends.

But I’d say at least $1,000 to $2,000.

Maybe more.

Yikes.

Let’s talk about other fixed costs.

What are some of the other things that you have to pay every month as a trucking operation?

I have my insurance.

I have my payments.

I have ALD, which is well…

Which one do you use?

I use Motif.

How much do you pay for that?

Threat fee, I think is $350.

That’s a tie.

I think it’s $1,400 per year.

But I got cameras.

I got some other things we lay to.

That makes more sense.

Yeah.

No, yeah.

They record everything.

So a little over $100 a month.

Yeah, like $120.

Maybe $110 per month.

But it’s working because there’s a camera.

Just in case you get an accident, it wasn’t your fault.

There’s only way you can prove.

It wasn’t me.

It was not my fault.

Do you have cameras in or around your trailers too?

I got it in the truck in front and the corners.

They can see basically what’s behind you.

The truck was in the front and was in the center part area.

And then obviously, you are the driver of your own truck, but do you set aside yourself, driver pay?

No, we haven’t done it yet because I got the wife.

She does all the paperwork.

She’s basically my owner.

And she gets everything on the side.

But she gets paid?

Yes.

You better?

Yeah, happy wife, happy life.

Talk to me about fuel.

Where do you fuel up?

How do you try to save money on fuel?

And how much do you usually pay?

I can go from recent a gallon up to that’s what I paid this trip that I went to Montana.

It was a crazy trip that I just did it though.

From the border between Mexico and USA, almost to the border between Montana and Canada.

Wow.

Yeah, almost 2,000 miles.

27 to 3?

273, that was the lowest in Texas, and 320 was the highest up in Montana.

Yeah.

You said you got 6.5 miles to the gallon?

Yes.

So that means you have 11,900 miles divided by 6.5, so you’ve got to buy about 1,800 gallons, and at 295 per gallon, that’s about $5,400 in fuel.

You’re in a Gulf state, right?

That’s usually a good place to have for fuel.

And fuel is down compared to last year.

Oh, yes.

Have you noticed a difference then in how much you’re taking home between last year and this year just because of fuel, or have rates dropped enough where it doesn’t really make a difference?

It does.

I would say almost 20% more money to your pocket now.

Wow.

Just from fuel?

Just from fuel because I only fuel out of Texas.

I run Texas and trying to before I get out of Texas, there is a fuel station that is cheaper.

And basically, I got enough fuel to go.

If I go to Colorado, Texas, came back from Colorado, I don’t fuel until I get to Texas.

And basically, that’s where I ran last year, almost a whole year, only Colorado was going to.

Like now, once a week, they got me going to Pennsylvania, Boise, Idaho, every other week sometimes.

First time going to Montana, and it vary variance.

They’re not sending me that far every week or every two weeks, like once a month.

But the other ones were locals.

And what kind of fuel mileage do you get on your truck?

I think it’s about almost 6.5 miles per gallon when it’s loaded.

And it gave me average everything when it, let’s say I run it for last miles, it gave me like 6.9.

Depends on how much you’re hauling too, right?

Well, like I said, I don’t over load my truck.

What’s the difference between a $5,000 load, like you were saying, and a $40,000 load?

Do you see a big difference in fuel mileage?

Yes, it is.

You can run maybe, I say more when you are over, not overloaded, but my loads are what?

Sometimes less than 30,000 pounds, 25.

Like this one that I just took over, 10,000 pounds, 8,000 pounds.

It’s basically what, 4,000 miles, $2 a mile loaded, $2 a mile unloaded.

It’s a good business.

You can get no more out of that.

What about maintenance?

What do you set aside for maintenance?

How do you manage that?

$250 for maintenance, and every two weeks, oil change, which is $500.

$250 per week?

$250 per week for maintenance.

I don’t think $250 per month would cut it.

No, for maintenance and oil change almost twice a month.

Yeah.

That’s what I’m saying.

You got to take care of your equipment, otherwise.

And who do you go to for maintenance?

Do you have somebody locally that you trust or do you just shop around every time?

No, I got a local person in San Antonio that every time I’m done going that way or coming home, I got to go to San Antonio.

So I stopped by over and would get it done in one or two hours.

Because he does the oil change, maintenance, filters, everything what it requires to.

And top of that, greased the whole truck.

That’s nice.

They got lobs.

They’re trying to sell you a lot of things that don’t need it.

Yeah.

And from $500 oil change, one of the $800, $900 worth.

Have you done maintenance yourself, learned how to do oil changes or things like that yourself?

Or that’s not really a thing?

No, because there is, let me see, 11, 12 gallons of oil.

What do you want to dump?

Did you just screw one, did you screw up when they’re nearing your truck, you’re making a mess?

Yeah.

And when I park my truck, they don’t want to know.

It’s like, where a house place?

They don’t want no mess.

No people working in your trucks.

But I know people do that.

And I say, if you know what you’re doing and you like what you’re doing, that’s fine.

It’s great.

At least you know the oil you’re pumping into your truck.

That’s the type of oil you want to have.

