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Can sleep when I'm dead.
Sitting in Winchester VA now. Brought up a trailer and gotta take one back. Should get home by a late bedtime. Tomorrow I work for an auction company.auctioning 2 pieces of land then to cattle market. Sunday night pull a trailer to South Carolina near Myrtle Beach. If I only his age again I could do lots more.
Do you have a return load/trailer most of the time? Tell the Keifer folks if they have one that is dented I will buy it from them cheap!
 
Can sleep when I'm dead.
Sitting in Winchester VA now. Brought up a trailer and gotta take one back. Should get home by a late bedtime. Tomorrow I work for an auction company.auctioning 2 pieces of land then to cattle market. Sunday night pull a trailer to South Carolina near Myrtle Beach. If I only his age again I could do lots more.
You are a long ways from home, about 9 hours one way I bet. I passed one of their cattle trailers on the road today and they sure look nice.
 
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If you're going to take a swing at doing this for a living.
Don't go to old with your equipment.
Breakdowns can cost you more than new equipment in a hurry. And people can be hesitant about hiring someone with old dilapidated equipment. Your going to need commercial insurance and it doesn't take much of a trailer behind a 3500 to put you in CDL requirements. Get set up right and be willing to put most of profit into paying for equipment at first. Blue sky will come sooner if you start up right.
Might be advice that you look back on in years to come and thank old Fence for his important imput.

Ken
 
I regularly see rigs on the freeway here. Out of state plates, a placard on the door, and a trailer hauling some sort of load. Today the truck I saw had Illinois plates, a 1959 Chevy station wagon on the trailer, and was headed east.
Listen to Fence. You will eat up a lot of miles. An older truck wont last long and cause you a lot of heart ache.
 
Have you looked into using Uship? I've used then to haul stuff for me a few times. Might get you started or at least an idea of going rates.
 
Have you looked into using Uship? I've used then to haul stuff for me a few times. Might get you started or at least an idea of going rates.
Lucky is right. Logistics is huge right now in the mfg world. There are whole companies whose only job is to coordinate shipping. Most of the time one item may use multiple carriers to get to its final destination.
 
Someone who hasn't worked in some type of industrial facility might not realize this, but companies will spend thousands of dollars to have a $100 part hot shotted in. The company I work for has a couple 20-30 day shut downs a year and during the shut downs there will be several hotshot loads brought in a day. We are in a town of about 35,000 so there's not a ton of options when it comes to parts. I've seen them hot shot in welding rods. Sounded crazy to me at the time but I guess it's better than having a 20 man crew sitting around for a day. These are generally expedited runs too, I wouldn't doubt if they pay double the normal rate.
The first time I used Uship was to have a dozer delivered from Tennessee to Texas. I bought and paid for it sight unseen and thought I'd just go get it over the next couple weeks. I got to thinking about it after the purchase and got nervous about what could happen over a 2 week period so got on Uship and within 45 minutes had it set up to be here for $1,050. I couldn't have hauled it myself for that. We got lucky and a guy was up in the area looking for a load to make it home.
 
One more option to get started. A friend of mine got hooked up with a few auction companies and hauls for them. When someone buys something online they give the buyer his contact so he deals directly with the customer. There's no middle man and he gets to work his own schedule this way as this is just a side gig for him. He hauls cattle and equipment. Back to Fences point of having newer equipment, this guy does this on the side and put nearly 100K on a new pickup in 2.5 years. Not sure the exact milage break down but he was very surprised how many miles he racked up on that truck.
 
Do you have a return load/trailer most of the time? Tell the Keifer folks if they have one that is dented I will buy it from them cheap!
Return this time was a 2008 model that's getting rebuilt. The owners haul race horses and the trailers are used every day. Took a 30 ft up and an 18 back
 
One more option to get started. A friend of mine got hooked up with a few auction companies and hauls for them. When someone buys something online they give the buyer his contact so he deals directly with the customer. There's no middle man and he gets to work his own schedule this way as this is just a side gig for him. He hauls cattle and equipment. Back to Fences point of having newer equipment, this guy does this on the side and put nearly 100K on a new pickup in 2.5 years. Not sure the exact milage break down but he was very surprised how many miles he racked up on that truck.
Couple of thoughts, a good old truck is ok but can be a nightmare. I deliver in a 2014 Dodge with a 6.4 Hemi. It will turn over 601,000 on my way to South Carolina tomorrow night. Most wont last that long.
If you put the placard on the side and try to be legal you limit yourself to 11 hours driving per day and also must have CDL and DOT number. That means stopping at the weigh stations and subject to DOT inspections.
If you don't and they catch you it can be very expensive.
If you decide to try long distance get hooked up with a dispatcher before you start.
 
One more option to get started. A friend of mine got hooked up with a few auction companies and hauls for them. When someone buys something online they give the buyer his contact so he deals directly with the customer. There's no middle man and he gets to work his own schedule this way as this is just a side gig for him. He hauls cattle and equipment. Back to Fences point of having newer equipment, this guy does this on the side and put nearly 100K on a new pickup in 2.5 years. Not sure the exact milage break down but he was very surprised how many miles he racked up on that truck.
We're at 65,000 plus since January 6th of this year. Can't get materials to build with or it would be more. Should hit the 100,000 by Christmas.
 
Thanks for the input everyone!

So what would you consider to old of a truck to start with? And how many miles would you consider to much?

If you were trying to be smart with your money how much would you want to spend on your truck starting out?
 
Also what would you expect your expenses per mile to be for your average load?
 
A fairly new truck will get old fast if your pulling every day. As I said a 2014 with 600,000 miles and it's not used every day.
Hauling cattle locally is not hugely profitable but if you have the connections with a buyer.you can do ok. One friend here gets 3.25 a mile with a 28ft.trailer but he works 3 stockyards so he has lots of connections.
20 years ago i paid for a truck and Wilson trailer in a little over a year hauling. But i would haul 10+ loads most weeks and didn't sleep much.
 

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