Owner Operator Anyone going it alone?

[RedEgg]

I certainly respect that many people pay to have much of the compliance stuff taken care of for them. I learned a long time ago that there's no such thing as doing something yourself and saving money. If you're doing it yourself, you're simply earning the money you'd otherwise have to pay someone else. The trick is being able to do it fast enough and well enough to justify the time it takes. I'm sure with YouTube and a manual, I could completely rebuild an engine. I might have to buy $50,000 worth of tools and be down for two years but I could do it. My question is, are any of you doing it all yourself? I'm talking about IFTA, rules compliance, all that other stuff people started hounding me about 10 minutes after I submitted my DOT number request. I've come across a LOT of things that are obviously going to require attention but not one single one of them so far seems and insurmountable task on its own.

 

[mndriver]

I did it all alone from 2012 until 2020.

Gave up my authority last year when my insurance went from $8700 annually to $24,000 annually. Too many loss claims from drivers I had leased on to me.

Enjoying others doing all the office tasks for me now being leased on.

@Mike is an independent also

Others have had their own authority here as well and gone back under others authority as well.

 

[RedEgg]

I did it all alone from 2012 until 2020.

Gave up my authority last year when my insurance went from $8700 annually to $24,000 annually. Too many loss claims from drivers I had leased on to me.

Enjoying others doing all the office tasks for me now being leased on.

@Mike is an independent also

Others have had their own authority here as well and gone back under others authority as well.

If you hadn't hired other drivers, would you still be happily doing it yourself? I think I like the idea of being in charge of everything. Of course, I've been WAY wrong before and probably will be again. My wife doesn't work outside the house. I expect she'll want to get involved too. Of course, her focus will be on keeping me earning as much as humanly possible. Nothing wrong with that I suppose.

 

[mndriver]

I would go back to just running a dry van.

Just like @Mike is doing

 

[Mike]

The paperwork requirements for one truck is very manageable. I take care of everything from within the cab of the truck. By that, I mean in the spare time while getting loaded/unloaded, and a little time in the evenings when you are parked.

There is no way I would consider paying someone to do any of this work for me. It’s just too simple.

I don’t factor, either. I invoice the customer on every load. I can do this in basically about the same amount of time it takes someone to send the information to their factoring company and I keep all the profits.

If you want to pay people to do your IFTA, collect your money, dispatch your truck, you are better off being least to a good carrier that has good paying loads and good customers.

$7500 / year roughly for a single truck to factor.

$15000 / year for dispatching, based on 6% and $250k per year in revenue. Higher or lower depending on where each of those numbers fall.

No idea what a compliance service costs, never plan on looking into it. Guarantee it isn’t cheap though.

There is no way I can justify losing $7500 per year just to get my money a little faster. Most of my loads are paid in 24-48 hours already. Even if they weren’t, still not giving that money to someone else.

No way I’m paying someone $15k to dispatch my truck for me. Pretty positive I can do as well or better than they can anyway.

 

[Electric Chicken]

I'm going to pay OOIDA to get me set up with authority and permits and such but nothing day to day administrative.

 

[Mike]

I'm going to pay OOIDA to get me set up with authority and permits and such but nothing day to day administrative.

The value there is the BOC-3 process agents for each state. With them setting it up, and a membership, that’s all covered.

They also have a good drug consortium program. They notify my wife by mail that I am due for a random, and she randomly calls me within 30 days to send me to get tested. You could probably utilize your dad in that capacity.

 

[RedEgg]

The paperwork requirements for one truck is very manageable. I take care of everything from within the cab of the truck. By that, I mean in the spare time while getting loaded/unloaded, and a little time in the evenings when you are parked.

There is no way I would consider paying someone to do any of this work for me. It’s just too simple.

I don’t factor, either. I invoice the customer on every load. I can do this in basically about the same amount of time it takes someone to send the information to their factoring company and I keep all the profits.

If you want to pay people to do your IFTA, collect your money, dispatch your truck, you are better off being least to a good carrier that has good paying loads and good customers.

$7500 / year roughly for a single truck to factor.

$15000 / year for dispatching, based on 6% and $250k per year in revenue. Higher or lower depending on where each of those numbers fall.

No idea what a compliance service costs, never plan on looking into it. Guarantee it isn’t cheap though.

There is no way I can justify losing $7500 per year just to get my money a little faster. Most of my loads are paid in 24-48 hours already. Even if they weren’t, still not giving that money to someone else.

No way I’m paying someone $15k to dispatch my truck for me. Pretty positive I can do as well or better than they can anyway.

This is pretty much exactly what I'm thinking. Between hearing other people describe the things I haven't gotten to yet, and doing the things I have, it doesn't seem like there's anything so far I can't handle. Like you, I'll be a one man operation for the foreseeable future. After hearing the horror stories about how horribly a bad driver can sink you, I don't think I'd take the risk on anyone but family and, to be honest, not all of them. I did set up as a C Corporation because I want the option of using my 401K money to help fund the business through the ROBS program if I need it to. That may have been a mistake. It doesn't seem like I'm going to need it. That end of it seems a little confusing right now so I'll probably end up getting help making sure I don't go to jail for misinterpreting the tax code. I just want to finish out my working years finally working for myself. If anyone is going to treat me like garbage from now on, it's going to be my wife!

 

[Mike]

This is pretty much exactly what I'm thinking. Between hearing other people describe the things I haven't gotten to yet, and doing the things I have, it doesn't seem like there's anything so far I can't handle. Like you, I'll be a one man operation for the foreseeable future. After hearing the horror stories about how horribly a bad driver can sink you, I don't think I'd take the risk on anyone but family and, to be honest, not all of them. I did set up as a C Corporation because I want the option of using my 401K money to help fund the business through the ROBS program if I need it to. That may have been a mistake. It doesn't seem like I'm going to need it. That end of it seems a little confusing right now so I'll probably end up getting help making sure I don't go to jail for misinterpreting the tax code. I just want to finish out my working years finally working for myself. If anyone is going to treat me like garbage from now on, it's going to be my wife!

Taxes are the only thing I don't do myself. I highly recommend these folks, and I don't get anything for recommending them. Been using them for a few years now, and am very happy with their service.

Trucking Taxes| Jones Tax and Benefit Solutions | United States

Jones Tax and Benefit Solutions is where truckers and small fleet owners go for trucking payroll for truckers, and independent trucker tax planning and preparation.

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I actually could do my own taxes, but once I reached the point of depreciation and crap like that, I decided to hand this off. I immediately benefited from it, because the software programs don't always catch all the stuff you can benefit from. That, and tax cod changes all the damn time and I don't want to keep up with it.