Dump Trucks?

chrisherk

I'm thinking about buying a triaxle to be put on with an asphalt co. after i do the numbers with a driver in the truck, i come out to 20k +- profit. new cost is 130k, next year they will be going for 140k+. anybody think its worth it? I do know this whole state's highways need to be replaced, and bridges, and coupled with the historically large highway bill,I think there will be plenty of work for the next decade. any opinions?

chris

rino1494

I wouldn't go out and buy a brand new one right away. With new ones you also have to pay FET. I would find a used one for now. There is tons of state and federal road work, but the contractors tend to not pay the best. My one buddy has his hired tri-axle on with a paving crew and he made $75,000 last year for the truck and about $20,000 of that went to fuel. Plus you also got to figure in your payments, insurance, license, tags, maintenance and tires.

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rino1494

Another thing, since you are looking to get on with a paving crew, you are prolly looking a truck with a aluminum body since most contractors pay tonage. IMO, your best bet is a light-weight steel body. They weigh a little more, but in the long run you are better off. With aluminum bodies, you are pretty much limited to hauling asphalt, modified or sand. When the paving crew wraps up for winter and has work for you hauling rip rap, you are pretty much screwed. Also, eventually your floor will have to be replaced. By the time you cut out the floor and purchase and install a new piece of aluminum, you will have more money wrapped up into it then what it is worth. What most ppl with aluminum bodies are doing is bolting in a steel floor to save on money and time. By the time you do this, you will have the weight of a light-weight steel body dump anyways.

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PipeGuy

Who will maintain it? If you need it on the road 52 x 5 to make money I'd say you'd best be prepared to turn wrenches on it yourself (or otherwise in your own shop).
Who will drive it? The wrong driver will turn $20K annual profit into a $40K loss in about 1 second.
I'm with rino - buy a used truck and see how it pans out. All the quarry drivers aound here gettem' down south.
Also, if it were me, I'd pass on the lowriders with all the lights under it and get a truck that can go on-site. The last time I checked, that meant buy a Mack.

jmic

10-4 Good Buddy, I agree 95%, Macks are nice, I'm alittle partial to Corn Binders. But there's tons of good brands out there, but watch the driver

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Joe

chrisherk

I've run the numbers based on 2000 hrs/year
truck payments= 1500/m (even if pay cash, truck depreciates and needs to be replaced,so 1500/m set aside) 18000/y-payments ( based on a 75k used truck)
fuel=30k
ins=8k
tires/maint/reg=7k
driver=40k
total=103k
revenue based on 2k hrs=(gravel co paying 65/hr right now)=130k
I have to hire a driver, because i cant get stuck in a truck right now. But i can drive occasionaly and or at night

jmic

In "86" I bought a couple of new tri-axels, there seemed to be a shortage of trucks for hire and I needed to control that aspect of business as I was busy spec. building, doing site work, ect. After I'de say 3 yrs, thats when all the maitenance started, besides the usual tires,brakes, clutch's ect. I could go on but let me just say I'de never bother owning another dump truck. I know people will disagree with me, but let me pay the $85.00/hr. when we need one. Every once in a while you might get burnt with an hr. or so but at the end of the day thats it, NO HEADACHES! IMO unles you're a owner/operator when the dust settles it's a losing propesition.

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Joe

Excalibur

I have to agree, IMO and from experience, new iron is not the way to go when starting out. Buying an older truck and a almost new trailer would be the best combo, leaving the most Benjamins in your pocket. If work gets slow or the weather isnt cooperating you dont want a big payment looming at you every month. When I bought my highway tractors I bought as old as I could get jobs with to keep the payments lower. This saved my butt when things went south, and money was tight. A buddy of mine sells trailers and he doesnt suggest buying new unless you really need to spend the money (smelling smoldering levi's perhaps) or tax purposes. I would agree that a steel trailer is the way to go because you have more options of what to haul. When looking for a driver be VERY carefull, a bad one is very expensive!! A good driver will save you $$$. Maintenance wise do as much as you can, I learned long ago that you can buy a lot of shop equipment for what a day in the Big Shop costs. That being said you should do well

rino1494

You are hurting yourself if you are basing off of 2000 hrs a year. That is 40 hrs a week for 50 weeks. You are in MA, it snows there. Paving won't be for 50 weeks out of the year. Paving ususally runs March - November. Also, you need to figure in rain days.

Lets say that you work 40 weeks which is 9 months out of the year. 50 weeks - the 40 weeks that I figure = 10 weeks.

Now, 10 weeks at 40 hrs/wk at $65/hr = $26,000.

