Monthly maintenance budget

My best advice is save everything you can until your established well enough... there's no real number, but your number should be plenty. I'd say average annual maintenance cost for O/O's across the board are about 5k - 25k, more or less depending on the factors

 

But just importantly as saving is having the knowledge to spend wisely and the know how to fix everything you can

 

Its good that yr planning ahead. Yr selection of vehicle is also a good one. However, I think that yr budget is a wee bit on the high side. Once you have brought the truck up to specs and have it earning an income, then figure out the budget. If you can set aside $30,000 a year and still pay all your bills then do it. I would set aside a good portion of yr income for escrow and such, but ultimately focus on paying off the truck ASAP.

 

When I was doing five axle it was $800 a month. Now I'm doing eight axle, it's pretty close to $2,000 a month including trailer and tires.
This does not include payments or long term savings for an inframe.

 

A good rule of thumb is to have 2 accounts.
If you take $0.10 a mile on each trip and put it away as a reserve account and don't touch it, the money builds quickly and can be enough each year to pay for all your licensing, tags, base plate, ifta, permits, etc.
Your fuel taxes each month, your quarterly, comes out of your business account not your reserve.
The other account is a maintenance account.
Put 15% of every load away. If that's high, start with 10.
This is for engine repairs, tires, etc. Make this a habit.
Fix as much as possible yourself. Save that money every trip, and when you're on the road and something happens, then the funds are there.
No kiting. Keep the funds seperate for their intended purpose.
The minimum you should shoot for is 2500 in your reserve for licensing and 15000 in maintenance.
When you decide to get off the road and those funds are no longer needed, they all revert to one account. Sweet Retirement.

 

That's not a bad number.

Now.

Let's say you have a 250,000 mile truck. You can probably expect engine issues by 600,000 to 1,000,000 depending on how well, or how poorly you kick it down the road. It probably will take you about 3 to 5 years to get there from your relatively new 250K mile truck.

If a nice engine in total costs about 40,000 and big horse to boot, you will want a new engine fund to be at least that much in say... 5 years. call it 800 dollars a month going to nothing but the engine fund. It will reach almost 45K in 5 years flat. 1000 or more a month to the engine fund turns into 50,000 dollars that is all you'rn. For a new engine or better yet a newer truck ready to do battle for another 5 years. Basically a new engine with body and wheels etc.

2500 is not bad. Thinking in terms of fuel, that's only 825 or so gallons using a 3.00 fuel price. Or... 5000 miles worth of go. If you aint got fuel, you aint delivery. If you aint delivery, your brokers and people aint got a trucking company to rely on. That means YOU aint got work anymore. Those Aints bite.

Try 5000 dollars a month. That way you DO have the fuel and do have the rest of the aints covered in a really bad month. Fuel = life, life = work and work = money.

If you only did 4000 this month instead of 5000, that's outstanding! Remember 5 grand is not a bad goal. Including your engine fund of 1000 per month however many years your current one last. So if she gives you 5 years of good service and blows up one day... that's fine. Either drop a engine new in there and go or.. replace the tractor and go. No problem. Literally no trouble. Wave your wad of cash and done.

That is where most little companies of one to few trucks or whatever fail. Something big goes BOOM and they can only come up with 500 bucks to wave and wonder why they got laughed out of the shop and then wake up to understand they are no longer in the trucking business. That is a pretty big BOOM. With a secondary detonation in BK court. I hope you are already incorperated so you don't lose your house, lands and everything else.

 

A bit of advice.

STOP thinking in months, start thinking in miles.

Your maintenance is based on the mileage of the truck, not what month of the year it is.

Let's start with the basics, go here - http://www.ooida.com/EducationTools/Tools/costpermile.asp

Read that page, download the spread sheet and see what their are looking at for a general idea of what is put aside for maintenance.

You can modify it to fit your needs, I have when planning not hard to do.

Then come up with the policies like when do you change the oil, if you get an OA every 10k or 15k and so on. This will be added into the costs per mile when you project the miles you will driving, like if you have an oil bypass system, the cost of the oil change over the annual operating period will be less but your OAs will increase in total costs this is reflected in the number of cents per mile you need to maintain for that to come out of the revenue stream.

Another bit of advice, learn how to buy the truck, it isn't a car and if you have in mind one truck, then great but what happens if it is a junker, the blowby is really high, then what?