Choosing the Right Trucks for Your Hauling Business

 In episode 14 of Waste To Wealth, Michael McCall explores the tough decisions waste hauling owners face when investing in trucks and equipment. From Peterbilts to Macks, roll-offs to garbage trucks, the crew breaks down costs, reliability, and meeting growing demand.

Tune in for practical tips on fleet growth, financing, and maintaining your trucks' optimal performance.

TIMESTAMPS

[00:02:09] Mack vs Peterbilt

[00:06:18] Truck costs (new vs used)

[00:09:51] Roll-off vs garbage trucks

[00:12:01] Financing & timing

[00:18:01] Maintenance & repairs

[00:22:26] Scaling operations

[00:24:59] Waste Expo insights

[00:27:05] Profitability tips

QUOTES

• “The problem isn’t just buying a truck — it’s keeping that truck on the road.”
• “New trucks are nice, but used ones can make more sense if you know what you’re getting into.”
• “You can’t grow your fleet too fast — the timing has to match your business.”

SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS

Michael McCall

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/buffalo.finances.cpa/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BuffalofinanceNC/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-d-mccall-03667714/

WEBSITE

Buffalo Finances: https://buffalofinances.com/

Transcript

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Foreign This is waste to wealth, a podcast about turning your waste hauling business into a profitable, scalable, cash flowing machine. And now here's your host. Michael McCaul, hello. My name is Michael with buffalo finances, and this is waste to wealth. I want to help you with your waste hauling business. I had one. I grew it was very successful, had a lot of fun, but then I sold it. Wish, I wish I was still doing it, but had to make some really important family decisions. I don't know if you've had to do that kind of thing in your life. Have you ever had a midlife crisis before? You have to be old enough to have a midlife crisis, but I recommend you have a midlife crisis or even a quarter life crisis, because they force you to do drastic things, important things. In my case, I did not want to work for corporate America anymore, and I said, Hey, I'm going to work for me, because I've worked for a lot of idiot idiots, lots of idiots, and I'm done with that. I'm going to work for myself. And it turns out that that was really hard to do. I don't know if you do any any really hard things on purpose. Maybe you love challenges. Maybe you hate them. I particularly love challenges. So today I want to talk about things that waste haulers are dealing with, because there's a lot of problems in the waste hauler world. Of course, while I'm doing that, I'm thinking, where's the best place to find questions for waste haulers that waste haulers have? Well, mm, let's check it out. Let's go on to let's go on to Facebook groups. I'm a part of a bunch of waste hauling groups like rolling roll offs, and they have some cool events coming up. There's one going to be happening in Florida next April. No, no, no, no, February. There's one in February, and then there's one in April, which is going to be in New Orleans. There's a lot of lot of fun events. I think there's one in Texas that's coming up later this year as well. So I'm happy to plug those. If you know about them, let me know, and I will plug those for everybody. Trucks. Everybody wants to know cool trucks. There's Peterbilt, Kenworth, Mac Volvo, Freightliner, western star. What is your favorite kind of truck? I like the Mack Trucks, but I've found that Mack Trucks have become a dealership truck over the last, I don't know, 20 years, it used to be where it was really easy to fix they're they're Bulldogs. Just means they're tough. But now you really got to bring into the dealership, and I'll blame the current, current iteration of that on Volvo, because Volvo, it's a European company. I think Spain could be wrong about that. And Volvo is great for over the road trucks. They got great OTR trucks, you know, they got nice sleepers. Get that really streamlined body, and they want to have a lot of the same components in their Mac trucks, ever since they bought Mac, so they've been blending them, and they put the engine in a ridiculous place where it's really hard to get to. So you really have to have a shop in order to fix anything inside the engine, unless you're an insanely good mechanic, and I know some really good mechanics, but you got to know your truck, and if you're you don't understand a Mack truck, then you're not be able to fix it, which is my case, I can't fix that truck. Now, Kenworth and gosh, what's it? What's its sister? Sister company, the pet car engine, Peterbilt. Peterbilt, Peterbilt, that's who it is. Kenworth and Peterbilt. They're the same company, same type of engine, but they're, they're different brand names. So those are, I think those are more American as as much as I love Mack Trucks, the Kenworth and the Peter worth very Peterbilt, very American. And the freight liners and the western star, they're the same company, but the Freightliner are the cheap versions. So if you're a big company and you buy 10 freight liners, you can probably get five of five Peterbilts. So they're like the budget truck. And it's hard to beat that, because if I can deploy twice as many vehicles for the same price, I'm