Hauling RV's for Money

valhalla360 wrote:
Seems like if you could pick up a used smaller semi-tractor with a sleeper, you could do OK. It would pull just about anything and no need for hotels (which I suspect is the big money loser if you have 5 nights at $100/night).

So if your example run grossed $1950:
- 3000miles at a 10mpg average (you should do better returning empty), that's going to be 300gal...lets say $900 in fuel.
- $50 towards insurance.

That's netting you about $1000/week working 5 days a week or about $50k/yr. Let's say you put $20k/yr aside for maintenance and buying a replacement truck that's $30k/yr or about $15/hr.

No you aren't going to get rich but it's some nice extra money and if you can find a few return loads, the hourly rate goes up substantially.

If you own the truck anyway to tow your RV, you can ignore most of the depreciation (or benefit from it tax wise) and reassign some of that $20k/yr to net profit raising your hourly rate.

As a part timer, can you pick and choose runs at all? If you aren't pressured to take every run that's available, you could take runs to destinations that interest you and expense all the travel cost and then you are there with your mini-RV for a week or two.

I understand what you are saying but your numbers are very optimistic in some cases. Your idea of using a used Class 8 Tractor is one I looked at carefully. BUT your per mile cost for fuel/maintenance and repairs goes WAY UP over a pickup. It almost becomes a wash with the hotels. This is why I am guessing almost no one uses them.

I can say with some certainty that you cannot ignore the depreciation. Depreciation in this case (a truck as opposed to real estate lets say) is a REAL cost to you. Whether you own the truck or it's still financed doesn't matter. The huge amount of mileage you will accumulate in a very short time will depreciate your truck very quickly. Which will take actual cash out of your pocket at trade-in time.

Consider this: on a Dodge Ram like mine with the 6.7L Cummins which requires oil changes every 15000 miles you will be doing an oil change/Filter change approximately every 35 to 38 days. Now my oil changes done by ME cost me over $100 dollars just in parts and oil including the filters bought at the cheapest price I can find. But doing them yourself will probably not be practical and they will have to be done for you. Now on a per mile basis my maint. only amounted to $0.05/mile but that is 3.7% of your $1.35/mile.

Once you figure in everything including depreciation on a per mile basis as I did you can quickly see the $1.35/paid mile shrinking quickly.

Here is one point of data from my spreadsheet: I took in $6498.45 in gross income over the 28 days of hauling 4919 PAID miles (over 11,000 actual miles) and my FUEL expense alone was $2501.14. You must remember that your per mile rate for everything has to be figured not on the paid miles but the actual miles. You are given a printed route done by PC miler on which you are paid. I was careful to follow that route. My fuel averaged $.21/mile.

I am thinking of putting up my spreadsheet on Drive for those interested to look at. You might find it interesting.