19 Year-Old Starts a Trucking Business

mikhail sant is only 19 years old and he's already a self-made millionaire how did he do it i started a trucking company from scratch and in three months we did 159 000 in revenue mikhail started sand lines with just one truck that he bought for thirty two thousand dollars well that truck right now is valued at over 89. the best freight for me that i haul like my number one niche is reefer when you find customers they're really everywhere anybody decided if you don't mind to take a spin on one of your trucks you might want to do that how do i adjust the seat i think like my main goal would be having like 10 000 trucks total see this guy's thinking big april i had like 16 breakdowns between all my trucks my girlfriend kept saying you need to start making tick tocks you'd go viral and i did like three videos 1.3 million views and i was like oh my god now one year later he's got five trucks in operation and two on backwater costing a whopping 200 000 each so let's go find out how he did it you know what i think i'm gonna drop the host thing on youtube and become a truck driver all right you guys we're here at mikael's house it's super early here in pasco washington i just texted him he's waiting for us let's dive into the interview in terms of how he built this business a 19 year old with a million dollar trucking company good to meet you my friend good to meet you well we're here at your house right yeah so pretty much here is where you know i started early last year everything was still kind of shut down so it's really nice because you could you know had an office space in my house and so i was able to just kind of run everything mobily yeah and you know a lot of people can do that and a lot of people think oh it's really hard to start a business out of your house and so or you can't but we're here to prove that you can tell us a little bit about your background michael why you got into the trucking business out of all businesses it's actually uh it's actually quite funny so i was in texas working doing like moisture inspection and my buddy he has a bunch of family and trucking and he's like hey man you know you'd be really good in like logistics and we were in texas and he's like hey you should look into it looked into it right as i got home from contracting i was like you know numbers look good a lot of opportunity in the industry and i just i had cash sitting that i'd been saving up for my other business when i did landscaping and i just sent it went to go looking for a truck and just found the place and met the right people and happened like that but you're like 19. right yeah so you can't talk a lot about experience of running a trucking business right so that's crazy and that's i'm excited about sharing your story and inspire everybody else out there watching yeah tell us about your fleet i know not all of it is here you've got the 250 you got the 350 you know and then you've got these front liners how do you decide on which trucks to buy for what freight what's the best the best freight for me that i haul like my number one niche is reefer and so we're holding 80 000 pounds really any double rear axle semi truck three total axle will be fine so here's our fraylander our newest one on the fleet uh this is actually one of my favorite trucks because of the engine is a cat c12 and those are super super reliable and then here right here's my f250 which we haul our flatbed with and our hotshot so we haul anything from vehicles uh to like i said sheet metal piping really anything it can anything you can put on a flatbed we haul it and so yeah and then uh freightliner is the one i like to go with they're they're cheaper trucks sometimes uh but they they're really reliable their parts are readily available so whenever we need maintenance these parts are just everywhere this one has a brand new cat engine in it so and cat engines are just phenomenal especially for the engine i actually got it with the truck so i actually got the truck originally they were wearing 34 000 got it for 19 000. so nice brand new engine everything so what a steel deal yeah i had to do the interior though but you know 2 000 into that still save money what should we budget for maintenance for say one truck uh one for use i'd say say 20 honestly of your of your gross gross revenue 20 just in a safety net account all your gross revenue put 20 in your account have a separate savings whatever you got to do make sure you just have that there ready because you're going to want to make sure that you have your safety net just covered because you have a breakdown where you need an engine that's super expensive so keep the 20 every time right don't think oh there's no breakdown let me just use it yeah i say i'd say i'd say keep it or if you know you you're pretty confident that's your business decision yeah i'm not going to tell you not to but i would say yeah definitely keep that 20 handy what are the significant costs of starting a trucking business insurance is number one luckily i was able to avoid uh high insurance costs because i had a really good agency backing me up so finding a good agency once you buy your truck is the insurance that's the most expensive thing that you're going to buy all year and so right now i probably spent a hundred thousand a year on insurance for like four trucks and four trades yeah okay four trucks and four trailers but other startup cost is government fees all in all when you get all your business work paperwork your llc your actual documentation from the federal government that's about i want to say 1500 all in that's another change yeah so exactly obviously compared to your truck you should be just having that money set aside anyways so i say those are the two biggest and then of course diesel you're going to want to like a month's worth of fuel when you're starting in reserves because companies they actually some of them have quick pay options but a lot of them you're on like a payment 30 like a net 30 net 60 or whatever and you're not going to see that money for 30 to 60 days true then that's you know you're gonna want that