Authority Pros & Cons

[AHMLLC]

What are some pros and cons of having your own authority? My inexperienced trucker buddy believes owning your own authority is the devil(because he cant afford it lol) and my buddy who is established said its the best decision he's ever made.

what are your thoughts?
How much does it cost to have your own authority in your state?

[snailexpress]

(05-31-2018 )AHMLLC Wrote:  What are some pros and cons of having your own authority? My inexperienced trucker buddy believes owning your own authority is the devil(because he cant afford it lol) and my buddy who is established said its the best decision he's ever made.

what are your thoughts?
How much does it cost to have your own authority in your state?

If you are organized enough to do paperwork and keep records and required documentation, work with brokers or direct customers go with own authority.
Expenses are
DOT registration is about 300
Insurance
Truck and trailer IRP
IFTA
Annual safety emission inspection
Drag consortium annually
Taxes
Some other crap mandatory required by FMCSA
Local business registration fee.
Load board
Office equipment.
I was in lease short period about 18 months then went on my own.
Result is less driving and fuel expenses more profit. Dispatchers don't care about your profit at all and will send you 400 miles deadhead to make a penny profit.

[Evotrucker]

I've got some experience in this!

is it worth? you have to ask your self that. what might not be good for you might be some life changing experience for someone else.

if you have children 18+ they can dispatch you from the home office, i know plenty of familys that do this together and have started with bare minimum at start. Some advise before hand, take it easy on the kids. they will be learning an entire industry by them self's. your first year might suck because a lot companies want or need for you to have authority longer then 1 year or 10 yrs!.

paper work, paper work, paper work and paper work. this might consume a lot of your time so have a system in place because if you have a inspection or need to find proper doc for authorities, this will save you face and trouble in the long run.

Factory companies arent bad starting out your first year or for the next 5 years, if you dont have financial means and dont mind paying a % of your loads for them to pay you. people will tell you or say " i will never pay someone else to pay me! or its a rip of or a million other reasons". i had a great relationship with my factoring company, they went above and beyond for us and did right by us.

if you just want to make a living for your self and dont want to make someone else rich then getting your authority is the way to go. One truck can turn into 100 or more later down the road. when i had my own authority, i was working 80hrs-100hrs a week minimum! its not easy by any means. that was just me dispatching and doing everything else but driving the truck.

in my experience its not worth driving more then 600-700 miles away from home base, east sucks because of toll's, weight stations, pay isnt worth shi#t coming back. didn't run west because well money wasnt out east at that time.

[Chamberpains]

It really is a personal question you have to answer. Im a Lease O/O and im fairly content with it. The way i look at it is, I pay my small time guy a piece of my $$ for his authority and to answer the phone, find my freight at the rate i need, if something goes wrong I burn his ear up not 10 other idiots that i have no idea where they live. Basically he's my office guy and he takes the risk of not getting paid by his customers. It's my break over point. Anymore tedious paperwork and phone calls and I wouldn't want to do this line of work. Its just my personal breaking point.

[Rawze]

I prefer the "Owner-Op on training Wheels" myself. It is not for everyone though.

My qualcomm beeps, and I drive, doing what it says. I earn a bit less per mile but have no headaches, hassles, or problems getting paid in return. I also know exactly how much I am getting paid, and get paid for for every mile the truck goes loaded, empty, bobtail, or otherwise.

We take home net (money you can keep) a decent pay for what we do and it is comparable to any one else's take home pay in the dry-van/reefer market after facting and all the other headaches. The advantage is that for us, it simply becomes a matter of how much we feel like driving it vs want to stay home.

This "No-Brainier" style of truck ownership works best for us, as we don't care to hassle with anything more than driving and maintaining our truck to the best of its ability. Could I earn more if I went all out and got my own authority? -- Sure thing I could,.. but at what gains vs headache?. -- For us, all the extra effort and headaches would not be worth that bit of gain, we earn a decent living off what we got already.

- Lastly, being part of a mega-fleet as an O/O, there is no such thing as sitting still or waiting for a load. There is always high demand everywhere we go and the truck literally never stops moving when we are out unless we are out of driving hours. To me, this pre-managed mega-fleet sort of "maximum driving efficiency" earns us money where others have to sit for that day or 2 looking for that back-haul or that next trip that pays well out of a dead zone. For us, there is no such thing, as there is always UPS, fedex, conway, or some other mega-carrier's stuff we can grab and go back out with, keeping us moving and the pay coming in steady.

