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Quote of the Day
“Confidence is going after Moby Dick in a rowboat and taking the tartar sauce with you.”
– Zig Ziglar, American author, salesperson and motivational speaker
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Drivers Sound Off
Tough economic times call for tough counter measures. Many carriers and fleets are responding to the crisis by putting a freeze on hiring and/or cutting employees. So what are those on the front line of the trucking industry – the drivers, particularly owner-operators – doing to hang in there long enough to emerge intact on the other side of the recession? With that in mind, Over the Road and Pro Trucker magazines asked a handful of over-the-road professionals the following question:
How do you survive in these tough economic times?
Here are some of the replies:
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Dustin Link, 24, Boyceville, WI
Professional driving experience: 6 years
“I’m an independent owner-operator and I was offered 63 cents a mile. Of course I turned them down. How do I survive? I sit around a lot. When good loads do come up, I’m all over them. I can’t do it for 75 cents a mile. I won’t do it. I’m in survival mode. The last thing I want to do is lose money hauling freight. I have a lot of advantages compared to some other guys. I run older equipment, so I don’t have big payments. My truck has high mileage, but I maintain it pretty well. The key to survival is having low overhead, slow down to conserve fuel and watch every nickel.”
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Mike Roberts, 48, Oklahoma City, OK
Professional driving experience: 20 years
“Right now I’m down $6,400 from last year in pay. How am I going to make up $6,400? I’m not. Owner-operators like me who run on a 100-percentage basis, we cannot compete with the foreigners hauling these loads so cheap. They’re killing us. Guys under percentage don’t have a chance anymore.”
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Ken Sargent, 52, Owensboro, KY
Professional driving experience: 32 years
“I haven’t been doing really well this year, but I think it’s starting to get a little better. Fuel costs went down, but the rates got cut even more. We did a profit/loss for the last two months and, well, the people working at McDonald’s make more than we did. I can’t remember it ever being this bad. Thirty years ago, you used to run hard, but there wasn’t near the competition there is now. I ran flatbed for nearly 30 years years, but I had to get out of it. I switched to a bucket and now I’m running coal.”
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James Pate, 55, Utica, KY
Professional driving experience: 21 years
“I’m an owner-operator. I just ran a profit/loss statement for the last two months and my profits were slightly over $200. That’s been typical of the operations we had last winter. I switched from a flatbed because I wasn’t making any money, so really, I’m pretty happy that I at least made $200 because under a flat bed I was losing money. How do I survive? I sold my pickup truck to pay off a lot of bills. That gave me a little breathing room. Right now, I pull a bucket and things are dead, but I think things will get better in the months ahead.”
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