It was once my dream to own one of these

New 2009 Kenworth W900, 550 horsepower Cummins ISX engine, 18 speed transmission with overdrive, 3.55 rear end ratio, 72 inch sleeper, Heated Leather Seats, Sirius, Smartwheel, Fridge, Sofabed, Upper Bunk, Power Windows, Moto Mirrors, Wide Ride Front Axle, LEDs.

$134,337.00

You can see a picture and more specs at the link.

http://www.hissonggroup.com/pre_owned_detail.asp?sid=08394586X7K13K2009J1I40I29JAMQ4071R0&veh=924056

And it's a beauty, too...

I know you thought you'd like to be your own boss, but reality intruded...

Still, that is one magnificent truck!

:hi:

The payment on it would be in the neighborhood of $2500 a month. If you want to own a truck like that you better be ready to do some serious trucking. :)

repairs, etc.
Insurance rates on a commercial truck will make your eyes water....


mark

The kind of insurance you have to buy depends on how you use the truck. If you lease the truck to a company, your insurance isn't extremely high. You usually just need bobtail insurance and physical damage insurance. I don't remember what bobtail insurance costs exactly, but I do remember that it's cheap. Physical damage insurance is a small percentage of the truck's value. It's not extremely high, but the more valuable your truck is the higher it will be.

If you choose to be an independent owner operator with your rig, that's where the amazingly expensive insurance comes in. You have to buy liability insurance and cargo insurance as well. I priced insurance for being an independent o/o with a modest $40,000 rig and they wanted $2000 down and $750 a month. That's physical damage, liability, and cargo insurance.

There are also other costs, like you alluded to. The best way to get a handle on your costs and what you need to make to be successful is to break it down to cost per mile. I figured on that $40,000 independent rig that I would need to make $1.25 a mile to break even. The same truck leased on to a carrier, less a trailer, would cost around 75 cents a mile. Both of those cost per mile figures are figured on the current average cost of diesel per gallon.

and get sandbagged by the operating costs while they think they are making lots of money.....


mark

I used to own a rig and I've been a trucker for over 12 years. It's a costly business to run and a lot of people don't know what they are getting into when they buy or lease a truck. You really have to have a good aptitude for business. Some drivers also find that a CPA does them a lot of good.

That's quite a beast!

But why was it a dream and isn't still a dream? Or are you making your dream come true?

One temporary reason is the economy. There's not enough freight avaiable at good enough rates to justify buying a truck like that. Who knows when the recession will end?

More of a permanent reason is the medical condition that I have with regards to mental illness. I have to have good, affordable health care and the only way I can get the coverage I need is to work as a company driver. I would have to buy my own insurance if I bought a truck and the insurance companies in that case will not cover pre-existing conditions. Also, if I ever ended up in the hospital again (which is unlikely, but still possible) it would cost me several thousands of dollars to get the treatment I would need.

Another reason is that if I bought a truck like that I would be out on the road over 300 days a year. My little company driver job that gets me home every day looks a lot more attracvtive when I think about being gone for weeks at a time.

but that one... OMG

It's one of those kind of trucks that make a lot of truckers get into the business in the first place. When you are driving a little 65 mph company truck out west and see one of those things blast past you at 80, it makes you think, "Some day, some day." :)

didn't even know they still made that style...

I thought everything was going in this direction :)

2009 Kenworth T660 - $112,695

and they do get little better fuel mileage. The W900s and Pete 379s are still the choice of successful owner-operators, though.