backup money why don't you show us inside this reefer and i want to ask you about scheduling you know your freight what systems you use and anything else you want to highlight on that so our dispatchers we use a camion they call it a tms oh i got to lock this up so yeah so i was going to leave it open yeah yeah now i got you um so we locked these up on the side always when loading because you don't want the doors to get pinched and there's always just a little clip but uh i use a thing called the tms camion is a really good one so we can do all of our calendar work scheduling and practically everything in between and it just it works really well so what does that cost you per month it cost me a hundred dollars per month too bad to do that and it and i can add up to uh about yeah it's moist i think i can have up to like a hundred trucks on there managing and then once you get to like another tier they charge a little bit more and stuff like that so you can pretty much do everything on there what lands uh trucks in the mechanic shops most often one of the issues i'd say a lot of times it's just unaware maintenance problems a lot of coolant lines electrical issues is a big thing as well as uh cosmetics people hitting things or stuff hitting your truck on the road a lot of stuff hitting your hood or our rocks kicking up and just knocking we have to a mechanic for that yeah no there's times where we had a rock fly up and damage our fan completely internal components yeah so there's times where that could happen or you know a lot of times is uh definitely leaks leaks is a big thing so i'd say definitely leaks electrical or cosmetic damages all right so let's talk about cdl you're 19 at what age can you get a cdl and walk us through the process of getting one cost time frame any tips on you know getting it faster than slower i can only tell you about idaho oregon and washington really different across the because every state has different rules but in every state you do have to be federally 18 years old to get an in-state license and a 21 if you want to cross state lines and a lot of people think you can only get a cdl if you're 21. i have my cdl i got it last summer graduated from cdl school in august but you can't cross certain states so i can't go across the oregon border can't go across the idaho border i can only stay in washington but definitely i can still drive out here well let's talk about costs where do i start to get a cdl and how long does it take there's a lot of schools uh i went to t enterprises here in pasco that's about 4 500 i spent it's about a month long is uh how long it took me but they have a night class so if you work you can go at night and that's about a two month long process why did you get a cdl because you're in it to run a trucking business not necessarily be a driver um there's times where i've definitely needed to be a driver because of the fact that hey you know you hire a driver doesn't show up or something or you know that like stuff can happen and there's been times where i go pick up loads for my drivers just so it's ready to go when i had time and uh do you think it's important like for somebody watching right now who wants to get into the trucking running business i don't think it's what would you necessarily but i think it's very important it's useful you definitely want to know how to drive your own trucks too because i've heard horror stories and i just don't want to be saying oh now i have to go find a random cdl driver to trust to bring my truck back where it is if you had a driver that just quit on the job that's the lot does that happen i mean tell us about some horror stories since we're switching gears here a little bit i haven't had anything like that except for once i hired a guy the truck was he went to pick up the load no issues it was time for actually taking the load i wake up in the morning and the truck is still here i'm like uh no answer no call no show no nothing damn so i ended up getting my other driver who's actually off for being sick who just was like hey i'm ready to go kind of so i should come and said hey i know it's last minute i'll pay you extra i just need you to get here and take this load all right got the truck and left how long did it take you to recoup the initial investment that you made i'd say it only took about a month and a half two months because uh i already had my third truck by october and i really started running my trucks in august so august 23rd of 2021 was my first official date running a load had all my drivers set up everything done and pretty much yeah and uh october i had my my new truck already a month and a half you reached profitability basically you got your money back that you put in started making profit and then obviously as we spent more money you know you got to build up more and more and more but yeah i say so we made our we made it money back the month and a half two months and then uh it just went from there tell us about your first truck purchase what can we learn from that what did you learn from that the biggest thing i knew is the type of truck uh what it's called for and also definitely the price at the time that was right before the market went crazy and soared i was able to get my truck for 32 000. that truck right now is violated over 89. and so uh i was i was the one who got the steal and so originally the guy posted for 45 000 i was kind of new and i was like hey there's always got to be wiggle room there's a facebook marketplace right and there's a bunch of trucks i went to go kind of look at and stuff and there's nothing that really caught my eye but this one was good looking right it was comfortable had all the features it was automatic so it was going to be easier if i didn't have to hire a new driver because at the time there's all the talk about well it's gonna be incredibly hard to find a driver especially for your new company and so we kind of were in touch for about a month or so took about a month he texted me he's like hey buddy have you thought of you know buying by the truck and i was like i have but i think that price is a little too high which you're