This guy gave me the opportunity to change oil by my oil, my filters, just gave it to them, and he will do it for me, for 105 lives.

But he charged $50 to do the oil maintenance that he does, just labor, but I bring everything to him, so it’s not $50 for.

Got it.

What about other, you talked about permits, taxes, you’ve got…

If you were to round out the number of the amount of other expenses that you have, we covered the basic ones, but how much do you set aside for those other things like permits and…

If that is about…

If that is about every $350 for every three months.

Okay.

And then you got this new thing that I told you, what was the name of that?

It was $500 for every 20, 29, I don’t remember that.

Yeah, it’s linked information about it below.

I can’t remember what it’s called right now.

There’s a tax you got to pay…

Annually, right?

It’s the…

No, you got to…

Heavy vehicle use tax, is that what it is?

Something like that, yes.

Yes, heavy vehicle use tax.

I think that’s for if you’re over…

Every year, it’s heavy.

What do you pay for parking?

$200 a month.

OK.

I just like a ready space.

They have a huge parking lot, and they’re not had too many trucks out there.

It’s just as a reason because it’s safe.

They got cameras all over.

I was going to say, how do you feel about parking out there?

It’s fenced in, it’s got cameras.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, it’s secure.

Right now, for what I hear, people are stealing trucks and truck stops.

Stealing diesel, too.

I just talked to a carrier that they had diesel, like $3,000 worth of diesel stolen out of their trucks.

I’ll tell you, no, one time, me, my wife, and my little one went on a trip to Wisconsin.

When we come back, we park in one of the truck stops in Missouri.

And we park, and I don’t usually like to park between two trucks.

I hate it.

It’s not my…

But since people are complaining so much lately, the truckers are parking anywhere, semi-trucks, blah, blah.

My wife said, we should park over here.

We should do the right thing.

I said, no, I don’t like this place.

We should stay out there.

We stay here.

Okay, we stay there.

But one o’clock in the morning, she heard noises.

Somebody’s around the truck.

Maybe the neighbors.

No, I hear noice.

And then I get up, get ready, open my door.

I see nobody around.

And then we fell asleep.

Wake up next day in the morning.

And I saw my fuel tank.

I was like, I’m almost a fuel tank yesterday, last night.

And I keep driving because sometimes the digital thing…

The sensor.

And balance up and down.

And as I was going into up and down hills, I noticed that I have a less than a half tank.

It’s 200 gallons.

It shows that I only have about 160.

So I stopped at a truck stop, went to get coffee, look around.

One of my fuel tank caps was off.

So they were basically still not sealed for my truck.

And they do that.

I saw one video last time.

I might send it over to you in Facebook.

How they do that?

They park right next to you.

Have you lost be to a step?

No, but it just, I guess it occurred to me.

It’s, yeah, how do they get in?

How do they take off your fuel caps?

And those sleepers, they remove all those, the bags, all the functions you have out there and put those barrels, metal barrels, and they run the lines into, and they have a little pump outside, between the fuel pumps in your, in their truck, and they start running those little hoses into your tank.

They start up and that thing is sucking off.

They feel under your truck.

So it’s the person who you’re parked next to, who is standing next to you.

Exactly.

Are your neighbors on the side?

I will look for that video, and I will send it to you, so you get a better idea.

It’s just…

Oh man, that puts, that throws a wrench into truck parking, too.

Because parking is hard enough to come by.

That’s what I think.

I don’t blame those people who park outside a highway.

Yeah.

Just don’t park.

If you want to park, one recommendation that I want to say to those people, do not park when you, right before you get off on the exit.

Go up before you get off on the exit.

That’s the best part.

And check where it’s legal.

Because I know in Texas, I think it’s usually legal out there, but in a lot of places out east, you can’t do that.

They’ll give you a huge fine.

Yeah, they do.

It’s just like going to Tennessee or Kansas.

Here in Michigan, too.

There’s always…

Yeah, do not park.

But they do not park because they know.

The only problem is get off on the highway before the exit.

And you park is not a good idea.

Because drivers are tired sometimes.

They’re trying to get off.

And first thing is right there.

They want to cross behind you.

But if you go up the street, you cross over the street, you go down, it’s much safer than being outside.

And right before the ramp.

You follow me?

Yeah.

Do you have to pay for parking at truck stops?

A lot.

Two companies that are doing it right now, there’s some places, Pennsylvania.

They got, let’s say they got 100 parking spots.

50, you pay for 50 or 50 or free.

Well, remember, most of the people are stopped by 5 o’clock in the afternoon.

So they take those free space.

They only release the parking ticket.

What do you think about this truck parking club?

I think if you use their, if you buy their diesel, you shouldn’t pay.

But I don’t buy diesel from Pilot.

I don’t buy diesel from Lobs.

I don’t buy, basically, I don’t buy diesel from them because it’s too pricey.

Yeah.

If you got to pay $20 parking ticket and a safe.

Right.

And I say, but I save $200 on fuel.

Okay.

Exactly.

It’s a big difference, right?

You only spend 10% of your best interest right there.

