Help with bottom line

Alright, I had written out something snarky, but then I saw your list of previous posts, and realize you're very new to this.

I've been driving six years, and have had my authority for 14 months. And even I learn new things every day on how to operate and squeeze out profit.

First, you have to figure out how you plan on running. Where, and what type of freight. This will determine what type of trailer you will want. I don't know about your tractor (but I saw you post on buying a new trailer).

First, price yourself as if you were buying brand new. The reason is that when the time comes to buy new, or at least newer, you want to be already expecting to pay for it (and the extra you're basing your rate on should be getting set aside to fund your future upgrades, as well as any 'big' repair you might have). Figure out your fuel costs. Figure out your expenses for getting ready to roll. And then how much it costs to roll per mile. Then, figure out what your annual or monthly costs are and figure them into your weekly or monthly expected miles.

You have:

One-time start up costs (down payments, permits, fees, etc)
Yearly expenses (plates/permits, etc)
Quarterly expenses (IFTA, NY HUT, KYU, NM, that are basically mileage based)
Monthly expenses (loans, insurance premiums, etc)
And then per-mile expenses (fuel, maintenance, tires, etc).

Then you have trip specific expenses (labor to unload if driver-unload, washouts if trailer is dirty if necessary, tolls for that route), etc.

Then, you determine what your per-mile costs will be based on the miles you want to run.


And, then you figure out how much profit you WANT to make out here. And then that 'break-even' number doesn't really matter. Because your goal will be to be way above and beyond that break-even you will never come close to it.

 

You need to be able to calculate your costs.

Simply put, you divide the amount, (costs), by the miles traveled.

For instance, let's say you have a truck payment of 1238.30 per month, what's that cost you in terms of cents per mile?

Let's assume 10,000 miles in a month, (once you get rolling you'll have "real" figures), but just for our example we'll use the 10k mileage for a month of trucking. (you can calculate monthly, weekly, annually, whatever... the important thing is accuracy,and you won't have truly accurate numbers until you have actually accumulated them, but the 10k projection should give you some idea)

$1238.30 divided by 10,000 = .12383..... roughly .12 cpm to operate the truck for the month....

What about fuel?? Take the price per gallon and divide by the MPG... let's say you pay $3.98 per gallon and get 6.2 mpg, = .64 cpm fuel costs

Do this with all of your expenses, when finished add all of your costs.... Insurance, registration, cell phone, fuel, maintenance, everything that you spend money on for your business....

That number will be your break even point.

 

lot's of options, some guys use quicken or quickbooks. NASTC has a cloud based software specifically for trucking called MYSTC, a lot of guys make their own spreadsheets to keep track, I'm sure some people still do paper records and calculator.

I like using spreadsheets because I can make it give me exactly what I need without a bunch of other stuff I don't want. Mine keeps track of everything and recalculates my costs/mile and profit on each load every day and every time I enter data. It converts my timed expenses to mileage and vice versa. It also gives me all I need to do my IFTA each quarter, generates printable invoices just by entering the load #, gives me a line graph showing actual profit/loss over time. took awhile to get set up, but now it basically does my thinking for me, which is good because somebody needs too.

 

You doing excel?

 

If you are looking for trucking software, you may want to check out Trucknpro. It is easy to use and will give you your cost (breakeven) on each load year to date along with your profit per load or year to date. In fact, you can print out reports on any time period you choose. You can print out a profit and loss at any time, too. www.trucknpro.com. There are a couple of others on the market, but I like this one the best. I think it is easier to use. It will track your maintenance, revenue, IFTA and any other costs associated with running a truck. It will also do invoices and you can also scan in all your paperwork. You can customize it to an extent, should you desire. I believe you can still download a trial version to try it before buying. There is also a demo you can access from their website. You could also use a spreadsheet, but this software has everything already set up so that you can begin using it immediately. If you want to look at a couple of other software programs, you can look at Truckers Helper www.truckershelper.com, and Easy Trucking www.easytrucking.com. These are the ones that I am familiar. I find the Trucknpro the easiest to use. I have several friends who have been using Trucknpro for several years.

 

I started with excel but switched everything to google drive spreadsheet, so it would be accessible to me as well as others from any computer and my phone. the google spreadsheet is a lot more basic than excel but I did manage to make everything work. (shortly after I got everything switched Microsoft announced the realease of Microsoft 365 which is basically the cloud version of Office and Excel, lol)

oh, and google drive is 100% free unless you really store tons of big files on there. I think you get like 25 G for free.