asking for and i said uh would you take thirty thousand he's like let me talk to my wife he said that's a little too low i said i'll do thirty two thousand dollars and i'll buy it like today when i'm done flying here and then i kind of pulled the the shoot him lower than what i originally offered then brought it back to my offer and it worked so he was like hey and me and him are still friends today so nice and actually for the two new semis i ordered i'm buying them from him because he got his order slots in super early oh all right so it's not that easy for anyone to just come in you know a lot right no when you want to buy a new truck it's actually sometimes dealerships are even selective when you see a 19 year old walk in hey i want to order a new truck i don't even get a call back man so i was able to negotiate with him and as soon as they come in i'm going to take them off of his hands and then so he's buying them yeah but you've committed to to buy them from did you have to pay him something as a deposit that way he knows you're committed yeah just a two thousand dollar uh deposit just to say hey here's good faith that you know refundable refundable so yeah have a pretty good relationship so so besides trucks themselves like what other supplies or equipment is important to have let's say with just one truck i mean what comes to mind i know there's a whole ton of stuff but equipment you're going to want to have is all maintenance stuff i keep oil on deck i keep straps on deck i have pretty much as many parts as i can get for preventative maintenance i'll stock because for me i've noticed whenever i need something it's not a stock so what i would i recommend is definitely keeping oil on board filters and whatnot and when you have that all stocked up you're going to be just fine because you're going to have enough material whenever you're going to do your oil changes because you're not going to do any major repairs on the road obviously right how does that work you break down what happens so i have a few uh roadside mechanics wherever i go i save contact numbers so i got one out in olympia and centralia in washington i got one in bakersfield california los angeles phoenix and texas so i kind of just keep uh keep my mechanics that are road guys there because when you're on the road and it's at night and you got your guys in flat tire even they come in handy you know and we've had coolant leaks where we have just a line burst and that just happens can't tell predictable i mean does it happen very often like i want to say in april so april i had like 16 breakdowns between all my trucks and not so long major not major um one truck was eight between the truck and the reefer because i spent over i think nine or ten thousand dollars on stuff that should have been fixed the first time but they ended up fixing everything that wasn't the problem it was a very stressful uh stressful month but we got through it and now i think we've been breakdown free for three months so are we gonna see your mechanic today sadly we can't but let's go to the parts store all right let's do it ah let's talk about customers like as a trucking business where do you find customers per se i think it sounds a little different in your line of work yeah customers is really interesting because when you find customers they're really everywhere anybody that needs freight hold you can usually bag as a customer and it sounds a lot more easy than it is so what i do is i'll go actually make cold calls and i'll just start calling people that need trucks and they end up you know doing that but a big thing is word of mouth i'll go to the truck stores i leave my business cards i give them to people they say hey i know a guy who has a truck and then i go online i do advertise on facebook and instagram for uh towing and hauling vehicles and that's a big big thing too how much do you spend on advertising per month i actually spend nothing on advertising so everything is instagram free and tick tock so all of those are just good tick tock has been good for finding drivers actually i've been doing some recruiting on there and i actually am in the process of possibly interviewing three guys off just tick tock just because they follow you on twitter yeah what are you doing on twitter i haven't seen your channel because i don't have to take that channel but so take doc i do a lot of informative how did i made a video how to start trekking company so better check that out and then another one i made is just like uh different different things from starting and growing and then also how i touch based on how to get your authority your llc how insurance works just everything people need to know it's all trucking related right yeah mostly i have a few other videos of me flying planes and stuff so nice yeah do you fly a point yeah yeah private pilot you have a private playlist license at 19. yeah 17 i got it well 18. that's freaking cool are you guys looking for ways to improve your memory and focus do you want to conquer every day while improving yourself one step at a time entrepreneurship needs human optimization because you are the one making all these important decisions so you need more mental memory than everybody else around you our sponsor today is on its and they are ready to help you on your self-improvement journey they've sold over a million bottles of their world-renowned nootropic alpha brain the nootropic is filled with clinically studied ingredients that help you with your focus and your memory and they are so confident you're going to love it that it comes with a no questions asked money back guarantee try alpha brain today by using this link on it dot com forward slash up flip and get up to 30 off your bottle of alpha brain again that is o-n-n-i-t dot com forward slash up flip and enjoy for somebody watching us right now and is struggling to get new customers what would you tell them and you can tell them on what they can do right now or change in their business yeah so one thing you're going to want to do is definitely hop on a load board i use that board there's a bunch of different load boards that