going to want to do that. I think the challenge is that freight liners break way more, and the def systems suck on them so bad they probably suck on all the trucks, but they're particularly bad in the freight liners. I've been stranded many times in a Freightliner, but you can't beat the price. I don't think you can beat the price unless you go with the Hino or not Sterling anymore. Sterling is done. I mean, they exist, but it's hard to get parts because they're not manufactured anymore. The he knows are like climbing, climbing the ranks. They're like the medium duty trucks, and they're affordable. They're Japanese made, so they're a little bit more reliable. I don't know why Japanese are so good at that, but they definitely are okay. What's your favorite kind of truck? Do you like the pack car? Do you like the Daimler, which is the Freightliner and western star? Do you like the Volvo, which is the Mac and the Volvo? Now, what's interesting about the Mac, I'll keep talking about them, is that even though they're the same company, there's secrets the Mac branch division, which is headquartered here in North Carolina, for America, they they do not want to give away their secrets to the Volvo. And so you would think that a Volvo dump truck and a Volvo roll off is the same as a Mac roll off because they're the same company, but they're not. The Volvo is not as good. The Mack truck does much better when you're talking about off road, when you're talking about vocational trucks, compared to the Volvo, and the Volvo is much better than a Mac truck when it comes to being over the road, although Mac is shiny, very reliable, and I like it quite a bit. So everyone that I see online is trying to get their next truck. Do you have a dream truck? Do you have a dream fleet? Do you have a setup that you want to have? You want to have a beautiful, beautiful setup that does exactly what you want. You know, I'm just going to share my screen for what I'm looking at. I like to look at trucks online. Super fun challenge with looking at trucks is you want to buy them. You're like, how can I make this truck part of my fleet? Like, what do I have to do to make this part of my fleet? I'm just gonna close everything else. Don't need that. Here we go. Come on, work, not working. There we go, desktop, two. Come on, trucks, trucks, trucks. They're so cool. They're so powerful. Trucks are so powerful. This is commercial truck trader. There's a iron planet. Is another fun place to go to. Maybe we'll go there next. All right, so what's the most expensive truck that I can find? Can I sort by most expensive, highest price, most expensive roll off $329,000 for a brand new auto car. Roll off a DC 64 I don't know what that is. Let's check out this picture. That's insane. How can a roll off truck be worth 330 grand? I mean, I know it's brand new. Is it? Is it, is it that pretty? It's white. So you gotta, you gotta put some some stuff on it. What kind of setup this is, gotta be cable, yeah. This is totally, yeah. That's, it's totally a cable setup. Can I zoom in at all? Yeah? Oh, way better, way better to see, yeah, that's what we care about. Look at those wheels. So it does have a drop axle, but there's no wheel. There's no tire on the drop axle. Look at that. That's strange, but pretty rails. Everything's clean. I'm curious if, when you have the truck in neutral, if you can, you sorry, if you have the truck and drive, if you can use the hoist, or if it has to be in neutral. I got those features. I like to be always available, because sometimes I want to roll back when I'm using my roll off. I don't know, what do you think? It's New Jersey. I think that's that's a lot of money, man, just five years ago, 200 grand, got you a brand new one. Now it's now it's 320,000 that's insane. And then you got to pay all the taxes and etc. On top of that, here's a Kenworth, brand new Kenworth 2025, a t8 80. Gotta love the 880s it's pretty solid, solid unit right there. And look, they're demonstrating what, what's with this grapple thing that doesn't make sense. Oh, it's, is this got a combo? Does it come with a grapple? Okay? That that's unique. This is the full setup. Okay, this, I can see where you get the $300,000 plus price tag if you have a grapple on there a roto back. But I don't know if, I don't know if I need one. So this is if you're going to do live loading yourself. So you drive up to a job site, you've got a whole bunch of trash they want picked up. You just hop into the I don't know how you hop into this thing, but you you run the machine and you load it yourself. Now, do you load it when it's on the truck? Like you keep your dumpster on the truck, or do you put the dumpster on the ground, then load everything into it? I would think that'd be easier, because you don't have to lift it as high as a little safer, but maybe, maybe you're in a rush, and you don't want to take it off the truck and then load it and then put it back on the truck. I think you take it off the truck, that's, I think, lot easier maneuver. But man, I don't, I don't see that being the way to do it. Just, oh yeah, there's the, there's the seat you can see right there. Elite nine. 10. Has anyone ever used one of these before? If you've used one of these before, let me know in the comments. If this is actually a good idea. I don't think this is a good idea, though. I would just get an