Question For Panther And Tristate Cargo Van Drivers

blizzard2014

Veteran Expediter
Driver
WTF!! NOT bad....thats 168 hours!! Minimum wage is about $7.45 an hour.....work your 40 at McD's and be home every day and weekends!! Not bad my butt...it's absolutely disgusting!!!:eek:

So you figure around 300 a week. You figure wrong OVM. I am going to work for an owner that has an .85 cent per mile contract on top of an average fsc of around 15 cents per mile at Panther. Now, .60 percent of .85 cpm is around .51 cents per mile plus the fsc. The owner will pay for the qualcomm and maintenance etc; I will simply pay for my cellphone and 17 dollars a week in personal injury insurance.

Ok, lets be very conservative here and say that I get around 1,200 miles per week on the average. I can do this "because I know where the freight is due to experience!" Now 1200 miles by .66 cents per mile "which is my cut" and we got 720 bucks. The van I am driving is a diesel that gets 20 mpg. With the average price of diesel being 2.24 per gallon I will need approximately two tanks to run 1200 miles and I will throw in a third tank for deadhead just to get a more realistic number. The is three 30 gallon fill-ups at 2.24 a gallon which comes to about 201.60 Now lets deduct that from 720 and we now have 518.40. Now lets take out 17 dollars for personal injury incurance and that leaves us with 501.40. Then we can take out 100 dollars for food which leaves 401.40. Then we times that by four and now have 1600 and 5.61 dollars for the month minus a 100 dollar cell phone bill for unlimited minutes which leaves a whopping 1500 and 5.61 dollar straight to the bank.

Now if I operate like this for an entire year 'I should have around 15k in the bank to buy a van for around 10k...one that is new enough to lease on with the company of my choice and still have 5k in working capital. It might look like a bad situation for some, but I have made money with fleet owners before. I have even paid 1,100 dollars a month in bills and managed to save money doing it in the past. I have run the numbers and I am losing approximately .24 cents per mile working for the owner as opposed to having my own van at a contracted .77 cent per mile with 15 cent fsc average.

So if I run 1200 miles a week times 4 that is 4800 miles a month times 12 months is approximately 57,600 miles. Lets take 57.600 and times that by .24 and we now get 13,680 dollars. That is the amount of money that I am losing as a driver not owning my own van. Now from that we will take the weekly qualcomm fees, The truck payment, the new set of tires once a year, the oil changes, the 150 a month in bobtail insurance, and the registration fees. Lets say truck payment is 400 a month, qc fees are 140 a month, oil change 60 a month, registration fees 300 a year, tires and alignment 700 a year. All of that adds up to approximately 10,000 dollars that I do not have to pay myself and the owner pays which is a net loss of 3,680 dollars considering there are no breakdowns. The owner makes 85 cents per mile which is 10 cpm higher than the contracted rate that I would get as an owner operator so that is not even a factor here.

But the owner does get .34 cents for every mile I drive which comes out to around 19,584 when I times .34 by 57,600 miles. Now I will deduct 10k from that and the owner makes around 9,584 dollars on a mediocre year. Not great, but when you spread that over several units (manned by dedicated and experienced drivers) you can pull together a good income. Not too shabby. But, all and all, I am still only losing 3,680 dollars on net revnue. Will I complain, heck no!
 
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OntarioVanMan

Retired Expediter
Owner/Operator
Blizzard ...My figures stand...the 60/40 with the owner paying fuel and owner getting the FSC....

Your example YOU are paying the fuel and getting 60% .
A whole different example.

The figures are variable depending on the setup with the owner.
 

blizzard2014

Veteran Expediter
Driver
Blizzard ...My figures stand...the 60/40 with the owner paying fuel and owner getting the FSC....

Your example YOU are paying the fuel and getting 60% .
A whole different example.

The figures are variable depending on the setup with the owner.

Has the Express 1 fsc completely disappeared yet? How low has is gotten down to? I used to do a lot of 70 cent per mile loads with them on top of about a 5 cent fsc right now. Heck I am not losing that much over here as Driver for the cat. Lets say you get a 80 cpm tier load with a 5 cent fsc that is 20 cent per mile more then me on a 1200 mile week is like 240 bucks minus qc is like 205.00 dollars more a week but then you gotta throw in maintenance, tires, bobtail insurance, and the works. I am not too far behind you unless you are getting a lot of those sprinter rates.
 

OntarioVanMan

Retired Expediter
Owner/Operator
Has the Express 1 fsc completely disappeared yet? How low has is gotten down to? I used to do a lot of 70 cent per mile loads with them on top of about a 5 cent fsc right now. Heck I am not losing that much over here as Driver for the cat. Lets say you get a 80 cpm tier load with a 5 cent fsc that is 20 cent per mile more then me on a 1200 mile week is like 240 bucks minus qc is like 205.00 dollars more a week but then you gotta throw in maintenance, tires, bobtail insurance, and the works. I am not too far behind you unless you are getting a lot of those sprinter rates.
You asked ans answered your own question about the FSC...yep it's stands at .05....funny you mention it I just came off a string of .70 ers..they suck....but I did have a run of 1.00 and 1.05's...paid DH is running about $200 extra bucks a month..so I think we about the same around the .85 cent average....plus my fuel is cheaper at 23-24 mpg...

and oil changes at only 1200 miles a week I would prolly do one around every 3 months for about $75 bucks....

Also Blizzard you are an experienced driver..How do you think a newbee would do at this time....That was the issue we were addressing really....
 
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blizzard2014

Veteran Expediter
Driver
Also Blizzard you are an experienced driver..How do you think a newbee would do at this time....That was the issue we were addressing really....

Yeah I am battle hardened OVM. I can get by with a **** duffle bag as a pillow and a regular Wal-Mart sleeping bag. I am a well trained expediter and all that in a bag of empty tater chips. You are right about the newbies and those who have bills. I just went through a chapter 7 and I am free and clear of all bills...Hell, I even have a nice personal vehicle paid for in cash. But you gotta know where your companied freight areas are. Like when I was with the big red e I would never get long loads out of the Chicago area. But with panther I get loads going down south or to Dallas all of the time. Then again Express -1 had a lot of shorter stuff that kept me busier. But Panther has gotten me out of Los Angeles California 7 out of seven times in the past with tht longest wait being around 8 days; all loaded miles over 1k to boot. Also having an owner who knows that California is a great freight lane now that panther has acquired Elite Forwarding and has offices in, San Diego, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle is a good thing.

To new guys, you can make it, but you gotta be able to learn really fast.
 

blizzard2014

Veteran Expediter
Driver
Yeah, OVM. The people at the big red E are a class act and I do miss the paid deadheads. But I only grossed 20k in seven months and that was some-what of a contributing factor in my economic demise. It was not their fault, I simply had too many bills to pay for the amount of money that I had coming in at the time.
 

OntarioVanMan

Retired Expediter
Owner/Operator
Yeah, OVM. The people at the big red E are a class act and I do miss the paid deadheads. But I only grossed 20k in seven months and that was some-what of a contributing factor in my economic demise. It was not their fault, I simply had too many bills to pay for the amount of money that I had coming in at the time.

That must of been awhile ago.....I've found E-1 can get ya outta almost anywhere these days...
 

mjolnir131

Veteran Expediter
i had one week thatwas 1200 in mid jan my last 4 week average is almost 19 but that is with that 12 in there bringing it down
 
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