Thought I’d just post some figures for the O/D sceptics out there 
Last week I worked Mon to Fri leaving the yard around 6.30/7.00am in the morning and getting back anywhere between 4 and 6 pm in the evenings. I hauled stone for Tarmac to the boat Mon/Tue/Wed and base coat blacktop for Whitemountain on Thur and Fri with 3 loads of sand for a small family quarry to fill out my days on Wed/Thur.I also hauled a load of Asphalt for Northstone on Sat morning but as I don’t know the rate I’ll leave that day out.
If anything this would have been a slightly above average earning week in that I grossed £2164,to earn this the artic covered approx 1193 miles.Even though I have the added costs of running my own tri-axle tipping trailer I think the fact that this works out to be £1.81/mile loaded or empty is not really that bad 
My diesel price is currently 60PPL ex vat which I get from the South, the roadrelay on the Foden tells me she is doing 6.90/gallon which I don’t think is too bad considering most of my running is 30/50 mile round trips through the urban jungle of greater Belfast
The morale of the story is don’t believe all the “doom and gloom” merchants about O/D work do your homework big time and it will work out if you’ve got the “gumption” 
I think you’re on fair good thing there BT. 1193 a week is not an excessive amount to drive & grossing over £2k (on that week) you’re well ok, especially at what you can buy diesel at.
She likes a drop though don’t she? How’s your driving style…do you rev her hard when you move away?
You might be interested to cast your eye over my operating cost sums here: (though for the baby truck)
http://trucknetuk.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=12698&sid=465b940f3c69a3fb15d3f305b28f7b0a
If anything this would have been a slightly above average earning week in that I grossed £2164,to earn this the artic covered approx 1193 miles.Even though I have the added costs of running my own tri-axle tipping trailer I think the fact that this works out to be £1.81/mile loaded or empty is not really that bad
My diesel price is currently 60PPL ex vat which I get from the South, the roadrelay on the Foden tells me she is doing 6.90/gallon which I don’t think is too bad considering most of my running is 30/50 mile round trips through the urban jungle of greater Belfast
If you were working for McBurney Brothers/Refrigeration out of Kells you would earn approx £1050 for the same mileage. its double so Good rates your on there fella! Keep it goin!!! Your wagon seem a bit thirsty though!!! even for local stuff, you should look into to it, fodens ? Narrrr!!
You are getting diesel a lot cheaper than can be got in the UK.
Apart from that it sounds a cracking deal you’ve got there.
I’ll do around 750km a day for around 4 days per week, and collection and delivery mileage would be around the 300km mark for the last 2 days of the six.
Theres got to be some sort of catch though or else everyone in Ireland would be doing it!
Driveroneuk:
I think you’re on fair good thing there BT. 1193 a week is not an excessive amount to drive & grossing over £2k (on that week) you’re well ok, especially at what you can buy diesel at.
She likes a drop though don’t she? How’s your driving style…do you rev her hard when you move away?
You might be interested to cast your eye over my operating cost sums here: (though for the baby truck)http://trucknetuk.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=12698&sid=465b940f3c69a3fb15d3f305b28f7b0a
You guys are maybe used to the big long M-way runs on the mainland 
When I got the Foden in Oct last year the average on the computer was 7.25m/gallon and this was when she was owned by Reid Transport up in Scotland.I presume with them she was doing quite abit of long haul M-way work and since she has dropped just 0.35 on my urban work and the extra loads I’m doing with the PTO it hasn’t dropped too much.Bear in mind it is a ■■■■■■■ M11 440hp donkey but its just 11 litres so its getting it tight somewhat at 44t. I don’t rev her too hard and always try to run in the green.There are two Daf XF 430’s that run with me at Northstone quarries and they are returning 6.30m/gallon 
ianyng:
You are getting diesel a lot cheaper than can be got in the UK.
Apart from that it sounds a cracking deal you’ve got there.
I’ll do around 750km a day for around 4 days per week, and collection and delivery mileage would be around the 300km mark for the last 2 days of the six.
Theres got to be some sort of catch though or else everyone in Ireland would be doing it!
Ian,
The catch
Well if anything its the fact that everybody knows quarry work is feast or famine and at the moment its at the feast stage and touch wood the only real famine I’ve encountered was the month of Jan but I know things can change overnight.
Today for instance I left the yard at 7.30am and returned at 5.30pm, 3 loads of base coat tarmac taken to a new road job and 162 miles covered. £360 gross earned to the truck which works out at the nice little number of £2.22/mile. 
But remember I run an artic with a 30t payload and not an 8 wheeler where your lucky to get 20t 
This is all very well until you come to winter where you’ll be sat about twiddling your thumbs for 6 months or pulling for McBurney’s at 10p per mile watching all your profit from the summer disappear down the pipes.
Rob K:
This is all very well until you come to winter where you’ll be sat about twiddling your thumbs for 6 months or pulling for McBurney’s at 10p per mile watching all your profit from the summer disappear down the pipes.