could go on and on we use the truckstop.com that is one of my favorites if you're for any freight you're going to haul so it's truck stop and i think if you just get on there and uh you start looking for brokers to haul for that's gonna be your first step and then start calling around you find out if there's a cold source facility anyone who makes like wine around your area beer producers potato haulers or depend on what you obviously haul of course that can change but even if you go hit up auctions and say hey i want to haul your cars with our flatbed you know do it so awesome what can you tell me about building relationship with brokers is there any any uniqueness to just building a really strong one i mean especially as a new one right yeah it's a new business i have a really strong relationship with this brokerage out in uh oregon and we haul actually loads for them every single week so we do haul their grocery outlet route that they have because a lot of companies like to go through brokers so it's the risk mitigation for having a trucking company directly so they go through these brokers and so just started by doing one load and i was like hey could this be a possibility do you have this often he's like yeah like all every twice a week like hey we got a truck here twice a week what dates worked out the same thing we just started doing it and doing it and doing it and came to the point where now they send me like the load confirmation i don't even message them they just send me the load confirmation every week they expect you to be there they know you'll be there yep exactly yeah that's pretty cool in terms of revenue mikhail what is it today and what are the typical margins yeah so right now our revenue a month is anywhere from 75 to 120 000 when all the trucks are running profit margin is about 30 so for me right now we're hitting a little bit lower revenue area because it's not harvest yet so we kind of have a slowdown in the summer how much of it are you putting back in in terms of revenue back in the business almost 100 wow just because i don't want to have as much trucks as possible and i have my construction business that's pretty much paying me personally so i'm not struggling there with the personal side of things without get having trucking paying but it's nice because when we have all that money built back in we're just able to buy new equipment new trailers hire more drivers and then my goal is just to have a super big fleet mega fleet okay in terms of your revenue that you mentioned how many jobs a month typically do you have to do yeah running what four trucks right yeah so four trucks to reach that revenue i should actually say my revenue is off because i try to hit at least thirty thousand dollars a week with four trucks so sometimes we're in the hundred and twenty thousand margin usually um but like i said with the three two to three trucks the 75 85 000 margin with that you're going to be wanting to run at least three loads per truck a week depending on the length sometimes you go to florida and that's just already a 10 12 000 week just going from here to florida yeah so it really just really depends on the type of freight but i'd say you're going to be wanting to do with one truck to pay yourself back would probably want to be three three loads a week roughly if you're running regional just because you want to be i'd say grossing at least ten thousand dollars or eight to ten thousand dollars per truck so that's kind of my my margins i like to keep when you look for drivers to hire what do you look for i definitely say that an interview is not gonna tell you the um the full story a lot of people will be like hey let's just do an interview whatever and then we'll do maybe a drive test no i asked them hey i want to take them to lunch i want to see if they want to go to dinner i'll say hey bring your wife or bring your kids or whoever i'll i'll buy you guys food because i want to talk to anything that's better or the reason i say that is because you really get to see who they are around other people and then you know with yourself and so you just talk and i get to really know them and then say hey i feel comfortable with you driving my truck and give him a shot what platforms would you go to to see facebook is so crazy because you can literally do anything facebook again facebook facebook again all right so even to find drivers yes please there's actually group chats for finding drivers so cdl drivers looking for work is a popular one and i posted there but yeah so i go on facebook um i even used instagram and it's worked i don't really like posting to job sites i've really never had to yeah whatever works for you social media has always been such a good tool and i've been successful with it most of your drivers are local right yeah or all of them i have a one driver that lives an hour about an hour out and then i have all my other drivers live in town is there anything else important to mention on how that works i mean i'm new to it too so i'm like is that always the case for like if a trucking company exists in pasco yeah every driver is going to be the most likely to have a driver live in california i could have them live in las vegas i could have texas yeah they could take the truck home as long as it comes in here at least once or twice a month so we can just have the service mechanics check it out i like getting my inspections done pretty often so do you think you're going to have that at some point or are you 100 i already had drivers talking about living out in arizona and working out there and i eventually have a goal for getting a warehouse out in arizona phoenix area so so when somebody just gets started when you did how did you build brand awareness right yeah what did you do specifically tell us getting my logos from my company that did my digital marketing they made my logos my banners variations pretty easy to do so i went to go to lonnie science which is a science shop out here in pasco they did all my signs on my trucks was a huge thing and i just started advertising heavily with the logos posted them all over on social media try