As an owner-operator, every new addition requires proper planning and careful execution. Although planning does not rule out the possibility of something going wrong, it greatly decreases the chances that it will. Throughout my 12 year career, I have made decisions that required proper planning including who to drive for, the decision to buy my own truck, as well as whether to buy or sell my old truck once I was able to step into a Freightliner Cascadia. As this blog posts on Monday, when most of you will be reading this, I will be knee-deep in yet another addition that took lots of proper planning and careful execution…having another child!
On this day I will not be firing my truck up for the workweek as I usually do every other Monday, instead I will be at the hospital supporting my wife as we give birth to our second daughter. This step in our life, like many things trucking related and not, took careful consideration and planning. Of course there is the obvious question of affording another child, but that is not the critical planning I am talking about here. As
an owner-operator I am used to planning for things such as periodic maintenance and other truck-related expenses, but one important thing to figure into the “baby calculation” from a business perspective is truck downtime! It is sometimes a struggle for me mentally to park my truck for full weekends at a time for a restart, just because I am such a work-a-holic during these extremely busy summer months. Having to park it for ten days over the Independence Day holiday weekend and birth of our daughter took carful planning and consideration during these past several months.
As I am one to think through everything and calculate nearly every figure I can to quantify a situation, I happen to have planned this since the minute we found out my wife was pregnant. This was not a surprise to us, as we wanted two children that would be close in age, so once we found out it we had conceived, it has been a number crunching situation up until now. We knew her due date would be the 4
th of July and as soon as busy season began in late March, I began working six-day workweeks in preparation. As an owner-op, when the truck is parked, fixed expenses do not just merely disappear. Sure, there’s no fuel bill or billing that needs to be done during that time, but things like insurance, permits and third-party payroll still need to be paid. As with planning for the winter months being slower in our industry, I took to the roads to make extra money on Saturdays to enable my time off for acclimating a new little person to life in our crazy house and to help my wife with our other 18-month old daughter. Although not a vacation or truck repair, things like this should still be planned ahead for as a trucking owner-operator.
Like all forms of downtime, losing money while the truck is down is far more palatable when it is planned for, rather than trying to catch up from it afterwards. Work a little more during these busy summer months while the weather is good and freight is ample, stash away a little extra money from it, and you may have an easier time swallowing a little extra planned or unplanned downtime should it occur.