Advice for starting a small expediter/hotshot business

As been stated with the amount of trucks out here I find it hard to believe a good paying load is having problems moving. The trucking industry is beyond over saturated with trucks.

 

please explain this - "initially start with loads under 10,000 lbs"

Also never go into business with a friend.

 

You're gonna have a tough time finding a driver. What you're thinking of requires somebody to be on call, but only for part time work.

It also really sucks getting paid 25% & working full time hours, but still only bringing home 4-600/week. Because the rates look good 1 way. Backhaul, what's that? Gotta get back to the yard ASAP in case they call again.

Run your numbers including $1k/week net pay...minimum. If you're rates aren't good enough to support that, you might reconsider your plan.

Also, load/unload times might kill your day if you're doing multiple stops.

 

Part time business but full time fixed expenses . A lot of variables ......

 

Where will you get these magic elusive drivers and why would they work for you vs one of the many other established trucking companies? Also with rates as they currently are.. How do you plan to pay your drivers, pay for your equipment, pay all the other bills and pay yourself?

JMHO, but this is more the type of business that you start up yourself as the driver/ owner operator and then maybe after you built up history and working relationships add on other trucks/drivers but even then it's a hard road.

With that said.. it's likely easier to do it with semi's than hotshot trucks.. Hotshot is very limited on freight..unless maybe you do cars but cars don't pay much. With hotshot many, many brokers and shippers will not work with you or the load requires air-ride or it requires a 48 ft trailer ect..ect you are already working with limited freight and then if they call it a partial the brokers try to get you to run it for .50/mile even though it might be a full load on your hotshot trailer..

dispatching a single hot shot truck and getting it good paying loads is a time consuming job. You sometimes have to watch the load board like a hawk all day maybe 2 days to get that 1 load before it disappears 5 mins after it was posted because some other guy was hungrier than you.

It's much, much easier to get a semi truck a good paying load, hot shot is more a niche for owner operators IMO not people trying to build up a fleet of trucks.

If I were to try and hire on trucks/drivers I'd probably go with car hauling because even though the rates are lower it's more consistent and much easier to get loads for a hotshot truck vs freight loads. You don't have to spend all day trying to find loads for a car hauler like you do with freight, but freight generally pays better, but car hauling will be dependent on where you live..

 

This is good intel for you to consider.