Trombone Transport

MikeJr

MikeJr

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Jan 21, 2010
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Thunder Bay, Ontario
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Well, it's been a while since I had the pleasure of starting a fun thread, so here goes...

I've come out of retirement and taken up employment at a Modular Home builder which I've got to say is extremely cool stuff. I'm not working in transport but do have some advice on those matters when we control it which is rare. I do find the owner picks my brain about a lot of things which is nice. Anyway, we have a single carrier we work with exclusively to move our buildings from T-Bay to northern Ontario delivery locations (sometimes on ice roads) and they dead head from Winnipeg to service us. Because we can only get our buildings delivered on their schedule and because we own a truck and trombone trailer for moving the buildings on our property, the owner is considering using our truck and trombine in the future to deliver some of our buildings to site. We're working on an estimate of costs and have come up with a bunch of numbers for equipment, maintenance, insurance, pilot vehicles, bodies, signage/lighting/etc, but we're missing only a few currently:

What formula are people using to determine cost of fuel per mile for a LOADED truck?
What does an annual CVOR cost?

Planning on billing delivery to customer in the $15/mile range and charging a rounder, but we'll see what the permits and whatnot cost, this figure may have to go up...

Hoping everyone is well, safe and living ever single day to the fullest,
Mike
 
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So you mean you didn’t try and talk the boss out of this idea?? You know, trucking isn’t our business, modular home manufacturing is? Let’s stick with what we are good at and let the trucking experts do the transportation? Just joking (sort of), good luck, it should be an interesting experience.
 
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Loaders - you are 100% correct, we build buildings and should let the truckers do the trucking. However, we have a truck, have a trombone trailer already and have a recently retired over size equipment driver willing to work for us. The intent is to treat the transport part as a side business. His son also drove truck in MB for 25 years so it's kinda in their blood.

Anyway, he's probably going to get a newer truck for travel off premisis and budgeting about $480k operating cost the first year. As long as we ship 60 buildings we should be a head about $120k depending on tweaking what we charge for delivery.

Seems like no one has the fuel-mile formula available so I'll just look up some comsumption data, current price of fuel and add 15% because things never seem to match manufacturer's data.

In case anyone ever needs one: http://www.anycalculator.com/truckerfuelcostcalculator.html

Shayne, thanks for the feedback on a more comfortable range for delivery charges, especially when you consider permits, escorts, etc.

Keep well,
Mike
 
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