Say What?

Question: How do you survive in these tough economic times?

Dustin Link, 24, Boyceville, WI  
Professional driving experience: 6 years  
“I’m an independent owner-operator, and I was offered 63 cents a mile. Of course I turned them down. How do I survive? I sit around a lot. When good loads do come up, I’m all over them. I can’t do it for 75 cents a mile. I won’t do it. I’m in survival mode. The last thing I want to do is lose money hauling freight. I have a lot of advantages compared to some other guys. I run older equipment, so I don’t have big payments. The key to survival is to have a low overhead, slow down to conserve fuel and watch every nickel.”

Mike Roberts, 48, Oklahoma City, OK   
Professional driving experience: 20 years  
“Right now I’m down $6,400 in pay from last year. How am I going to make up $6,400? I’m not. Owner-operators like me who run on a 100-percentage basis cannot compete with the foreigners hauling these loads so cheap. They’re killing us. Guys under percentage don’t have a chance any more.”

Ken Sargent, 52, Owensboro, KY
Professional driving experience: 32 years    
“I haven’t been doing really well this year, but I think it’s starting to get a little better. Fuel costs went down, but the rates got cut even more. We did a profit/loss for the last two months and, well, the people working at McDonald’s make more than we did. I can’t remember it ever being this bad. I ran flatbed for nearly 30 years, but I had to get out of it. I switched to a bucket, and now I’m running coal.”

James Pate, 55, Utica, KY  
Professional driving experience: 21 years  
“I’m an owner-operator. I just ran a profit/loss statement for the last two months, and my profits were slightly over $200. That’s been typical of the operations we had last winter. I switched from a flatbed because I wasn’t making any money, so really, I’m pretty happy that I at least made $200 because under a flatbed I was losing money. I sold my pickup truck to pay off a lot of bills. That gave me some breathing room. Right now, I pull a bucket and things are dead, but I think they’ll get better in the months ahead.”