Good weekly estimated revenue for a solo straight? Running full time.....

jzalesky · Feb 16, 2017

Hey everyone! I have spent a few hours reading through the posts and I keep seeing people say they do not make that much more in a straight truck solo as they do in a sprinter. My question is what are you guys averaging per week in the straight if you are running the 6 days a week staying out weeks at a time? I have talked with a few people on the phone and they say you can do around 4k and up per week. Is this a over estimated amount? And if you run teams is there the ability to double that amount? Several companies I talked with stated you could make 8 to 10k a week doing team loads? Anyway I was just curious as I own a few box trucks for local delivery and was looking to trade in a couple to do the OTR stuff or regional runs. Any info here would be great. I understand the overhead costs etc but keep seeing people talk about it being to cheap. To me if I make 1k plus a week off a truck as profit then I am doing good.

x06col · Feb 17, 2017

jzalesky said:
Hey everyone! I have spent a few hours reading through the posts and I keep seeing people say they do not make that much more in a straight truck solo as they do in a sprinter. My question is what are you guys averaging per week in the straight if you are running the 6 days a week staying out weeks at a time? I have talked with a few people on the phone and they say you can do around 4k and up per week. Is this a over estimated amount? And if you run teams is there the ability to double that amount? Several companies I talked with stated you could make 8 to 10k a week doing team loads? Anyway I was just curious as I own a few box trucks for local delivery and was looking to trade in a couple to do the OTR stuff or regional runs. Any info here would be great. I understand the overhead costs etc but keep seeing people talk about it being to cheap. To me if I make 1k plus a week off a truck as profit then I am doing good.

Seems to me that if you already have the equipment and a customer base, the credentials, personnel, it would be fairly easy to branch out into expedite/regional with some of your equipment. Try it and see if it works.

Living the dream · Feb 17, 2017

Is that 4k a week before or after food, gas, parking, showers, scale tickets etc.

FlyingVan · Feb 17, 2017

You won't make 4k a week every week. I am venturing out to say that you will rarely do 4k a week as a solo.

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Dynamite 1 · Feb 17, 2017

As a fleet owner that runs mostly solos i can tell you that 4k and up a week is a bunch of ?? Maybe on a good week in the busiest of time with the stars aligning or you are hauling specialized freight { TVAL, WHITE GLOVE or DOD }. Most of the time we see 2-2.5k per wk. on average weeks. Really busy weeks 3k or slightly over and slow weeks 1200 to 2k per week. As far as doubling that by just becoming a team, no. Teams will do a higher revenue generally but not always. With expediting its always right place, right time. Team revenue will go as high as the freight will allow but generally the high side for typical freight, not specialized as mentioned above is between 6 & 7k per week. A good average is 4 to 5k per wk.

Doing this with your current equipment could be possible but most carriers will want a DOT certified sleeper. If your boxes on your trucks are bib enough you could build a sleeper in them but trading for a proper truck would be a better choice. You can make a decent living as a solo, of course that depends on what decent is to you. If you have a large overhead for personal bills, probably not. Hope this helps.

Hansen Josif · Feb 17, 2017

Thats for O/O or diver bcuz I drove for O/O with panther all I am making is $900 to 1k a week before expenses to slow

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jzalesky · Feb 17, 2017

Dynamite 1 said:
As a fleet owner that runs mostly solos i can tell you that 4k and up a week is a bunch of ?? Maybe on a good week in the busiest of time with the stars aligning or you are hauling specialized freight { TVAL, WHITE GLOVE or DOD }. Most of the time we see 2-2.5k per wk. on average weeks. Really busy weeks 3k or slightly over and slow weeks 1200 to 2k per week. As far as doubling that by just becoming a team, no. Teams will do a higher revenue generally but not always. With expediting its always right place, right time. Team revenue will go as high as the freight will allow but generally the high side for typical freight, not specialized as mentioned above is between 6 & 7k per week. A good average is 4 to 5k per wk.

Doing this with your current equipment could be possible but most carriers will want a DOT certified sleeper. If your boxes on your trucks are bib enough you could build a sleeper in them but trading for a proper truck would be a better choice. You can make a decent living as a solo, of course that depends on what decent is to you. If you have a large overhead for personal bills, probably not. Hope this helps.

