How does an owner driver actually get work?? Is it just through contacts or is there a marketplace for loads?
Cheers!
I think there are two types of owner drivers.
-
Dedicated to one company sit back drive your truck and be fed the work by an office. Example for this maritime.
-
Individual that has built up a lot of contacts and manages to fit a weeks work together with the contacts he has. More to do himself but probably more rewarding.
Not one of these is wrong or right. Different things suit different people.
How much capital do you need to start, minumum?
ive got all my own work 
, dont work for any other transport companies
8 yrs running vans getting the customers and working it from there
burnley-si:
ive got all my own work8 yrs running vans getting the customers and working it from there
So you’ve got a network of customers and if they have a load they’ll call you and offer it to you?
About 95% of my work is sub-contracting, I rent a trailer from the company I sub to and they just feed me a constant supply of work. I do a bit of my own work, which pays more, this I get through word of mouth.
As for how much you need to start up, that’s a bit of a “how long is a piece of string question”. I’m paid “30 days end of month” so before I received my first payment, I’d spent about £10,000 on diesel, made two finance payments of £579, two insurance payments of £400, had spent about £3,000 on tyres and repairs, £500 on advance yard rental, etc etc etc etc etc. The O licence cost about £1,000 and I put £10,000 down on the truck.
You can do it for less, lease a truck, work for weekly payment terms etc (although the rates aren’t normally as good).
If you have a good employed job, with a fair boss and a reasonable wage, then stick with that.
I have 2 customers that keep me busy every week…
As a single vehicle owner operator it is very difficult to build up a client base of good paying reliable direct customers. When I started 30 years ago I was very enthusiastic and had a few good contacts but the problem is that you cannot be available to every customer every time they ring and they very soon stop ringing if you refuse work, it is, and always has been a competitive market no matter how good you are.
To some of us the sub contracting route has been the easy option, either that or expand to cope with the work, and some of us do not want that.
I hardly ever turn anything down which is why iam always busy quite often a wagon &drag or pick up& trailer will go out with 3 full paying loads on I work with a lot of light haulage fleets and crane fleets in my area we share work and cover a lot of areas ,we all help each other to cover jobs .i my self invoice 20 customers a month ,I wouldn’t know exactly how many customers I have .
Dan Punchard:
I hardly ever turn anything down which is why iam always busy quite often a wagon &drag or pick up& trailer will go out with 3 full paying loads on I work with a lot of light haulage fleets and crane fleets in my area we share work and cover a lot of areas ,we all help each other to cover jobs .i my self invoice 20 customers a month ,I wouldn’t know exactly how many customers I have .
Carefull now Dan giving all the little secrets away…
I work solely for Tata steel albeit through Norberts as they run Tata,s transport for them, Norberts themselves dont have any vehicles on the job though so i suppose i do work as a subby for a transport company but not in the usual way, i do the odd backload myself but 99% of my work is to one customer
Dan Punchard:
I hardly ever turn anything down which is why iam always busy quite often a wagon &drag or pick up& trailer will go out with 3 full paying loads on I work with a lot of light haulage fleets and crane fleets in my area we share work and cover a lot of areas ,we all help each other to cover jobs .i my self invoice 20 customers a month ,I wouldn’t know exactly how many customers I have .
That is the ideal way of working, basically co-operating with others to cover work that you can’t cover yourself and vice-verca, this alleviates the problem of turning work down which must occur sometimes otherwise.
A possible problem with this scenario, and I have seen it happen, is when others in the ‘scheme’ decide to undercut or otherwise become the first call for some of your customers.
Safety in numbers 
Got my cpc exam next week, so hopefully that’ll give me opportunity to become self unemployed real soon
I think from most similar posts on here, I think a lot of lads would love to be taken under some ones wing, I know I’ll be askin some of you guys for contacts, don’t expect to get any of your current custom but you’ll all know somene who could give work that maybe you excepted till something better came along once upon a time. That’s prob the difficult bit, gettin your name or gettin your cold call through to the right person.
mattf789:
burnley-si:
ive got all my own work8 yrs running vans getting the customers and working it from there
So you’ve got a network of customers and if they have a load they’ll call you and offer it to you?
yes at my peak i had 48 customers 8 of my own vans 2 with trailers, and 5 subbies, but the profit wasnt there for the work load, so cut the vans down and cut the custome rlist down, but putting the price up 
so know im down to 3 vans 1 subby and 2 artics with my own trailers, my customers are down to 8, but the profit is higher and the stress is less and it monday to friday not 7 days per week like it was 
forgot i got shafted by an owner driver (van) lost me a contract worth £110k per year
just gone through sage and i have invoice 236 different customers over the years 
matamoros:
Dan Punchard:
I hardly ever turn anything down which is why iam always busy quite often a wagon &drag or pick up& trailer will go out with 3 full paying loads on I work with a lot of light haulage fleets and crane fleets in my area we share work and cover a lot of areas ,we all help each other to cover jobs .i my self invoice 20 customers a month ,I wouldn’t know exactly how many customers I have .That is the ideal way of working, basically co-operating with others to cover work that you can’t cover yourself and vice-verca, this alleviates the problem of turning work down which must occur sometimes otherwise.
A possible problem with this scenario, and I have seen it happen, is when others in the ‘scheme’ decide to undercut or otherwise become the first call for some of your customers.
This is can happen but we all know the unwritten rules !!
I used to work together with a couple of other hauliers, we shared a yard too. It worked very well, I had every lorry we had between us out working on quite a few occasions, other times my lorries were all out on their work, we paid out what we got in and also shared a pool of casual drivers for weekend and night jobs, although I seemed to be the go to guy for a driver, I even used to go out in their lorries myself at times.
It all worked very well, there was no backstabbing or poaching going on and we all benefitted from the expanded fleet size at some point.
If you can get in with like minded trustworthy people it can make life a lot easier.
newmercman:
I used to work together with a couple of other hauliers, we shared a yard too. It worked very well, I had every lorry we had between us out working on quite a few occasions, other times my lorries were all out on their work, we paid out what we got in and also shared a pool of casual drivers for weekend and night jobs, although I seemed to be the go to guy for a driver, I even used to go out in their lorries myself at times.It all worked very well, there was no backstabbing or poaching going on and we all benefitted from the expanded fleet size at some point.
If you can get in with like minded trustworthy people it can make life a lot easier.
if only some could see the benefit of that nowadays instead of stabbing each other in the back over a few quid
Yep, you suddenly have the ability to say yes to almost every request from a customer.
I once did a warehouse relocation for a customer from Harlow to Rainham, it was originally scheduled for a week, we put every lorry we had between us on it and got it done over a weekend, the customer saved a fortune on labor and equipment rental costs (there were cranes involved) and we all earned a good week’s money over the weekend and had our lorries available the next week too, the customer (one of mine) was very grateful and I picked up more work, which fed us all at some point, so everyone was a winner.
Those kind of cooperatives can really benefit everyone involved.
The Transport Association was a similar thing, but on a much larger scale, as was the Wisbech Roadways set up between Knowles, Garn and the other one I forget.
Thanks all very interesting