Never!
Why go O/O?
Please read this Blog article (link) written by one of our moderators; Old School:
Natural Progression of a Trucking Career
There are additional articles featured in the Trucking Truth Blog section addressing leasing and O/O. I highly recommend reading all of them before making a decision.
Anthony many people have the same question. Everybody’s situation is different. There is not a firm right and wrong answer in my opinion.
That said if you do go that route here are things to think hard about.
Leasing a truck is just renting it and paying for the upkeep for someone else’s assest. You are locked into a situation. If it doesn’t work you loose what you put into it. You have very limited choices from what make/model truck and in many cases what equipment you can outfit it with.
Purchasing is acquistion of an assest. Your not locked into a specific carrier. If the situation doesn’t work you take your assest somewhere else. You have choice over specing the right truck for you.
Maintance is ongoing with this equipment and can be very expensive. You need a bare minimum of 10k in reserve to just start out. This year I had a very unexpected major breakdown. It ended up by the end costing me close to 20k for the repair and 2 weeks worth of lost revenue. Is that something you are fully prepared to handle??
Revenue is always a roller coaster ride. Some weeks are very good and some aren’t. If you have to rely on a specific amount of weekly income to make it, then ownership is not right. I do well, at least in my mind. I make what I want to, more is always good, but we can’t always have everything. I have had weeks I made less than 100.00. and others where I made a very big check. I always look at the monthly bottom line average.
The bills never stop with ownership. You take a day off or a vacation your still paying bills and no revenue. Are you prepared for that??
I work far harder now than I ever did as a company driver.
These are just starter general things you have to answer in your mind before you consider anything else in my opinion.
When a violation by either a driver or company is confirmed, an out-of-service order removes either the driver or the vehicle from the roadway until the violation is corrected.
To add a few things to PJ’s points, I am a former small business owner which equates to being an owner op. Running a business is stressful and consumes a lot of your life. When your not “Working” you need to keep up on your paper/computer work and accounting, find the work, bill the work, collect payments and pay your bills. You also need to pay your own taxes(quarterly state and fed), insure yourself both business and health.
Being your own boss looks great from the outside but its a whole different reality once your in it! Even when you take a day off the business is lurking in the back of your mind making it hard to truly relax
Just to ride the coattails of what’s already been mentioned and something which rarely comes into the conversation is this. The folks you meet who are “making good money” have been at this game for a long time. They’ve established relationships with brokers and direct customers so they’re rarely just “looking for a load”. Building those relationships takes time and most nowadays are in too deep to take that time and added stress which leads to a quick and painful financial disaster. I work for a small company that specializes in heavy haul. We only haul broker freight but we only work with a small handful of brokers and are top carriers with them. Because of the power units and trailers we run, we can haul freight to places that nobody else can without significant permits and extra axles. The load I’m currently on which I just posted pics of is one of those loads. The broker insisted we couldn’t run it on 7 axles because their own trucks require 8. Well, the scale ticket proved him wrong and made him very happy. Situations like that don’t just fall in your lap, and the majority aren’t prepared for breakdowns, loss in revenue and different things it takes to be successful. There’s no way in the world I’d buy my own truck and I guarantee you that I can match or better the revenue of most owner operators as many of the veteran drivers on here can as well.
An owner-operator is a driver who either owns or leases the truck they are driving. A self-employed driver.
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Hello my fellow truckers. I've been a company man for 7 years and I am ready to cross over to Owner Operator. I wanted to know yall's opinion on leasing vs financing. what do you think is a better option. Thanx in advance
Owner Operator:
An owner-operator is a driver who either owns or leases the truck they are driving. A self-employed driver.