Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/85415
Chasing the green Certain niches offer big income potential for those willing to specialize. BY TODD DILLS it comes off of a barge." Running often off-road to get to the sites, Bixler and his wife, Doris, average only 900- 1,200 miles a week, but their average revenue on those miles exceeds $5,000, or around $5 a mile. "For the first time in 12 years as an owner-operator, I'm really making money," he adds. Leased to Schuylkill Haven, Pa.- based Reed Trucking, which in turn is contracted with Updegraff Trucking of Williamsport, Bixler's D&S Bixler Trucking is an S Corp business. He pays himself a driver's salary as a company employee. That pay, calculated as just 25 percent of what the truck grosses, averages $1.25 a mile, or $65,000 a year at 1,000 miles a week. In addition, further net income accrues to the business. The operation required investments, Bixler says, including auxiliary equipment such as an air compressor for offloading the tank. "About $7,600 and change for that," Bixler says, which included the Tuthill blower and the power takeoff on the transmission that drives it. Another top-dollar opportunity exists in hauling wind energy components to new wind turbine sites. Palmerton, Pa.-based owner-operator Bill Ehret, leased to Daily Express, pulls a Schnabel-type trailer to haul windmill towers. Ehret operates a 2006 Freightliner Coronado spec'd for heavy haul with a 625-hp Caterpillar, double frame rails and a lift axle to pull the trailer. His wife, Kathy, operates the pilot car. "We're close to 160 feet long," he says. Recently, the couple was working a windmill project in Illinois. Negotiating the 550-mile dedicated round-trip between the site and a manufacturer facility will help Ehret pull in $200,000 in gross revenue to the truck on just 60,000 miles, or nearly $3.30 a mile. A Daily Express fuel surcharge that takes into account the high weights associated with his JANUARY 2012 OVERDRIVE 27 Lyle Ratliff