How many years of experience should have to be an owner operator?

Depends. Depends. Depends.

 

Depends on lifestyle, and what you want to do. I would assume if you study and learn the lanes, focus on buisiness plans, and run the numbers while being a company driver you can figure it out.

Start calculating fuel costs, actual miles vs paid, get an insurance estimate, calculate all the repair costs etc.
I prefer being a company driver, others prefer being a lease or owner op.

Key point I believe is important is spending habits. If you can't save half your income being a company driver, and blow each check on random crap, you don't have the financial discipline to survive as a business. The guys who weather the economic downturns are the guys who have enough in savings to pay the truck's expenses and their household expenses for 6 months to a year.

 

Is it worth it ? For me it is. How much you make is up to you. How much you don't make is up to you.
It's also about the potential independence in my case. Although there are varying degrees of that.
I had five years in a retail business, and five years in trucking before I became an owner op. The better you are with numbers the better chance you have. You have to take care of the equipment better. And some luck helps.

 

depends on how smart you are.

Many owner operators are dumb as a brick and make money when times are good from pure luck. It is when they struggle, they fail to even change the oil in their truck and then complain when it breaks.

Then we have the dumb O/Os who are cheap and want to make the big bucks, they insist on paper logs so they can stretch the miles in order to make that 10000 a month goal no matter what.

I tell people learn how business works, once you get the basics, then you can make this into a business because for the most part, nothing is different from other businesses.

 

I quit Office Depot in 1996 because I got tired of other people telling me how to run my department.

Been on my own ever since.

 

Do you want to be an independent or a lease operator?

 

I always said a prospective owner operator needs a good 5 years experience as a company driver first. That's plenty of time to hone your craft and skills as a driver.

You will learn in that time how to efficiently plan trips down to a "T" really trip planning should be something that is second nature and only takes about a half a minute of thought. If you dive right in as an owner operator you're going to waste and lose a lot of time on things like that which should be second nature but aren't.

You will also make a lot of simple time wasting mistakes. You won't even realize it either. I know many guys who were never company drivers will argue with that but they are flat wrong. And I guarantee if I was a fly on the wall in the cab of their truck when they first started out there would be plenty of examples that could have been pointed out, wouldn't have happened with some prior experience on the job.

I could write a book of examples where experience trumps having none. Point is you need every leg up you can get. There is NO substitute for real world experience.

 

If you have business skills then you are good to go on day one. If you lack business skills you will never be any good.

Now if you are talking about being an owner operator leased on to a company, that is just a company driver that knows how to do their own taxes.

The trick to being an Owner Operator with you own authority, (and that should have its own term), is SALES. Finding your own freight without the need for brokers is the key.

Controlling cost is also important. No more buying fuel at the Big Boys.

Government paper work, IFTA. audits by DOT and IRS.

The learning curve is sharp but most can learn.

Then all you need to do, is refuse to haul cheap.

 

Controlling costs and paperwork are the easy parts. Sales not so much so. My point is basic driver skills are important and overlooked. Also there is a lot of "osmosis" so to speak about freight and lanes. Things that take years to learn but then again there are some guy that have been out here 20 and 30 years who absorb nothing useful.