to make one show today right and from social media it just kind of took off and that's when i take talk my girlfriend kept saying you need to start making tick tocks you'd go viral and i did like three videos 1.3 million views and i was like oh my gosh so that's insane so you didn't really spend a lot of money on getting your brand away just the logo so i think i spent about uh 600 total maybe just getting everything all my logos copyrights done everything so yeah wow so with the rising fuel costs and everything else right as a business owner what are your suggestions to manage the the fuel costs yeah what ways and tricks to get the most amount of discounts now is definitely the most important time to reinvest in your business and your company save all the money you got for your business besides what you got to pay yourself to you know be stable but i'd say yeah definitely investing more in your company and kind of waiting it out because it is going to go down eventually fuel card programs are best i use uh but i have an a to b card is what it's called a to b you get universal discounts and you can manage all your drivers on there all of that and it's when you say universal like any gas station you get a discount yep interesting how does that work what is the discount is it substantial or is it just minuscule it depends it's it's all variable anywhere from 20 cents to 70 cents wow yeah the 70 cents makes a difference yeah it does definitely 100 were there any barriers to uh entry being 19 years old i mean how did they look at you yo you want to start a trucking business 100 percent my first insurance quote with me driving it was like 57 000 a year and you know starting out you know i'm putting my money in my truck my trailer my insurance that's now 57 000 a year man that's my whole capital and they wanted like a 20 down payment so yeah that's when i was like kind of getting discouraged at first and then that's when i started just i posted on a trucking chat like hey i'm just kind of stuck i'm probably and the cheapest i found was 38 000 and then i had a dude called me from florida and he was like you're talking about the truck yeah yeah the truck for the insurance and the liability and all that he's like hey i'll guarantee you save you money he's like let me do my magic so i hit up him in florida my first agent and then he you know helped out a lot so okay any other tips and tricks when it comes to just getting into trucking with regards to insurance for those watching what else have you learned that yeah like do this do this or don't do that what comes to mind 100 so first thing is uh for me i wasn't going to be the primary driver i'm actually not on my insurance as a driver because of how expensive it is then sherman that makes sense i'm put on like a my my flatbed at 350. i'd say first get your drivers that have more than two years of experience um 100 needed two years of experience for your drivers second would be make sure that your agency is local i recommend having a local agency another thing would be i'd say shop around and actually put insurance agencies to get like against each other because they want you to spend the most money but if you find the right one they're going to save you the most money and they're not we're going to care about hey i got this guy to buy a hundred thousand dollar policy they want your business yeah at the end of the day yeah right that's just good just gotta find the right one okay this is the reefer right yeah i remember you mentioned this is your favorite uh thing to haul why is it is it because of the profit market definitely the yeah the profit margins and availability uh reefer freight is huge in washington because we have lamb western potatoes we have eggs out here we have all these grocery stores dairy products so dairy gold is huge and so we just whatever it is that needs refrigeration which is mostly food we can haul it and we've been really successful at it with our first truck that's what i started with was a reefer do you want to get more is that the idea for scaling the game get more reefers and flatbeds is the goal so those are my two favorite freight right now flatbed freight is the one that's going highest uh freight rate wise the highest value because of uh flatbed yeah but they fluctuate all the time reefer is really strong in uh like i said august through uh december and then january as well so is van because then everyone's kind of wanting to get their amazon products their christmas toys and then flat bed that stays busy all through the summer and the spring because people are always going to need wood lumber and whatever they need you know what do we got here right now do you actually haul with this thing is this more of a business computer we have a gooseneck in there right now it's used for commuting and we actually we transport a lot of uh equipment and stuff like that so for this we have a gooseneck in our flatbed we haul anything from cars uh piping scrap metal the whole nine yards really with it so and this is the trailer no no this is just a secondary trailer this is a tow trailer i got it for our towing division and you said the gooseneck right that's the much bigger one how many cars can you handle the gooseneck this hauls the gooseneck trailer up to three cars but then it's 40 feet of space where you could stack that thing at 11 feet high so nice what did you pay for it i paid this guy a little bit more than i should have 67 000 i negotiated a bit off of it they were wanting way more than it was worth but got it for that and we ended up getting a flatbed already had drivers a team ready to go so i have a team that that drives this and a reefer so they kind of interval back and forth okay and then we use it to haul cars and then our gooseneck we just go all over the country we've been to florida been to oklahoma texas california you name it yeah your tires are running uh you know they're getting there yeah looks like you're using it for what it's meant to be let's talk about truck storage yeah you know where are you at here you're well we're here at porch facility uh i know the family they gave me