Trucker Taxes and Living Costs Deep Dive

In this hard-hitting episode of The Trucker’s Radio Podcast, powered by Sabren Group LLC, host Stacey Yearout breaks down the truth about truck driver and owner-operator taxes — the part of the job no one likes to talk about.

From income and self-employment taxes to deductions, per diem, and what happens when the IRS comes knocking, Stacey brings 30 years of real-world experience to explain how drivers can protect themselves and keep more of what they earn.

This episode dives deep into the reality of being overtaxed as Americans — paying at the pump, at the register, and on every hard-earned mile. It’s not just a tax talk; it’s a wake-up call for drivers to understand their worth, manage their money like a business, and fight back smart.

If you’re tired of feeling like the system’s stacked against you, tune in. This one’s for the drivers, the dreamers, and the owner-operators holding this country together one mile at a time.

 trucker taxes, owner operator tax tips, trucking business deductions, tax help for truck drivers, trucking business consulting, owner operator accounting, 1099 truck driver taxes, self-employed trucker tax advice, trucking per diem deductions, how truck drivers file taxes, Sabren Group LLC, Stacey Yearout, Trucker’s Radio Podcast, truck driver finances, trucking business education, trucking money management 

 #TruckersRadioPodcast #TruckingPodcast #OwnerOperator #TruckingTaxes #TruckerMoney #TruckDriverLife #TruckingBusiness #OwnerOperatorConsulting #TruckingFinance #TruckerStrong #StaceyYearout #SabrenGroup #LifeOnTheRoad #TruckingSupport #TruckingIndustry 