So let’s talk about, let’s come back to the revenue.

So I have a good idea and we’ll calculate up on the screen.

And when we publish it, all the numbers, yeah, all the numbers cost per mile.

But in order to understand what the cost per mile is, we have to understand how many miles you usually drive in a month.

So how many miles do you usually drive, let’s say loaded and unloaded?

Let’s say, okay, okay, let me see.

So it was 4,000 miles this week.

That was 9,800.

See if you can help me out though.

2,000, 4,000 miles this week.

And the week before was the 2,100 miles.

It was a holiday too.

Yeah.

Last week.

And the week before that, I went to Colorado and I came back.

I was so lucky getting a load for $4,000 from Colorado coming back for 1,600.

Nice.

And that is 1,800 miles.

Okay.

Before that was Pennsylvania for almost 4,000 miles.

That means?

I go loaded.

I came back on loaded.

Basically, that’s how that work.

So 1, 2, 3, 4.

Yeah.

This is over 4 weeks.

4,000 miles.

One week, 1,800 miles the next week, 2,100 the next week, and then this week was another 4,000.

11,900 miles.

And something like that in the map.

Yeah.

And you said you tried to aim for $2 a mile.

Pretty much.

Yes.

That was basically what I was getting for those ones.

Cool.

All right.

All right.

So I have total costs for a month is $11,426.10.

If you’re going 11,900 miles at $2 a mile, that’s $23,800.

So that means that you are netting.

Now we have to make sure you got to pay your taxes, you got to pay income tax and all that, but you’re netting about $12,000 per month then, if you’re able to run like this.

Does that sound about right?

Yeah, kind of balance, because you got ups and downs.

Right.

I had a better month than this one, but every…

This is a good average throughout the year, to say.

Some months are a lot better, some months are slower.

So what do you do to manage that up and down?

Do you have money set aside?

How much, how many months of expenses do you have set aside so you can deal with that fluctuation?

I got about $20,000 in one side, just in case we needed to.

Yeah, so that’s about two months of expenses.

Yeah, two months.

Exactly.

Two months plus whatever extra that I have saved for the truck, just in case.

Nice.

I appreciate all of your transparency.

Being able to share all of this is really useful.

I think a lot of times people like yourself, when you first started out, see all of these magical things on YouTube about trucking and how much you can make and how amazing it is, how you can become a millionaire in under 12 months.

But like you said, there’s no such thing as getting rich quick in trucking.

And in reality, there really isn’t such thing as getting rich ever in any industry.

And I would say that now on YouTube, the story is being in trucking is terrible.

You can’t make any money.

It’s a lost cause.

So it’s funny.

It’s flipped the script completely from the COVID years.

What would you say to someone who’s thinking about going into the trucking industry, but is a little scared about what people are saying about it these days?

I say, just keep watching those YouTubers.

Take the best from them, because maybe 50% of what they say is a lie.

But there’s a lot of things you can learn, not from those people saying making so much money.

The reality of this thing is not listening to the people how much money make.

It’s what is going on right now.

And I’m not going to say do not watch any YouTubers.

Watch them.

Look, learn from them.

Learn from their mistakes, because there’s a lot of you like to say, what’s the best?

What’s the best?

What’s the worst?

And then you do a balance.

What’s the best?

What’s the worst?

All right.

You like driving?

Welcome.

You don’t like driving?

Don’t even get into this business, because this business keeps you away from home.

It takes about two years to feel like, okay, that’s exactly what I wanted to do.

If you’re passionate about what you do, driving, if you think that trucking is going to be your solution, you got to sit down with a wife and have a nice conversation.

And I will say, ask yourself, are you sure you want to do this?

Do you have the money to invest, but you really want to do this?

Go ahead and do it.

If you’re not secure, not sure about it, don’t even try.

Money is not going to come to your pocket.

You got to go for it.

You got to look for the money.

You got to look for the opportunity.

It’s basically you who’s going to be working in that truck, nobody else.

Even if you have a dispatcher, you got to keep calling your dispatcher.

You got to know what you’re doing.

That’s what I’m saying.

Look at those YouTubers, see how they talk and take the best from them.

That’s my advice.

You can, I can say so many things that are not true, but doesn’t help anybody.

Study, look at the market, go to whatever.

There’s a lot, like I said, there’s a lot of tools out there you can learn the reality.

And this show is one of them.

So if you like this kind of content, like seeing real life examples, the perspective of the trucking industry from the people who run the trucking industry and make it happen every day out on the road, make sure you like this video.

Comment below with your questions for Jose.

We will send your questions to him and get answers from him if you have more questions.

And subscribe so you don’t miss out on any more of our interviews with people like Jose.

Yeah.

We’ll be open.

Any help, anywhere near any questions, I’m able to answer.

I’ll be more than happy to help anybody and answer any questions.

And thank you so much for having me.

It was great.

And we got to keep working together.

Remember, nothing is free in this life, man.

Nothing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You said it.

Thank you so much.

And everybody who’s watching, drive safe.

Thank you.

See you.