Starting a Trucking Fleet

I was hoping to reach out and get some expert opinions / advice. I'm not looking for any "Oh you will surely fail" or "It's a hard industry, etc" I've been in trucking for over a decade as a Fleet Manager (fancy title for baby sitter) and I've never had trouble keeping the companies I've worked for in the green. There's some bad months but the good months offset them usually.

Now I've read Dune-T's post with the numbers and as expected the numbers I've ran and been running are fairly close, which is good.

I have about $250,000 to startup right now but I haven't made any purchases yet. This is startup capital that I do have to pay back within 7 years. It's about 3k that comes right off the top every month

I can buy 1 NEW 2019 truck and 1 New Trailer with this and then allocate the rest for the first year of expenses (not including salary and driver salary).
Looking at the numbers I hit some cash flow issues throughout the year but at the end of the year I'm up, not by a whole lot. 4% margin for the whole year. I've also factored in repairs that I shouldn't see in the first year but I am planning on anything happening.

Alternatively,
I could buy 2 used trucks and 2 new/used trailers with this and allocate the rest for the first year of expenses. Not including salary.
Looking at these numbers (assuming 80k per truck, which might be understating right now) I don't have a single cash flow issue (assuming I can run each truck for 1200 a day. Trying to be optimistic.) but there comes a bigger risk of dealing with a truck with up to 500k miles on it and in my experience they hit the shop up every week for something or another. I won't have access to a onsite repair shop like I have so the repair cost will be a lot higher than I'd see if I was able to repair on site This is less attractive to me right now but it would generate a lot more revenue for me and increase my margin significantly.

So, when it comes to buying used trucks is it really just luck of the draw on getting decent used equipment or does anyone have any personal insight on what equipment holds up to the test of time better? What should I look out for?? I'm mostly only familiar with Freightliner.

I have a good driver following that would probably come work for me, and they have taken care of my employers equipment better than I'd ever expect anyone too.

 

You're right, I do know which way would be best long term but I was more or less just reaching out for other opinions. I try not to go into things thinking I know everything and I'm always open to other opinions.

Yea. I should have stated that 4% is literally the worst things happening every month. Sorry for leaving that out.

Running 2 used trucks using the same estimations per truck but with a higher revenue brings it up to 24%. So it gets better going that route but with the risk of break downs and total equipment failure looming, but some could argue the same could happen with a new truck,.

I'd be interested in hearing any stories you have about a failed/distressed fleet owner. I'm basically planning on going for running someone else fleet to my own fleet so I'd mostly just be cutting them out and losing their resources (and lanes) and having to work my way up to that level.

 

Thank you for the reply! If I went used; I'm hoping I'd be able to recruit 1 or 2 of the drivers I've been running for greater portion of 10 years, esp since they're the ones who've put the bug in my head that I should run my own fleet. If not, I'm just hoping I can find 2 decent blokes with at least 2 years otr. The used equipment I was looking at was 2 2016 Freightliner Cascadia. I'm weighing the difference between the normal manual transmission versus the DT12 which I hear there's a ton of fuel savings going with a DT12 but I've personally never dealt with one, so everything I know about it is anecdotal at best. Most have closer to 400k on it though. I thought DPF delete was illegal, or are you referring to something else?