Well Rob,
I brought the truck home on a Thur last Oct and there was a quarry screaming for me to start a resufacing job the following Mon and apart from the first 3 weeks in Jan this year its been steady enough.Things could all change this winter I know but I’ll just “batten down the hatches” and wait for the spring 
.
good on you BT - keep up the good work and don’t listen to some of 'em they’re only jealous really as they haven’t got the cojones to go it alone
sounds nice work BT, i’ve been tempted to post figures just to prove a point but have resisted simply for the fact it’s my business and no one elses!
in my book anyone who’s prepared to give it a good go deserves to reap the rewards, those that aren’t deserve to stay on £6.00 an hour.
jj72/Paul b,
Big 10/4 on that lads I never let the “soothsayers” get me down
Soothsayers or not, I hardly think there is any comparison running local distribution or quarry tipper work to long distance haulage.
When I was running a successful UK transport business in 1986, I could get rates of £30 for a short run from the tankfarm to the the refinery landtanks. I could quite easily do 10 loads a day and do no more than 30 miles in total, including taking the truck home.
So £300 per day, it would be nice if it lasted but you still have to deliver the finished product to the customer if you have a contract with the manufacturer.
Local work will always pay more money, and cannot be worked out solely on a mileage basis
wheelnut, no disrespect but your well out of touch with the job, your right in what you say, local work always pays more per mile than distance but of coarse you have to load and unload in that rate so those local jobs can be a pain in the arse. i’m not about to publish figures for my business for all to see but my wagon earns between £300 to £450+vat a day, everyday, with maybe one night out a fortnight, thats a combination of distance and local, distance being two load to the west midlands or one to port tolbot or, as is often the case two drops west midlands and a back load to rotherham, you can’t really put a mileage rate on it as everyday is different but the distance jobs if thats what you’d call em, pay good money.
everyone seems to look at it as what you get per mile, why? i never think about that, i purely look at what the trucks earning per day/per week against how much fuel i’m using, because basically that’s what determines how much goes in my pocket, other costs i’ve got no control over, standing costs are, what they are, maintainence? you’d need a crystal ball for that one!
i’m not saying, everyone rush out and buy a wagon, all i’m saying is you can earn decent money if you’ve got the nowse to find some decent work AND your prepared to graft, theres no such thing as easy money in anything and it is, a gamble.
paul b:
wheelnut, no disrespect but your well out of touch with the job,everyone seems to look at it as what you get per mile, why? i never think about that, i purely look at what the trucks earning per day/per week against how much fuel i’m using, because basically that’s what determines how much goes in my pocket, other costs i’ve got no control over, standing costs are, what they are, maintainence? you’d need a crystal ball for that one!
Local work will always pay more money, and cannot be worked out solely on a mileage basis
i’m not saying, everyone rush out and buy a wagon, all i’m saying is you can earn decent money if you’ve got the nowse to find some decent work AND your prepared to graft, theres no such thing as easy money in anything and it is, a gamble.
Thats what I said 
And the VAT is not yours, you are only looking after it for Tony and Gordon, it cannot be counted in any way as earnings.
A company with a 1000 trucks will be happy if every vehicle makes a £1 per day profit, a man with one truck is not so happy with the same profit margins
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interesting point about the vat, there’s a hell of a lot of people in business that will tell you theres good money to be made out of being vat registered, i’m not convinced you can actually make money out of it as such but you are slightly incorrect in saying the vats not yours, the vat you can’t claim back is not yours would be more correct, yes, you have to pay the vat out first before you can claim it back or more to the point, offset it against the vat you’ve took in but i look at it like this, the things i pay vat on like fuel and maintainence i’ve got no choice about, the costs of such thing are inclusive of vat wether i’m vat registered or not, so in affect i get that money back which to me is worth about £500 a month or looking at it a different way if i wasn’t vat registered and therefore didn’t charge vat on the work i’d be £500 worse off for doing the same job. there are one or two other perks involved but i’ll not go into that on here.
Paul,
I am well rusty on this but I thought that if your turnover was above a certain figure (30 - 40k ?) then you were compel led to register for vat. Like it or not
Good to hear its working out BT.
Loggo:
Paul,
I am well rusty on this but I thought that if your turnover was above a certain figure (30 - 40k ?) then you were compel
Yes, I’m sure you are correct on that point.
Loggo:
Paul,
I am well rusty on this but I thought that if your turnover was above a certain figure (30 - 40k ?) then you were compel
the curent threshold is £60,000 on taxable supplies wich is not necessarily turnover, it means if you were vat registered you would be charging vat on that £60,000, for instance if you were self employed labour only and earnt in excess of 60k you wouldn’t “have” to be vat registered but i’d advise anyone that pays any amount of vat on supplies they use to carry out their business to go vat registered, at the end of the day it’s money in your pocket
I knew one of you would have the latest gen.
Now how did that get in the middle of my sentence when I put it at the end ■■