This is a good blog post by Kevin Rutherford on his LetsTruck blog. It hits on the point that Owner Operators need to think about themselves as a business that is in a marketplace where they have some control to set rates and service levels, and seek business that matches their expectations.
New Guidance from FMCSA regarding the HOS rules imposed July 1st: Under the new guidance, effective July 12, 2013, there is no requirement for employer instructions, either written or verbal. The old guidance said that the driver had to get written instructions from his employer spelling out how long the off-duty time would be.
Read More »New FMCSA HOS guidance regarding 30 min Break Times
It can be hard to separate the truck stop rumors or myths from the facts. As an owner-operator, one of your biggest concerns is revenue. Since most owner-operators are paid on a per-mile basis, this tends to dominate discussions about income because it is easy to measure.
Unfortunately, pay-per-mile is often used as the deciding factor of which carrier to lease with. While pay-per-mile is important, it alone is not an indicator of success, nor does it mean a big settlement check is coming your way. Pay-per-mile must always be looked at in perspective with gross revenue. It can include mileage pay, percentage of revenue pay, loading or unloading pay, toll or scale reimbursement, etc.
Read More »Trucking Myth Busters – good article by Team RunSmart
It now looks like the FMCSA is not going to delay the proposed July 1, 2013 implementation of the new HOS rules after all. Even though the new rules will cost the industry a lot ($230M according to the ATA) in terms of lost productivity while also decreasing the flexibilty drivers have to choose their sleep/drive/work cycles it will not cause too much trouble to adopt for those fleets using electronic logs today.
And although finding freight isn’t hard, it is a little bit of an art. Knowing where the freight is, knowing how much time is involved loading, knowing if it’s going to a good area, deciding whether deadheading (driving empty to pick up) is going to be worth it. These are all learned. Ed is a master at this – you can throw a load and a rate at him and he’ll know immediately if it’s worth doing. Me? I’m not as quick with the figuring, but I’m pretty good now too.
We have a few agents who will call us outright, if we’re in the area, to offer us a load before they post it. They know us, they’ve worked with us before, and they know we deliver – no pun intended. Most of the time though, we find our loads on the board. “The Board” is the load board where the company we’re leased to posts their loads. If you enlarge the photo below (click to enlarge), you’ll see a real example of freight that’s available to us.
Read More »Click Mouse, Make Money – Owner Operators and Load Boards
A good article about technology in trucking from Homer Hogg, Maintenance Supervisor for TA and Petro,. Homer highlights the benefits of technology, mobile and otherwise, as well as explores the benefits of things like a truck Blackbox (EOBR, AOBRD, ELD…..). He also discusses the need to get drivers on board and not resisting technology that may help them and improve fleet operations at the same time. Technologies like BigRoad can be used to automate electronic driver logs and improve CSA scores for the fleet.
Read More »GPS fleet tracking: Maintenance, Logs, Smart phones
New year – new taxes. That’s what many drivers are thinking after the latest round of tax increases. Read More »The 5 Most Overlooked Tax Deductions for Owner Operators
Check out this new rugged smart phone by CAT. I like the look and I suspect CAT did its homework as they don’t generally put their name on crap. There is a good review of the phone on Equipment World if you want to check it out. See link below.
Read More »Good looking Trucker Smart phone – CAT gets it right!
Who says “old dogs can’t teach new tricks”: Kenny Barstow – NASTC Truck Driver of the Year
Read More »Veteran Drivers Embrace E-logs To Eliminate Form And Manner Issues