-- There is also the "support" factor in what we do. Being leased onto a mega-fleet with more than 2,000 trucks and 4,000 trailers ... Hit a deer in Montanna, blow out a tire, something breaks, someone runs into you in a parking lot, or simply break down in the middle of no-where, get sick with the flu, etc... A phone call later and there is another truck there to take your load to its delivery within a few hours, no questions asked. There is a "break-down" department that has already figured out what shop or road service in that area is the cheapest to get you going again, and someone on the other end to support that odd situation.

-- Personally, if someone is starting out in trucking, I think they should do the O/O on training wheels for about 3 years or so, learning how to maximize every dime out of owning and maintaining a truck before even considering their own authority. WHY? -- Because truck ownership is a learning curve that takes years to get good at. It takes years of experience to become very efficient at solving your own problems, keeping your equipment in decent shape yourself, and all the things that count the most towards keeping your money in your pocket these days. -- Add into that the fact it takes a few years to get good at having your own authority,.. and those first few years experience of running a truck efficiently before hand will compliment it instead of making it more complex and more difficult.

that is my take on it, no one has to agree.

[AHMLLC]

Very powerful statements.

[Waterloo]

I've done both, but I am happy where I am at as a lease driver. I stay in my neighborhood, like a local driver. The insurance alone to do our line of work is not cheap, we have to carry 3 million in cargo and liability. It is hard enough to keep this newer equipment on the road without worrying about everything else involved with running your own show. Like Rawze said, it is just a no brainer.

[simon999]

(05-31-2018 )snailexpress Wrote:  

(05-31-2018 )AHMLLC Wrote:  What are some pros and cons of having your own authority? My inexperienced trucker buddy believes owning your own authority is the devil(because he cant afford it lol) and my buddy who is established said its the best decision he's ever made.

what are your thoughts?
How much does it cost to have your own authority in your state?

If you are organized enough to do paperwork and keep records and required documentation, work with brokers or direct customers go with own authority.
Expenses are
DOT registration is about 300
Insurance
Truck and trailer IRP
IFTA
Annual safety emission inspection
Drag consortium annually
Taxes
Some other crap mandatory required by FMCSA
Local business registration fee.
Load board
Office equipment.
I was in lease short period about 18 months then went on my own.
Result is less driving and fuel expenses more profit. Dispatchers don't care about your profit at all and will send you 400 miles deadhead to make a penny profit.

I was leased several years to the few carriers. Last one I worked with, all good paying loads always for company drivers. All the left overs - for 0/0. I opened own mc this year and I already can tell that I drive less miles and make more profit. First three to six months are hard because some brokers wont give loads. But after that you good.
Yes its more paperwork. Im doing my own ifta, invoicing to brokers, finding my loads. Yes its more work, but eventually more profit.
And I agree new o/o in this bussiness should be trained on wheels few years. If new o/o jump to his own authority not understanding rates and lanes whete to go can be out off bussiness soon. Plus need to have solid $ in the bank to start this.

[Chamberpains]

(06-01-2018 )simon999 Wrote:  I was leased several years to the few carriers. Last one I worked with, all good paying loads always for company drivers. All the left overs - for 0/0.

You can avoid some of this (not all) by looking for 100% O\O companies to lease to. Then you just get into seniority problems. But thats with any company.

After 10 years of doing the lease gig I'm contemplating going the route of Simon999 for the choice of running when and how I want. But thats only after I am very confident on every aspect of owning and operating a truck very efficiently and knowing all the freight lanes and dead zones and how to get out of them with all your profit still intact. So, I'd say Rawze 3 year training wheel time is a pretty good. It gives you time to work out the bugs,bumps and bruises from truck ownership and also allows you to build and collect good business relationships because you have hands on experience with customers and building rapport with them.

Thats not to support stealing customers. Many companies will make you sign "no compete" or " no back solicitation" clauses in contracts. But the time and experience will give you an idea of how and who to talk to when searching for customers.