KEN'S KORNER - OCTOBER 2008
GET RICH DRIVING A TRUCK
BY AUTHOR, EDUCATOR & DRIVER KEN SKAGGS
You can still get rich driving a truck. That may sound funny to some of you, but it can be done. I can give you a few examples of how they did it, too. There are several ways to become financially secure driving a truck. Many companies started out with one guy and one truck and grew to be multi-million dollar companies with hundreds or even thousands of trucks. Others do just fine raking in large, six-figure incomes with just a few trucks. And yes, it can be done with only one truck, too.
By far, the most common way that I’ve seen drivers make it big is by growing a company. They start out with a truck, save their money, buy another truck, hire a driver, save some more money, buy another truck, hire another driver and so on. Many of the largest trucking companies in the country today were built from the ground up, just like that. Over the years, I have personally heard first-hand many stories from successful people who started out driving. Truck driving is a real career, with unlimited potential for those who work hard, plan well, save and invest.
When I was only about twenty years old, I worked for a guy who I thought was a total idiot, with no common sense at all. But he was rich. So I asked him one day how he got there. He looked at me dumbfounded and shrugged, “I don’t know, I just always worked hard and saved my money.” I thought surely there must be more to it than that. But I was young and naïve back then.
One guy I know started out with a straight truck and built his business up to six straight trucks and two semi-trucks. It only took him about six years. I knew him when he worked in the shipping department of a print shop making a meager living. He saw a need for a smaller, local truck and asked his boss if he would keep him busy if he bought a truck. The boss said yes, so he went out and bought a junky straight truck that smoked for only $1,200. Several weeks later, he bought a better one. Then, at every place where he delivered, he asked about hauling local deliveries. In less than one year, he quit driving and became his own dispatcher and salesman. Nowadays, you can find him in Greece twice a year, for a month at a time, when he’s not at home in his $600,000 house.
I talked to the owner of a refrigerated distribution center in Chicago. He told me his story. One day when he was a truck driver, he was picking up a load of eggs at a large egg company in rural Indiana. He asked the owner how much the eggs would cost if he bought them in bulk. The owner offered them to him for forty-nine cents a dozen, for extra large eggs. As he made his deliveries at grocery stores in the Chicago area, he asked every store manager if they would buy eggs in bulk from him if he could give them a lower price then they were already paying. He landed a few accounts before the end of the week. The next week, he rented a Ryder refrigerated truck, bought a load of eggs, delivered them to his accounts, and the rest, as they say, is history. He became “the egg man” for many years, until he decided to expand into other types of refrigerated foods. Before he knew it, he had to hire a driver, then another and another. Before long, he realized that he also needed his own refrigerated storage place to enable him to continue to buy in bulk.
Another ex-driver I know got sick and tired of running OTR so he bought a dump truck and got into hauling gravel locally. Soon after, he landed an hourly gig with a major asphalt company. He soon realized that the money was about the same, except the cost of fuel was way lower running locally. He saved his money and bought another dump truck, then another. He now owns a local company with about 20 trucks and has another twenty or so owner operators working for him.
One company owner I met told me how he started with just a contract. He was a part-time agent and didn’t own a single truck when he offered his trucking services to a major shipper. He sent them a rate quote, they agreed, and, with the help of an attorney, he wrote a contract, which they signed, guaranteeing him a steady stream of freight. With that contract in hand, he was able to secure financing for all he needed.
The whole trucking industry is full of success stories like these. I know some of you must be thinking, “What about the ones that fail?” It’s true, trucking companies die as fast as they are born sometimes. Some blame it on the economy, the price of fuel or something else, but I think any business that fails did so because the owner did something wrong, made a mistake or didn’t learn something that he/she should have. So, if you are thinking about getting into it from this perspective, I suggest that you do your homework. Talk to other successful people. Hire experienced people, get an accountant who is experienced in trucking, keep good records and always make constant improvements.
And, most importantly, stay out of debt. Debt is probably the single biggest killer of any business. However you do it, I recommend that you pay cash for your first truck (and every truck thereafter) if possible. You can get a decent used semi-truck for about $15,000 or a straight truck for about $5,000. When you don’t have debt, you can easily weather any storm. Save as much money as you can. Ask your accountant about write-offs and use them for all they are worth. Practice good customer service and they will come back for more. Now, get out there and make it happen. You can do it. You can still get rich driving a truck!