Transcript

Dolores 0:00

Welcome to The Trucker’s Radio Podcast, powered by Sabren Group LLC. Hosted by Stacey Yearout, a 30-year veteran of the trucking industry, recovery coach, and author who’s helping drivers and families rebuild their lives one mile at a time. This podcast is more than talk it’s about truth, resilience, and the real stories from America’s highways. Each episode dives deep into the heart of trucking: owner-operator consulting, business advice, mental health and relationship coaching, and trauma recovery for drivers and their loved ones. If you’re behind the wheel, standing by one, or just trying to make sense of the miles, you’ve found the right place. This is The Trucker’s Radio Podcast where the road meets real life, and where every mile has a story. Trucker's Radio podcast. Today we're gonna take a deep dive on taxes and how the over cost of living on the road affects what we earn as owner operators, and also even as company drivers. All right. We got Daniel from Florida, and also we got Thomas from Florida. Y'all with us? Hey Stacy. Thanks for having us. Just out here driving around tonight trying to make that tax money. Yeah. You can say tax money. Yeah, I understand. And this is part of what we were going to do tonight. We're gonna take a deep dive in on taxing overtaxing and survival. As an owner operator, it's a very crucial thing to be able to be pretty sharp on your taxes, all your write offs, be organized, All the above. That's most definitely, probably the biggest thing right there. Yeah. I remember early in my career, I went from a company driver to, a lease purchase program and, I was free and I was making these big checks and I supported the family. And it's like, damn, I'm making good money, but it takes every dime of money to support that family. And I, I'll take some money out for taxes next week. Next week, same scenario. And three, four years later, I got the IRS crawling up my butt. About back taxes had to refile. It was a nightmare. I didn't keep up with any of my renters were seats. Lost a lot of that stuff. And it was a nightmare. I had to hire a company to fix it all. Cost me thousands of dollars. And then the IRS didn't wanna settle. They didn't wanna, come to a compromise or anything. A lot of penalties took me years to get that caught back up. Yeah, that's definitely as we've talked about before, when you jump into the deep end of the pool to be an owner operator, you definitely gotta know a little bit of something about business. And being up on your paperwork and being savvy, with your taxes is most definitely a deciding factor whether you stay in business or you don't. Right. I can honestly say anybody that's new to this industry whether you're a company driver, or especially if you're an independent, you're gonna do a lease purchase or go out on your own. You gotta keep that stuff, you gotta get those receipts. That was my problem. I thought, okay, I took a picture of it on my phone. Phones get lost, things don't transfer over all the time when you get a new phone we didn't have the cloud back then. You gotta find multiple places to store that stuff. You gotta print it out. My hat's off to the husband and wife teams out there. That's gotta be great that, one person can focus on driving, the other one can handle all the bookkeeping and paperwork. Saves a lot of money that way. Having a tax service do it for you. Yeah, most definitely. And it don't take a lot to get organized yourself. It is like the, one of the little piano organizers. All right. Being organized with the taxes, you can kinda get one little organized little piano folders, you got each month, stuff, all your hard copies, your receipts in there, it's just a kind of a state of mind. You gotta get into every meal, everything you do, grab that receipt. If it counts, that's great. If it don't, at least you got it. You can sort through it at the end of the year. That's a big thing that you gotta do. All your fuel, yeah, your fuel's the biggest expensive bend on our owner operator. So you most definitely, you've got to have a way to track your fuel expense, because that's gonna be your largest write off. You've got your stationary expenses that are the same thing every week or every month. And then you've got your variables, which is going to. Be different, your fuel tax. Even when you buy a piece of equipment, you've got even when you buy piece of equipment, you got the FET tax on new trucks, that's an extra 12%. You gotta think about that. You're buying 170,$180,000 rig and you got the FET tax on a brand new truck. Looking at your daily per diems, your write offs, 70, 80 bucks a day every day you're on the road, you need to get some sort of a calendar. If you do it on your phone, whatnot. A lot of people just track their log books, which is probably the easiest thing you could do. You don't ever how many days you're out, that's a write off. How does I don't know, it's been so long since I've been a company driver. What are those guys? Are they getting a per diem now or is it the standard deduction now? What is going on with that? Well, that's the biggest issue is being a company driver. You only get standard deduction, if you're married, you get, was it$30,000 now this year, and if you're single is 15,000, basically half of that, you're not getting your per diem, you're not getting your days in there. And that's a big thing. We're not being able to count the days on the road like we used to. We're not able to itemize certain things or there's really no above the line deductions unless Trump's put some more in there. I know when Biden was in, he pretty well took away even your charitable contributions that you could do as an employee. You basically had no protection whatsoever. You made over a hundred thousand dollars a year you were in trouble. Yeah. Being a company driver would be really hard to beat the standard deduction. And it is to a degree, but you know, when you itemize, that shit adds up quick. And having, All the different days. If you're on the road 300 days a year, that adds up 70,$80 a day. I think what it is now. And of course you only get 80% of that and then your repairs and as an owner operator, that adds up. And as a company driver, you've got other expenses, food. Look at the cost of living on the road today. I mean, you're lucky if you can eat for 70,$80 a day, probably two meals a day if you're lucky. I mean, you could outrageously expensive and it'd be difficult to get your truck into a grocery store and then you're limited on what you can cook and actually eat unless you got a decent size freezer