I've been posting my monthly reports every month for a while showing my net profit as an owner operator for each month. I also show my running yearly net along side my monthly report for the year but I haven't really talked much about what it takes to get to those numbers.
I want to go over that a little bit today.
Days like today can be typical out here on the road.
Today I woke at 8am or so, I got up, made coffee and made a few phone calls to inquire of loads posted in the area I was in. I landed a load paying $1.83 per miles for 444 miles paying $850. This was a bit lower than I should of accepted but it was getting late and I still had to go and get it, so I needed to get rolling. I know up north I can make up the difference in what I loose today.
Anyway I loaded a heavy load of paper load going from Augusta GA to Columbia KY.
My pick up had an appointment time of 1:15 pm so I timed it so I would arrive at 1:00 since this place is so close to the house.
I load out of this place just about every week. Most of the time with long delays.
Today was no different. I finally made it to a dock at 3:30pm. At 3:45 I was told by my loader that my trailer had a hole and I was shown a screw hole at the top left corner where one of my marker lights was replaced over a year ago before I bought the trailer and a hole was left where a screw used to be. Let me remind you, I load out of this place weekly with the same trailer but today I have to go have this screw hole patched. The last time I loaded here is was raining and had been raining for over 3 days but anyway...
This brings up another issue where I needed a marker light replaced 6 months ago due to the one I had burned out. Shops don't provide ladders so I had to pay $110 for the shop to take two screws out, unplug my light and screw in a new $5 light because I could not each it.
I be damn if I was going to pay that again. Since I was 12 miles from home I went home, got out my ladder and put a screw in the hole left by whoever repaired that light before. One hour later I am back at the shipper, back in line to pick up my same load where I had just waited 2.5 hours..
So here it is 8pm and I'm still sitting in the same dock waiting for my light to turn green so I can leave.
This load is suppose to deliver in the morning at 7am but I done called the broker and told them that ain't gonna happen and explained why. Normally if I were not so close to home I would leave, drive late into the night and make this appointment so as to stay on track. Then tomorrow locate a new load, screw around all day getting that new load loaded then drive way into the night with that one.
To be honest that's the way trucking goes day after day.
Everything is trucking is linked. Now by me loosing a day and "working" from 1pm to almost 9pm I've essentially lost a days pay. The only way now to make that up is work a day that is allocated to be home. Since I was only 12 miles from home it's not to bad, I can sleep at home tonight. But still I was out working. The time put in is lost without pay.
Check out my article "Cost to Operate" and you will see how much I need per day to operate.
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