excavator separate, because if you combine them, then you've got you can only get less use cases for it. Here's a $300,000 Peterbilt. I love the Peterbilts. Look at that beautiful, beautiful hood. It's just so large. Now it's not aerodynamic, but you got a roll off truck. You don't need to pay aerodynamic. It's got the drop axle, which means it can handle way more mate weight. We're talking, you know, high 60s, 60,000 pounds. Looks good to me. I would totally drive this. What's with the yellow white, a combo strange like, why wouldn't you just have the whole thing white? Why would you have yellow on there, unless that's your color? Peter belt, Gal fab, that's, it's um, Gal fab, I'm not familiar with gal fab. Inside looks pretty good. Looks it's got some wood etching on it, nice and comfy. Millions of switches. Dials are are easy to read, pack car engine, of course. Why would you get a Kenworth if you didn't have a pack car engine? Here's another Kenworth. 300,300 grand for a truck. 300,000 for this Kenworth, this one's red. Here's another one. 300,000 300,000 for t8 80 must be the most popular right now. Here's a Peterbilt for 290 Look at that. So same company, both made by PACCAR, but the Peterbilt has got a different chassis. Similar engine looks very standard, no drop axle. So you're going to be low 60s with this one for how much you can haul. Yeah, I think it looks pretty good. Looks shiny. Everything's nice. Now look at all those tail lights. They get smashed so easy. This is a cable truck. I don't see any hook lifts, but hook lifts are way more popular and way easier to use. Think they're more important for the medium duty but if you're going to have medium duty hook, hook lift, you're going to want heavy duty hook, lift, beautiful engine. It's, oh, this is a Cummins. This is not a pack car engine. That's, does PACCAR own Cummins? Are they the same company? Let's see PAC car versus Cummins. PACCAR designs and manufactures its MX engines specifically for its fuel for its Peterbilt and Kenworth trucks, offering advantages like lighter weight, better fuel economy, but it faces criticism for maintenance issues and limited service options. I think it's a lot easier to get to these engines. I mean, in this case, too, it's not a pack car, it's a Cummins. But look how easy it is to get to the engine. It's all right there. Shouldn't say it's all right there, but you can get to it. It's not, not like you have to jack up the truck to get to it, huh? Cummins engines are built by an independent company. Okay? So they are separate companies. Still they didn't like buy each other out. That's I thought, but gotta check, and it's known for its power reliability and extensive service network. Yeah, that there's a lot of places you get a Cummins engine fixed. That makes sense. So I guess if you don't know how to fix your Kenworth or your your Peterbilt, then then you got to bring it to a dealership, just like any truck, and you're gonna find less service than you would for Cummins so and the chassis is not as hard to fix as an engine and transmission, like engines and transmissions way harder to fix engines, way harder to fix for a standard mechanic. Let's move on to something else. We got another Peterbilt, a 589, there's another Kenworth, a Mac granite, my personal favorite. And I don't have a really good reason besides, they're so reliable, I guess that's a good reason. Very, very reliable, very expensive to fix, though. So it's, it's why I only got two of them. I didn't get a lot because they're so expensive to get a lot of them. But look at this truck. He's got beefy tires made for going on job sites. No drop backs on this one. This is a cable truck. I ran a cable truck for a Mac, Mac granite. This looks just Same, same look as mine. Same Front had that gray cover. It's got the side toolbox, Yep, looks like the same truck. This is just few years newer than the one I ran. And yep, Gal fab looks everything looks the same. They didn't change too much. It just costs about 100 grand more than I paid for it, and I got a drop axle too. So here's, here's the interesting thing is, on mine, you could not run the PTO if you were in Drive, it wouldn't let you, which is, I think, a major flaw. So there's the PTO switch you can see right there. So if you flip that on. On while you're in gear, like, let's say you're in first gear, or let's say you're in reverse. You want to back up to the box as you're picking it up. It's not going to let you do that. It's not going to let you actually engage. The PTO, the switch will flip, flip, but it won't actually engage. And that drove me crazy. You can see the controls are digital. Very, very nice to have digital controls. And there's your E brakes, emergency brakes. You should do your brake tests every day, every morning. You don't want to find out that your brakes don't work when you're trying to stop and holding a heavier load. That's my personal favorite, right there. Western Star. I have not seen a Western Star roll off in real life. Seen plenty of western star over the road trucks, but not a, not a roll off truck. This is a horrible picture, very, very grainy, so it's not doing the Western Star justice. There's a close up on the grill. The grill looks very Beefy. Beefy grill, very tough. Makes the truck look even taller, again, a cable truck. Do we have any, any roll offs? Nice suspension? Yeah, I