How many miles are you running during the weeks you are only doing 2k? I ask because you can do 400 a day just doing local pickup and delivery in a box truck here in DFW. And you can get runs to Houston for about 500 to 700 one way depending on how fast they need it. Are you running under a dispatcher that goes off several load boards and brokers? Just curious because I am being told by these companies we should expect 4k plus a week. If we do not have a sleeper then we can put our drivers in hotels etc. At 2k a week there is no way you could do that going OTR because you would lose your butt. One of my drivers I have now just came from working for a guy who was doing about 2500 loaded miles a week and he said they averaged about 1.5 to 1.8 a mile. So just trying to see if its all smoke or if the money is actually there. Thanks for the info.

jzalesky · Feb 17, 2017

Living the dream said:
Is that 4k a week before or after food, gas, parking, showers, scale tickets etc.

Before expenses etc. I am just looking at my options to expand my business. I know some people here locally doing the dually hot shot work doing around 4 to 5k a week. I am sure there are some weeks they do less but they are out a month or two at a time and come back home for a week and rinse and repeat. Since I have some straight trucks I have heard there is OTR stuff similar and I have seen some on the load boards. Have been looking at a few small dispatching services that claim you can get around 4k a week so not sure if that is true or not. I understand there are slow seasons etc and we are about to see it pick back up. Just seeing if its worth my time or not. Since a straight truck is not going to last near as long OTR as it does running locally unless you have one of the nicer expediter rigs. I am talking about running the non cdl type trucks. Thanks for the reply.

Dynamite 1 · Feb 17, 2017

jzalesky said:
Dynamite 1 said:

As a fleet owner that runs mostly solos i can tell you that 4k and up a week is a bunch of ?? Maybe on a good week in the busiest of time with the stars aligning or you are hauling specialized freight { TVAL, WHITE GLOVE or DOD }. Most of the time we see 2-2.5k per wk. on average weeks. Really busy weeks 3k or slightly over and slow weeks 1200 to 2k per week. As far as doubling that by just becoming a team, no. Teams will do a higher revenue generally but not always. With expediting its always right place, right time. Team revenue will go as high as the freight will allow but generally the high side for typical freight, not specialized as mentioned above is between 6 & 7k per week. A good average is 4 to 5k per wk.

Doing this with your current equipment could be possible but most carriers will want a DOT certified sleeper. If your boxes on your trucks are bib enough you could build a sleeper in them but trading for a proper truck would be a better choice. You can make a decent living as a solo, of course that depends on what decent is to you. If you have a large overhead for personal bills, probably not. Hope this helps.

Click to expand...

How many miles are you running during the weeks you are only doing 2k? I ask because you can do 400 a day just doing local pickup and delivery in a box truck here in DFW. And you can get runs to Houston for about 500 to 700 one way depending on how fast they need it. Are you running under a dispatcher that goes off several load boards and brokers? Just curious because I am being told by these companies we should expect 4k plus a week. If we do not have a sleeper then we can put our drivers in hotels etc. At 2k a week there is no way you could do that going OTR because you would lose your butt. One of my drivers I have now just came from working for a guy who was doing about 2500 loaded miles a week and he said they averaged about 1.5 to 1.8 a mile. So just trying to see if its all smoke or if the money is actually there. Thanks for the info.

Around 1350 to 1450 miles and if you can do all that with under cdl vehicle then you better stay with it. Your local p&d is close to same income so how many miles do you run to make 2k a week ? Houston would be a good gig if you had freight back. My miles i gave you is for all miles not just loaded.

T270_Dreamin · Feb 18, 2017

Wait for Davekc to chime in. He'll eat this post for dinner

Oh wait he does teams, last I heard was 200k on a team for revenue to the truck so I figure a solo is capable of making half of that. You wanna walk a straight line or talk a straight line rate?

Dynamite 1 · Feb 18, 2017

T270_Dreamin said:
Wait for Davekc to chime in. He'll eat this post for dinner Oh wait he does teams, last I heard was 200k on a team for revenue to the truck so I figure a solo is capable of making half of that. You wanna walk a straight line or talk a straight line rate?

200k a year is possible without doing specialized freight if everything falls into place and the team works their butt off and takes very little time off. A team working 44 weeks a year has to gross 4545.00 $ every week to gross 200k a year. Thats in a perfect world. Now lets look at what happens when they get a slow week here and there or have a breakdown or heaven forbid a family emergency or they get sick. All combined you could easily lose 4 to 6 weeks of not making that 4545.00 per week. If those, lets use 6 weeks are reduced to 3k a week then that drives the weekly gross for the remaining 38 week a year to 4755,00 every week. Like i said, it can be done its just not as easy as one would think. Its great to have that team in the truck who live in the truck and work all the time and never go home but in reality they are few. It is much better to have a good team in the truck and take a little hit on the gross revenue to keep them because they have some resemblance of a life. All that does make it difficult to achieve that 200k a year. We have a team that is one of those that doesnt go home but about 4 times a year. It would not surprise me if we see a year like that for them but we are banking on a lower number and will be happy if its more. Just trying to put things into a real perspective and not be misleading about what is possible and what can happen to make it impossible. Expediting is everything but predictable. I wish Dave would chime in cause I am sure he would agree on several points. Dave has been in this business over 25 years and while we dont have that many we are clocking our 16th year and we both have seen the business change making it harder and harder than it use to be.