in your truck, keep frozen meals and whatnot. I mean, yeah, you're limited. What you can do with the microwave and eating outta the truck stops. Yeah. Well, that won't be long bill taxes on that too, so. I mean, well, you still pay taxes on the food in most states when you buy it. Not every state, but you know, that's another big thing that we're looking at is like, we make money, we get taxed on it, we spend money, we get taxed on it, let's go out and buy a house. Well, we pay taxes on that every year. We pay school tax, we pay city tax. I mean, it's like, where does the tax stop? Car registration, one a year, car registration, we're forced to pay all of this tax, All of my kids are grown and we're still paying school tax to a school that, we've already paid our dues. You know why we still pay. I read the other day. Some of these other states out here, they have a personal property tax. So not only are you paying your car registration, but they're taxing you a certain percentage just to have your car. Oh yeah. Like Virginia Banks one I read on, it's like a 10% annual tax. Oh yeah. Based on the vehicle's value. Yeah. We pay that every year. Yeah. Yeah. We pay that. Thing that gets me is like, I live in the state of Florida. It's one of the states that has a lottery. And the lottery is, hey, that's where we're gonna get our school money. Great. Why are we still paying those school taxes? Shouldn't that come from the lottery? I mean, we're hitting record number lottos of, a billion plus dollars. The amount of money generated, it seems like it could go for more than the schools, because from what I'm seeing out there, the schools ain't doing too good of a job. There's a, they're producing a lot of these young idiots, but we got DeSantis down here. He is talking about doing away with property taxes all together. If not, at least do it for retirees or homeowners, you bought your house, you shouldn't have to pay anymore on it. A lot of things like that. I know it's outside of truck driving, but, we all have homes. It's not just out here that I'm paying taxes on my truck. The loads, the things, that I'm doing out here on the fuel it's also the taxes on my house, my property, my cars, everything else, so, yeah. You're fighting the tax man every step of the way. It's like you've got a tax man riding a shotgun with you day by day, looking over your shoulder, making sure, he gets accounted for every dollar that you make. And I have no problem paying taxes'cause I understand that's what makes our roads and bridges and, but somewhere along the line, we gotta be able to survive too. And I think that's where we've just gotten, they have gotten just outta hand, if I go out and buy a home, well, they adjust the property tax every chance they get. They drive by my house and I've put a new deck, or I've put new windows, or I put new siding on the house or something to that degree. It's new landscaping, well they just, up my tax bill a little bit more. That's real frustrating, pull permits too. You wanna build exterior buildings and stuff on your property, you gotta get permits. Oh yeah. I had a building tax. I had a building built and I was in the process of having it built and I called to see, what about, permits, this and that. I live in the city limits and that this was probably going to be my first and my last house inside the city limits. I had to basically scrap the whole plan of building the size of building. I wanted go with a much smaller building because of the criteria that they wanted it built to, if I built any bigger than what I got built and brought and set up, and it is just constantly something. Somebody always telling you, no, you pay the payments, you pay the tax on it. You do what they tell you to do with it and that don't really sit that well with me. And all these new bills and neighborhoods. You got the HOAs that start out at a low monthly or annual payment and after a year or two they jack it up and then you got CDD fees that may or may not go away. I mean, every direction you turn, man, they just take more and more of your money. Well, and I'll tell you what, less I've or their pocket less than yours, I got enough common sense to never buy a house in an HOA'cause I'd be in prison. I ain't even gonna lie. They ain't nobody going to come knocking on my door acting like a Karen, telling me I'm not gonna be able to fly an American flag or something like that in my front yard. I had a friend of mine. He's retired military. He had a little HOA, this guy spent 29 years in the military, served his country. I think he was deployed like six or eight different times, and little HOA loaded told him that he had to take his American flag down out of his front yard. And the court legalities of that was unreal over flying an American flag. That wouldn't sit well with me. But I mean, I just don't understand the whole HOAs. Some people may get along with it, some people may bend into the rules, but I just ain't that guy. I'm just gonna go ahead and tell you that. The problem is all the new communities that are getting built, they're all Dr. Horton, KB Homes, all the mainstream home builders. It's all H-O-A-C-D-D fees. It's very hard to find an older house in a good neighborhood like that. And I live in a newer subdivision. We have a hoa. I pay a hundred bucks a year. Eh, they can be a little trifling with certain things. They leaving you trash can out on the street too long. But other than that we don't have much problems with'em. Now, the problems that I do have is I'm outside. Mine is actually just inside the city limits, but the other half of the neighborhood is not. And across from us is the old dairy farms which they are now converting into Agra. They're keeping a lot of farm land around these neighborhoods. So they say but the taxes, our property taxes are going through the roof because now we get to pay for all the water and utility lines that get run out there for these new neighborhoods. We've got growth of about 50 to 60,000 people in the last eight years. It's like, wow, you got all these new taxpayers. Why are our taxes going up and not set down? We've got all this extra money coming in, but they keep asking for more and more. It's greed. Greed. That's all it's see. And an issue that I'm seeing with that is the developers are the ones that are making the initiative to buy up all of the land and make the investment, put in the infrastructure, build these new neighborhoods and communities, but they're charging it back to. The home buyer and everyone that surrounds the community that they're building. I mean, don't you think the major