the opportunity to park here they have loads i recommend highly getting an enclosed lot the thing is that where we live out here is so truck heavy that finding an enclosed lot's almost impossible what would it cost to store it than if it wasn't a deal that you have right yeah this family expect for a truck and trailer combo to be anywhere from about 100 a month to 200 a month that's like a rough average and that's just for parking a truck and trailer the idea obviously is right that the truck shouldn't be parked too much it needs to be on the road making you 100 so how often out of the month do you think the trucks sit here for you specifically one or two of the trucks that come like this guy in the two freightliners they come in and out uh in in our local routes so they'll run anywhere around town and then the other ones going back and forth from seattle spokane sometimes oregon so they'll be back every other night or every two nights or something like that so i have them here quite often but then my other trucks they probably come here maybe twice a month max so okay well i'm excited if you don't mind to take a spin on one of your trucks do you mind if you do that i think i trust you all right let's do it all right you guys let's go for a spin my first time driving a semi and we'll continue asking amazing questions to mikhail who's already inside let's do it all right miguel teach me how to start this uh monster here got your key on the very left over there turn that all the way though right do we do any pre-start checklist or is it pretty straightforward pretty straightforward on this guy we would usually do an outside inspection but today because i just flew a plane yesterday and you have like a whole checklist of things before you can hit the yeah hit the road and then let it sit on for about five seconds why is that what do we do you want to wait for the glow plugs to warm up um and then there's a start button right there that push button do i hold it until it yep i hear it running and just hold it let go perfect that's easy just press both pedals both pedals push on the clutch then grab this and then it's on the bottom there's a little lever and then pull it to drive right there uh one more up there you go and then slowly release the clutch obviously the brakes on keep your brakes off top and then slowly release clutch and then gas her up let her go and don't have to touch the clutch anymore unless you stop yeah you know what i think i'm gonna drop the host thing on youtube and uh become a truck driver but we're hiring how are you did you write a business plan when you started the trucking business yeah i had a little printed out one that i uh paid why not yeah it was just one one general page that had a breakdown of like just starting really just starting what's three important parts on that piece of paper that i think every business plan should have three important parts of the business plan is that you had on the number one is i'd say is the financing always where do you get the money yeah where are you going to get the money and how much are you going to spend of it and then second off is what is your first plan of attack how are you going to get the first how are you going to get the first amount of money and then the third time is how are you going to sustain the money right how do you keep it going so i think those are the three important parts is you know start get it going keep it going how do you manage your work life balance i mean what other things do you do and i like i like traveling so like we went to mexico this year like four times what else do you do yeah i like flying it's a pilot so i like my license and whatnot and so i like uh you know uh going playing no not yet someday though um but i have i have friends that fly and then i do videography and photography and that's kind of i make money from it but it's kind of like a fun type of business where you can really be passionate about it and passionate about other things i do but there's the difference between actually doing the work and right having that uh you know that mindset where you know you're like okay the pressure's not all the way on there but you know shooting can be very very stressful sometimes but it's very fun so i love doing it i bet that's that's cool look if you guys want to hear more advice from mikhail we interviewed him on our podcast check it out on upflip.com forward slash podcast i believe it's episode 28. so for somebody looking uh to buy their first truck you mentioned facebook marketplace what other places can people go to to you know vet the possible trucks what should they look for obviously there's different kind of freight right yeah so what else can we touch on that and add value so i'd say facebook marketplace is honest it's honestly one of the best-selling selling sites i'm surprised for anything really yeah trucks and reefer i've got everything i have off facebook marketplace another good one is craigslist because a lot of older guys are not surprised they're posting are posting their trucks and craigslist because that's what they're used to usually 19 year olds are really in the trucking industry so usually hopefully that'll change after this video i hope so like what do you look for like i'm brand new i did some research i want to buy my first truck what are the key components mikael to look for to not get screwed essentially yeah so first thing obviously turn it on see how it sounds um when we hop in a truck you want to you want to make sure that the the ignition starts up yeah and then also come look at the tires you can see where the wear is because tires are very expensive obviously these ones have been weared down quite a bit these are the inner duals on the front these are the power drivers common or just alignment off oh no pretty common with these trucks especially with the weight being on the front there's a bunch of factors that can affect that um but yeah mostly mostly weight and also alignment but then another thing is come check the plate pull the fifth wheel and see if all the mechanisms are working uh you could check all the transmission