$BEST COMPANIES FOR DRIVERS WITH OWN AUTHORITY

If you're going to lease to Landstar, you can't have your own authority. Leasing is using their authority. The trailer makes the money, I wouldn't dream of getting my authority without a trailer. Strategic my butt.

 

So if you have or you are getting your own authority but your looking at leasing on to others. Me thinks before you go too much further, and especially before you spend a wad of money, you may need to do some more research cause the plan you say you have in place don't coincide with what your looking for.

 

If you are going to lease your truck or equipment on to Landstar or someone like them (a motor carrier) then you will run under their authority. When you lease your equipment onto them you can then lease a trailer from them if you need to. Now if you just want to use them as a broker then you can find some of their loads on th e load board but you will need your own traile for this. There are are a few brokers or companies that are power only but in my opinion there isn't enough of that out there to justify getting your own truck and authority for. If you plan on getting your own authority you really need to get your own trailer. If you have only been a company driver and wanting to own your own truck I highly suggest leasing it onto a company first and learning the ropes before you go all in with your own authority. Unless you have access to high paying direct freight, which I doubt because you wouldn't be here looking if you did.
Now if you are still insistent on getting your own authority, you need a trailer and you need freight amongst a whole list of other thing, there is or was a thread dedicated to telling everything you needed to do. You can find direct freight, or brokerd freight or a combination of the 2. Brokerd freight is easy, you can find it all day long on the load boards and
( don't want to guess at a percentage) a very large portion of it don't pay worth a ####. That's why it is on the load board. Direct freight is a little harder to get, unless you find some that don't pay worth a ####, then it's easy to get. Phone calls, hand shakes, years of connections, years of dependable service and some times even the good ole boy network is where you find this. Some of our best freight comes from people we went to elementary school with and now they are high enough up to have some say in the company they work for. This is the kind of freight that gets you through the hard times.
Wasn't but a couple of years that it was pretty easy to make a decent living just off the load board but that kind of freight is up and down and right now it's down. Way down.
Didn't mean to get off on a tangent but I truly believe that at least 85% or higher of the people that have their on authority shouldn't. They would be better off leasing onto companies that know what they are doing. It would also help the industry as a whole. Too many people get their own authority then come on here or places like this and sy now what. IMO that's the wrong answer. Some of these make it, they are normally the ones that would succeed t whatever they try. Others will fail miserably within the first couple of years and there is a long line of others waiting to go all in and get rich quick.