tknight · Feb 18, 2017

Never in all my expedited driving experience have I ever made $4000 a week that is extremely rare in this business for a solo

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Dynamite 1 · Feb 18, 2017

tknight said:
Never in all my expedited driving experience have I ever made $4000 a week that is extremely rare in this business for a solo

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We have not either, The closest we have been was real close @ 3900. 00 but there was a couple of real high paying loads !!

tknight · Feb 18, 2017

Dynamite 1 said:
We have not either, The closest we have been was real close @ 3900. 00 but there was a couple of real high paying loads !!

are we a solo?
Or are we a team?

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coalminer · Feb 18, 2017

I have had one week that I grossed 5000, and actually that was 3 weeks ago. Would love to have more weeks like that, but they are few and far between.

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Dynamite 1 · Feb 18, 2017

tknight said:
Dynamite 1 said:

We have not either, The closest we have been was real close @ 3900. 00 but there was a couple of real high paying loads !!

Click to expand...

are we a solo?
Or are we a team?

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We arent anything anymore, we retired in June. When i say we, I mean one of our trucks. Yes it was a solo. We have 5 solo trucks and 1team truck.

T270_Dreamin · Feb 18, 2017

tknight said:
Never in all my expedited driving experience have I ever made $4000 a week that is extremely rare in this business for a solo

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I just did 3500 on one Sprinter load but it was 10 clients non expedite. (so much lost productivity between loads) I think I make around 30-40k in a Sprinter as a owner operator so If I can get a straight and make 75k a year I'll be living like a normal American or maybe I'll just get a driver and keep that passive income dream alive.

jzalesky · Feb 18, 2017

Hmm well thanks everyone for the input. That sucks that the OTR stuff does not pay. Seems as the person im looking to work with that the shorter runs pay better than the longer runs. We currently do about 1800 to 2200 a week and average about 700 miles a week or less doing the local stuff inside 100 mile radius. So the driver makes around 6 to 700 a week and is home every night. After costs etc I make around 500 to 700 a week per truck. Gross for the year is usually around 95k on the low and 110k on the high per truck. Gas runs about 13k per year each truck.

I know a few people who are making around 20k to 30k a month running semi's locally as well doing pick up and delivery. Each truck has access to about 3 dry vans each and they just hustle them around town and get about 4 or 5 loads a day or more. They are running 6 days a week usually working off the load boards or with direct businesses or brokers they have met off the boards. As for running to Houston we have averaged around 2 to 2.35 a mile one way. So it pays out to about 600 for a one way trip.

Anyway maybe its too good to be true. There is a couple companies im looking to possibly get on with and they all boast that they have solo straight trucks making around 4k on average staying in a 4 state area and that they have a load each day to run. So maybe just depends on the lanes and who you are running for?

T270_Dreamin · Feb 19, 2017

jzalesky said:
Hmm well thanks everyone for the input. That sucks that the OTR stuff does not pay. Seems as the person im looking to work with that the shorter runs pay better than the longer runs. We currently do about 1800 to 2200 a week and average about 700 miles a week or less doing the local stuff inside 100 mile radius. So the driver makes around 6 to 700 a week and is home every night. After costs etc I make around 500 to 700 a week per truck. Gross for the year is usually around 95k on the low and 110k on the high per truck. Gas runs about 13k per year each truck.

I know a few people who are making around 20k to 30k a month running semi's locally as well doing pick up and delivery. Each truck has access to about 3 dry vans each and they just hustle them around town and get about 4 or 5 loads a day or more. They are running 6 days a week usually working off the load boards or with direct businesses or brokers they have met off the boards. As for running to Houston we have averaged around 2 to 2.35 a mile one way. So it pays out to about 600 for a one way trip.

Anyway maybe its too good to be true. There is a couple companies im looking to possibly get on with and they all boast that they have solo straight trucks making around 4k on average staying in a 4 state area and that they have a load each day to run. So maybe just depends on the lanes and who you are running for?

Which companies are making 4k (a month) you mean and what state/city would these companies be located in? If the semi's are doing 20k a month sound like that might be your best opportunity.