make sure that everything's kind of lubed up and the gears uh breaks you can do your brake test and see how many brakes they got and then just see if you just see anything out of normal obviously this is my beat truck tires aren't as important when buying a truck because then you can always throw that into a negotiation i actually prefer getting a truck that needs a little bit of work because then that's where your negotiation comes in i got two really good mechanics and they come in and help out they're good good price and they're well worth it so how many employees do you have because you said you're running five trucks so how many total i currently have seven and so i have a four four drivers and then uh well five but the part-timer yeah and so full-time employees though about six and then seven total and so we have a two dispatchers and uh my girlfriend she does the personal assistant work and stuff like that and they're employees of your company they're not subcontractors or anything yep anything you want to highlight in terms of how the pay is structured any tips yeah tricks but i do i do buy mileage anywhere from starting from 50 to 70 cents a mile so i make sure i pay them well so i have a driver making up to like 2800 3200 a week so just by driving yeah your truck yeah not having to worry about maintenance of the truck yeah yeah so that's not bad so yeah they make some pretty good money sometimes with uh with driving then there's other times where you know you might do a shorter mile a week or shorter run and you know could pay 1200 or so or you know 800 depending on just really how much you drive yeah so if you the more you want to drive the more you may get a deal so there's a lot of regulations for the trucking business right yes give us the top three regulatory things that you have to stay on top of monthly yearly yeah one is driver e-logs elds making sure your drivers are staying in compliance with their hours and then another thing is making sure that you keep all your receipts all everything for both dor and irs is because we get tax deductions with an mc number i think the last thing is definitely insurance your insurance has to be like keen perfectly for what you're hauling all the freight has to be perfectly insured or else you can get a big violation if your insurance was off when do you want to get to 100 trucks 100 trucks i was actually talking to the guy at a dinner i was saying i think in about i think seven to eight years i could have 100 trucks nice is that really your goal for satellites yeah you want to grow that big i think i would i think a thousand trucks is like my main a thousand reefers having a thousand refrigeration units in the fleet and then having a total i think like my main goal would be having like ten thousand trucks total uh box trucks flat beds reefers yeah see this guy's thinking big what do you see happening with these diesel they're not going nowhere diesel i don't think so you can't outperform a diesel and yeah it feels like a truck so you have to test the truck there's a they've never had one in real operation and there's been videos now getting leaked about uh autonomous trucks crashing and stuff like that so i i don't think so it weighs out i think before very i think we're about like honestly being realistic about 40 years out before we get to an actual electric trucking uh community and uh but overall when that happens you just gotta evolve you can't be you can't be afraid of it hey if they make electric trucks run as efficient as a diesel right i'm all for it so absolutely no what are some challenges that you're faced with you know as a truck driver what give me a scenario yeah so i mean for instance we had a really tough month in april you know like i talked about breakdowns are always always a thing right with our case we had a large frozen load of potatoes worth over a hundred thousand dollars and we had a reefer that ended up having six or four to six breakdowns that month and it was all for one issue that could have been fixed in one go but no one really knew what they were talking about and we finally came to our thermal king here in pasco they got us done right and then our blower motor went out and that's when we really felt that because we were losing temperature we're in hot texas weather so you've almost lost a hundred thousand dollars of potatoes but luckily my reefer held at like positive 10 degrees so it was still frozen as can be and it it really was uh was a work of a miracle there so yeah that was definitely a hard thing to go with running the business and you know for my driver as well because i was having him rushed to dallas from another small town in texas and we were able to find the park and got it fixed that'd be a lot of french fries destroyed i'd be disappointed a lot of mcdonald's would be upset with us how do you scale a trucking business and you know increase its revenue first thing obviously is uh getting getting loads and getting you know more customers and and i think it's getting one truck set a goal make sure you're hitting that once you start hitting that and you see that profit come in and you have enough money in your account you can buy a new truck as soon as you can afford a new truck yeah i can't go spend it on a ferrari or something that you want but rather get a truck so truck will make you money ferrari depreciates so you know i'd say uh go uh go get a go get a new truck soon as you got that money and then start building from there and then the more trucks you get actually the more customers will start coming to you which is kind of a weird thing people just start realizing once you start getting more trucks you start moving around and start seeing your logos nice to have that how important is like customer experience obviously reliability and that whole process right because it's not just trucks and stuff super big um you your trucking company literally relies on your reliability to pick and deliver a load right and so that's the secret to that and the secret to that is just making sure you have good drivers good reliable drivers good reliable trucks good maintenance plan