gotta have a lot of suspension. It's a drop axle. I guess I point the drop axle a lot out, quite a bit, in case you're not aware. Oh, here we go. Yeah, look at all those levers. So we've got the hoists, and you're also going to be running the tarp system with these, so it's going to hit in your cable. So you tough thing about roll off cable trucks, if you don't know, is that when, when you're picking up a 30 yarder, you can't see the back of your truck. See, you really have to get good. Get good and do a lot of training, do a lot of pickups to get that perfect spot so that you can actually hook it up correctly. But you got your your levers on the left are typically your your hoist, and then the ones on the right are normally your tarp tower and your tarp arms. But yeah, you got your hoist up and down, you got your cable, got your tower and your tarp. They made a lot of room here for your belly. If you got a big belly, it isn't nice how they point the dashboard towards you. It's not flat. It's actually pointed towards the driver. 90% of the time, 95% of the time you're by yourself, so you might as well make it. So this is truly a cockpit and not not just a regular truck, because the passenger is not going to be helping you anyway. Okay, here's the internal controls for the hoist and the winch. Allison transmission, reliable transmission, I'm a big fan. Just like the Cummins engine, there's a lot of opportunities to have somebody fix your Allison. You can see it in the middle, right there for the transmission. Three, 285,000 so we're getting slightly cheaper, but not much. Peterbilt, 280 This is a 567 nice and shiny. 280 another t8, 80. Another t8, 80. Brand new. Price difference is going to be the features and where a heck this thing is. You know, if you're closer to a big city, it's gonna be more expensive. Another t8, 80. Lots of those. Can I jump 10. I want to go down to the three, the 200,000 range. What? What does$200,000 get? You? All right, go back to results. I had 200 grand for a budget. You know what? Let's filter by price. 200 grand. Fine. I'll use mine. I'll use my zip code within No, I'll use it because you want it. And then nationwide, oh, it's not letting me filter on price at all. Well, that's sad. Super sad. Oh, featured, hmm, okay, look at this is $160,000 Mac granite. It's got 157,000 miles on it. I think that's pretty decent. Yeah, it looks like a granite. What do you guys think? Oh, it doesn't look pretty anymore. They gotta if you're gonna post it, you gotta repaint it. You can tell it's a private, sale, because their rails are rusted. Got to paint those things and, oh, look at this. See the strap the box. Strap is missing. Why is it missing? It got torn off. Somebody was picking up, picked up a box. They hooked the strap on there, and then when they went to drop it off, lower it down. They did not remove the strap, and so it got ripped off. Happens so fast, so easy. When you stop moving and you're gonna gonna unload your box, get out. Make sure your tarp is off. Make sure that your hook straps are unhooked. You. Because toast, they're just ripped off in a second. And I get spend another 50 bucks if you break your tarp. You're talking $1,000 at least, at least. And you got it, how many hauls you have to do to make up for that broken equipment? Not even worth it? Got advertisements that I don't want. This is pretty I love the blue man. Oh, this is a dump truck, though, not the same thing, but similar application. You're driving on job sites. This one, you're delivering soil instead of removing debris. That's just a Peterbilt picture. Anything else you want to see? Let me know. I'm going to stop googling over trucks. I have a good time looking at them. It's fun. They're very expensive. Make sure you can get a return on them. I recommend you have a newer primary truck and a used backup truck. We'll go over used trucks later, but this has been Michael with a waste to wealth. I hope you're having a great day. God bless. Oh. We should do a scripture. We should do a scripture. What's a good scripture for waste haulers? So I know waste hauling often feels thankless. Few people notice the bin is there unless, unless it's full and they need to call you, but you don't get a lot of thanks for that. They just expect you to empty it. So people don't notice that the bins not there until they need it. Scripture refrains our work for every pickup and every route, every contract you could, treat it like an offering to God. And I'll give you this scripture to think about that Colossians 323 says, Whatever you do, work heartily, as if for the Lord and not for men. So do your work. Enjoy your work, and do it for God. Don't do it for other people. For bragging rights. I know you want to have a shiny truck to show off. Don't have a shiny truck for other people. Have a reliable truck for you to do your work so you can do it well forgotten. Don't try to be glamorous, just try to be a good worker. This has been Michael with buffalo finances, and this is waste to wealth. You have a great day and God bless thanks so much for tuning into this episode of waste to wealth. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you connect with us on social media and subscribe to the show wherever you consume podcast. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review and tell a friend about the show until next time you.