“If you’re doing the right things … if you’re looking at your numbers, figuring out your fixed cost per day, your variable cost per mile, and choosing the best loads for yourself, you’re going to weather this winter just fine like you have the last two years. And then when freight turns around, you’re going to be in really good shape.” –ATBS Vice President Mike Hosted
When freight turns around. What every owner-operator out there’s been waiting on for quite some time, and it’s like as not to be a while yet, with market prognosticators predicting that we’ll continue “bouncing along the bottom” all the way through the first quarter of next year, to use the words of ATBS VP Mike Hosted. Yet there’s at least some confluence of opinion on a potential market turn and its timing.
Hosted echoed voices from last week’s edition of Overdrive Radio, essentially: Get through the election, through the winter period and typically sluggish Q1, and hopefully further interest rates cuts deliver confidence for business investment and some freight improvement.
Here’s a big thanks to continued support for Overdrive Radio from the fine folks at sponsoring company Howes, longtime provider of fuel treatments like its Howes Diesel Treat anti-gel and Lifeline rescue treatment to get you through the coldest temps, likewise its all-weather Diesel Defender and Howes Multipurpose penetrating oil, among other products.
ATBS’ analysis of trend lines derived from real-world performance of their thousands of owner-operator clients showed income has been on average just slightly down for the 12 months ending June of 2024, compared to prior 12 months. It’s down as an average because dry van owner-ops were down, yet other individual segments — leased reefer haulers and flatbedders, and independents, too — all posted gains. There’s a lot more detail in the full presentation, and plenty of potential insights around maintenance spend, fuel costs and efficiency, and much more.
Benchmark your own business’s performance against the average numbers, yet keep in mind of course that every owner-operator business has unique revenue and income needs, relative to unique costs, too. Full audio follows in this week’s podcast episode:
Download Mike Hosted’s presentation slides at this link to follow along, or catch the video up top.
The Overdrive/ATBS Partners in Business owner-operator business education program is sponsored by Rush Truck Centers, the premier solutions provider to the commercial vehicle industry with 150-plus full-service dealership locations in the United States and Canada. The PIB book is available for download via this link.