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chrisherk

Actually up here Aggregate Industries, in the past few years has averaged over 2000 hours/ year. durung the summer, they pave day and night. they sub out 100% of there hauling.yes, most paving stops in winter,(some plants still sell asphalt year round) there still selling stone, gravel,sand. space up here is tight, so there is a lot of plant to plant hauling

PipeGuy

WORD

chrisherk

So let me get this straight, you dont have dump trucks now. you pay for moves, but on a house site that is only one move. when you need mat. you call the gravel co. How do you get rid of excess mat? When you do one house site do you do the whole thing with one excavator? Sorry about all the questions, I have a ton of them

jmic

Chris,
Grab a beer, sit back and relax! We don't have dump trucks, the guy we use has 6 tri-axles and gives us service like you wouldn't believe, chirp him on the nextel and within a half hour I have what I need. When he gets busy he hires owner/operators to run with him. One of his drivers the other day says to me " Gee the other day 2 of his trucks were caught overloaded by DOT, $5000.00 fine each." Not from my job, someone elses. I said thats to bad, turned and Thats not for me no more! Usually pay $300- $375 per move depending on which machine it is. When I Quote jobs Min. 3 moves figured depending on whats involved with site. When I need Material as said above I call Jeff on nextel and get what we need right away.( It feels good almost like owning the trucks without any liabilities) Some of the sites are so tight we haul 75% of the materials excavated away then when we're ready to backfill or establish grades haul new material back in.( we have no storage facilitys to stock pile materials) I do most of the bulk of the work on our sites with the excavator then go back with mini ex. and skid steer to finish up. If we get on a site bigger than 1/2 acre I might rent a dozer to final grade/spread topsoil. We do a high volume $$ amount of work with a small overhead and let others have the headaches. Tell me and be honest you think I'm doing something wrong??

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Joe

rino1494

Damn, around here the quarries won't let you off the scale if you are over weight......unless they were hauling their own material.

For us, we use our trucks everyday and isn't worth it to hire out trucks. Some times when we need more trucks running, we will have our buddy that has a trucking business run with us.

Damn, i can't believe that you pay that much for mobilization. We have our own truck/trailor and move our small to mid-size machines. When we move our oversized loads, we have company do it for us. They charged us $300 to move our 35 ton haul truck. That inlcuded the permits.

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chrisherk

Actually I thought i was doing something wrong by not having a truck. Everyone keeps telling me "buy a truck" then i here "you start losing $ when you buy a truck". To be honest, Idont want one for site work, and for the volume of my work, It's a hell of alot cheaper not to have one. Hey, your buisiness model makes perfect sense to me

PipeGuy

I was a GM for 3 years for a guy that runs 4 - 6 pipe crews. He also runs 2 - 3 dump trucks and a low-boy daily.
I can tell you, there's a lot to keeping a truck road legal (not to mention running) when it's doing local hauling 2000 hours or more a year. Stuff is always falling off, wearing out or otherwise being broken. There's always a sideboard that needs replacing, a tailgate that needs staightening, a load cover that won't open or close, a latch that needs welding, brakes that need adjusting, a turbo that takes a dump and on and on and on. And we haven't even touched on driver issues.
I can see owning your own lowboy if you're moving equipment 5 X 52. The flexibility of scheduling alone makes that an attractive proposition. As far as dump trucks go, I don't see how there's any real money to be made hauling aggregates for the local Aggregate Industries office. AI didn't get to be one of the largest producers of aggregates, asphalt and ready-mixed concrete in Enngland and the U.S. by paying truckers a lot. In fact, I would imagine that constantly working to lower their delivery costs (pay less to truckers) is a priority for them. I don't see dump truck ownership even being a breakeven proposition for an excavator unless you're needing it regularly 25 hours or more a week.

jojo

E-Gads,,you guys are scaring me with this dump truck talk,,,,LOL,,I got a small dump (see pic), to haul my backhoe and light loads,,I figure it will be there when I need it,,,But I will hire out for large loads,,

jmic

Jojo,
Don't get me wrong, once in a blue moon when we're finishing up a job I'll wish we had a small truck like what you have to get that !/2 load of screened topsoil or to haul away that pile of rocks ect.. that you just can't hide somewhere on site. Then I'll snap out of it and be glad of not dealing with all the negatives, which are a plenty.Just my opinion. Hey listen we have to work overtime to get our post count over 1000 so Nate will move us to the front page with our own section.

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Joe

jmic

E-Gads! I like that one.

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Joe

jojo

I sure understand the troubles that come along with owning your own truck, but I'm not sure I can find someone with a Truck that will be there when I need them,,,