Sold my first Duramax today

[Mark Rinker]

Sold my '05 today with 75K miles on it. Bought it for 36K, sold it for 24K. It cleaned up well, but had a suprising amount of rock chips for mostly highway miles.

I got a bit aggressive this last year trying to grow my company too fast, and had real struggles this past summer. Net result was taking out a loan to cover my losses - and selling my newest and most expensive truck. Employee #1 has gone on to other things. I still have a few parttimers that drive when they can and will be there for the snowplowing business. What a lesson. Nothing like standing at a fuel pump 500 miles away from home and having your debit card declined. And your Shell card. And your Visa card.

Not fun, but a good lesson on how to run your own business. The first step is when you stop blaming fuel prices and the economy and your bad luck and start accepting the responsibility for owing the bank too much damn money.

The '05 was a great truck and generated ~80K in gross revenues in the 15 short months of ownership. No mechanical issues, only one set of tires and a bunch of fluid and filter changes. The original brake pads looked to be about 60%. I think that is amazing, considering it was nearly all towing miles with gooseneck and 6k average loads. Tow/Haul grade braking sure saves on brake pads.

Like a rock!

[JoeyD]

As a business owner everything is a risk. I have had plenty of weeks where there is no money in the bank and bills are due. Learn from it and just stop spending is what I do. I buy if I need not if I want and it still is tough at times.

[rob from bc canada]

Seems to me, the trick is to figure out if the demand for the service you provide might warrant a slightly higher price, so you can make decent money doing a bit less work.

If you keep the best half of your customers, and provide good service, you can often make more than trying to hire help, and capture more of the market.

In my field of construction, we often see contractors expanding and growing themselves to death, not realizing that twice as much business often cuts the margin in half, because you can't spread yourself any thinner.

In any case best wishes from the scenic province you visited (possibly without much time to look) last summer!!

[SoTxPollock]

Mark, sorry to hear about your business woes, but a bank that doesn't analyse your business plan and help you to understand the costs involved is no frieldly banker. Not saying that you didn't understand them, but I've found that we often forget to figure in a decent wage per hours worked driving, loading, unloading, pulling maintence on the vehicles etc. Just hauling by the mile doesn't cut it anymore and then there is replacement costs for the equipment your using up. Its tough. The govenrment will bail out the air lines, but not the truckers. Go figure.