Case file 013 · Hotshot trucking
He Quit a 6-Figure Job to Haul With a Pickup. Here's What He Kept.
A pickup and a long flat trailer cost far less than a big rig, so almost anyone can start. That's the catch: everybody does.
The numbers
The story in 30 seconds
A former fraud investigator quit a six-figure office job in August to haul freight with a pickup and a long flat trailer. He tracked every dollar, on camera.
It's cheap to start, so everybody starts. New for-hire trucking licenses went from about 43,000 in 2019 to almost 108,000 in 2021, and about one in three of the 2021 crowd still has a working license. The truck payment and the insurance come due whether the truck moves or not.
His first month brought in $8,300 and he kept about $2,900. Another one-truck owner went from $163,612 in sales one year to $7,789 the next, and filed for bankruptcy with $85 to its name.
Follow the $100
Every $100 of one real $400 job off his spreadsheet:
Everyone else: $70.50
before he's paid a cent, on a day he worked
Everyone else's $70.50, up close
- The truck's bills for the day$38.50
- Diesel (he says his sheet runs low)$19.50
- Repair fund$9.50
- Cashing the bill early$3
The driver: $29.50
$118 of the $400, for about six hours of work, before taxes
our arithmetic
What this means for your business
- 1
Know your two numbers before your first job.
Try thisWork out what every mile or hour costs you, and what every idle day costs you when nothing's moving.
- 2
Count the work nobody pays for.
Try thisTake your last job and add the travel, quoting and waiting nobody paid for. Divide what you were paid by all of it.
- 3
Win customers who come to you directly.
Try thisList everyone who takes a cut between you and your customer: an app, a middleman, a card fee. Pick one customer to win directly this month.
More plays from the video
- Plan fuel at today's price, not the price when you made the plan: he planned $3.50 a gallon and paid $7.25.
- Build a repair fund before you pay yourself. One breakdown left another driver nine months without his truck.
- In a 2022 survey of trucking owners, those who hauled straight for the customer earned $1.75 more a mile than those who went through a middleman.
- Count the bills that keep coming when the work stops: the truck payment, the insurance, the trailer.
How you compare
He kept about 35 cents of each dollar his truck brought in, before taxes. Two vehicle businesses from the 40, for comparison:
Locations open three years or more kept about 8.7 cents of each sales dollar after crew pay, fuel and truck repairs.
Owners took home about 10.8 cents of each sales dollar in salary and payouts.
Run your numbers
Before you buy the truck, the van or the machine, run these numbers.
If a slow week's parked days can eat what a busy week earns, one breakdown can put you under.