and a good scheduling and knowing how the hours of operation work with an eld which is just a device that limits your hours drivers only get 60 hours a week they can work seven days 60 hour schedules or they can work 8 day 70 hour schedules and so you just want to make sure that time management is is super keen with trucking and it sucks because it feels like sometimes trucking companies are the ones that get pinned because there's the brokers that give out loads to companies from the client and there's clients that just expected to be done and so then the trucking company is the end result of hey it's all on you and that's the pressure's on you know but i really do like it and i think that once you get that down and you realize how the industry works you're just going to keep rolling and keep going let's talk about buying or leasing a truck when you get started you didn't do that yeah i bought absolutely so can you share what you think just at least you're about to say i say leasing is good as if you can get one but it's like a six months waiting list right now to even get a lease truck so yeah so it's gonna put a time crunch on your business and then on top of that you actually don't own that truck you're spending money on the truck that's not even going to be yours which i see why they cover the maintenance whatever and you can switch out trucks if you ever have a breakdown but i recommend buying over leasing but i think leasing is a good option if you're wanting to just try out the industry before you really dump a bunch of money yeah before you really commit to the business like you did so you have other businesses as well what do you use to manage your workflow not just on the trucking side the construction side i want to highlight sort of how you make that work yeah without going crazy a big thing is quickbooks i have my uh my brother who is a banker he manages all the finances does a lot of bookkeeping we have weekly calls and just go over everything and whatnot and then another big thing is just you have to be organized digitally so i have like contacts that are all saved if it's for construction that's in their company notes or anything on their contact notes so i can just search construction and i have like all my contact construction come there and then i also use a thing called jogger and that helps me for construction window jobber yeah so jobber is uh what i use for construction and then i have on my computer both my computers the ipad for dispatching and then the my personal laptop i have a file section for each truck when it comes to trucking on where i put my documents the load bills receipts all of that so expenses is all categorized and everything's in its own little file system let me follow up with this question so we have somebody watching they have one truck they do their finances they do their tracking they do their dispatch whatever the case may be right at which point what would be the first one or two things that you need to give over to somebody else to then you know run your business more smoothly right instead of being a jack of all trades and trying to do everything i'd say definitely dispatch and fleet management is the one thing when you start growing but if you're doing one truck one or two it's kind of it's kind of hard to say because i was a super i'm even able to manage with all the stuff i do right now i could dispatch four trucks overland too it's not it's not as efficient so i don't but um i i can and so i'd say the first thing would be throw over your fleet management and dispatching to somebody else and then uh finances is really the last thing you want to do because luckily i got my brother a part of my team and so i really trust him but you could really get screwed up by trusting somebody with your finances and then definitely go see a cpa for all your taxes go go get an attorney for contracts employment contracts just have those people in your in your circle and i think after that you'll you'll kind of get the rest of the way but a fleet manager is like the number one i think that you should source out once you get to that point he's got a private pilot license at 17. he's got multiple businesses at 19. he's got plans to do a lot more and i'm like this there's got to be a secret sauce to this my dad he had a landscaping company when he was young like younger in high school and started a little business when uh he was in a in high school and just did that and made all his money doing that and then he got into other things and my brother had a little lawn care business it was just kind of one thing after another and i just took on to it and then that's all i want to do so it's awesome self-employment so okay what's next for saint lines for the next five years give us a quick snapshot next five years just keep buying trucks and evolving and maybe getting a few more extra freights i think we're gonna get into heavy haul hauling bigger excavators and equipment and just keep killing it trying to i think our five year goal for revenue and i lost some of my brother is going to be about like 25 30 million so wow that's pretty ambitious but i have no doubt he can do it all right mikhail well this has been fun thank you it's been a pleasure appreciate it well that's a wrap with sandlines the owner is mikhail i hope you guys enjoyed it i hope you were inspired by everything he's doing everything he's shared with you i'm sure he's happy if you reach out via comments he'll respond thank you guys so much for watching take a second to like subscribe and hit that bell so that you don't miss any of our videos we do for you thank you

Channel: UpFlip

Views: 3,890,152

Keywords: trucking, trucking business, truck driver, trucker, cdl, trucking life, trucking vlogs 2022, joy of trucking, semi truck, trucks, truck driver vlog, semi, trucker vlog, truck, how to start a trucking business, owner operator, starting a trucking business, hotshot trucking, start trucking business, trucking from scratch, trucking podcast, truck drivers, upflip

Id: -8TnsjDRXUE

Length: 39min 46sec (2386 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 22 2022