infrastructure section should fall on the builder that's making that investment in the community? Yeah. You'd think so They'd have some sort of a deal, but they would get less taxes for the first 10 or 15 years. I know in some deals, when they build these big skyscrapers that they don't pay any taxes on that building for 20 years because of the, and what they're bringing to the city, the business that they're bringing to the city. I think they could definitely do something like that. It just it falls on greed. That's what it all boils down to, is greed. When they get by, they slip one little tack in on you. They get another raise, they slip that in on you? Well, they start looking for something else. Well, they got by with that. It's just like the electric bill. When I first bought Air House Air Electric rent, about$150 a month. The, I don't live in a large, huge homes to Standard Creek bedroom home. Very efficient. I've remodeled most of it all LED lighting, efficient. And we're up to now after they've put in every time, sometimes twice a year for raises on the electricity for the electrician company, now we're up paying about$550 a month for, and it's just me and the wife, it is just unreal. I mean, what are we gonna be paying next? And a lot of that is the expansion of the communities that are going in. It's putting more strain on the power company out there generating power. I mean, they only have one generating station, typically for multiple cities at a time. So now they're having to produce more and more workload and it is, it's gonna drive the prices up. It's like we have some new roadways cut in. They're really beautiful scenic views along the way, but leads to a big toll road. And when I go to my terminal where I keep my truck and all of that I take the new toll road and I'm like, here I am paying taxes to drive on a road that was supposed to help alleviate congestion and make things a lot easier for the community. Granted it's a new toll road and it's spectacular, but, when will we not have to pay? When will that road be paid for? And we won't have to pay tolls anymore? We all know about the Pennsylvania turnpike, Ohio, turn all, Kansas, all when are these roads not gonna be toll roads anymore? Well, they need to be toll roads to keep maintained, but the rest of the highways don't. But federal funding cover that. You'd think so, but it all ends up being more and more money. They've wanted to impose toll roads for 18 wheelers across the country for years. I've seen it come up in legislation several times. You wanting to just make, I 70 and I 40 and all these different places, the toll road, and I'm sorry, but the way that the rates and everything goes. We'll still be out here paying for all that and still getting$2 a mile. It's just like, and you're already paying a heavy highway use tax. Everywhere you turn, they're trying to get more and more. A lot of people don't realize if it wasn't for the trucks, the highways would've never been built. We paved the way for the highways to be built off of the fuel tax or the heavy, tax off the truck drivers, and we can't even drive down the roads that we actually contributed to build without being harassed by, motorists that think we're nothing but a nuisance. And they always said, you truck drivers think you own the road. Well, in a way, we kind of do. I mean the Federal Highway system for developed, first and foremost for military purposes after World War ii and they came back from Germany and they had saw the Audubon and how easily the Germans could move their equipment. Across Europe. It they wanted to do the same thing. Eisenhower developed the interstate program. Secondly, it's interstate commerce. And that does include travelers, vacationers, the highways opened up a lot of route to places where people, families could go and vacation and, across the country. But interstate commerce is the most important. Aspect of these interstates. You think with the machine, the big machine the, what we do for a living, we keep the goods flowing. It keeps the economy going, and the truck drivers should be exempt from, road tax, fuel tax. There should be federal funding. Like I said, you got the toll roads as it is. They should exempt us. It's us out here moving the products, moving the goods. They keep America going. Every city, every town collects sales tax. Well, what are they gonna collect sales tax on if the shelves are empty? They definitely don't think about that. They just look at. Everything has greed and that's where it all starts. Your property tax, you know what your tax on your road tax, fuel tax, just the fuel tax alone. You know how much money that adds to a gallon of fuel. It's like 24, 0, 20 5 cents a gallon in some cases, even 35 cents a gallon. That's from the state. Yeah. In some cases, I'm looking at California, it's even about 35 cents a gallon. Even in California, You got your 2290s and you got your FET tax. It's just like constantly, somebody's always got their hand out, we do all the work. Everybody else got their hand out for what we earn. We get taxed on the dollar when we make it. We get taxed on it when we spend it. We get taxed while we're trying to make it, X oral tax. that hell, half the time we don't even know? a lot of your, and at the end of the year, you gotta file your taxes to make sure you're paid enough. Yeah. And then they always want more. You got your, some of your state's got that Valium tax, you know that they add on. Yeah, I know. I get up in the morning, my 10 hour breaks done. I get up, I put those boots on and it's just me in that truck. I don't see the tax man there. The IRS is not even standing outside waiting on me with a cup of coffee. I go in, I brush my teeth, I get something to eat. I come out still no tax man there. But by God come Friday I get that settlement or the tax man's there then. He is waiting right there, he is already dipped into it. And he's just hanging around every quarter. I see him again every quarter and again at the end of the year. Yeah, most definitely. Sure. I he sure ain't out here helping me make this money though. No, that's for damn sure. And you got to itemize, you got to keep track of your expenses and pennies make dollars. I mean, I know you've heard me say that a million times, but it's the truth in our world, ma'am. Pennies make dollars and you're in a race throughout the year of how much money you can keep. Yeah, you gotta spend money, but you got to know what's write offs, what's not, and you may be passing up a lot of money. You're leaving laying on the table. They don't make it easy for you to figure out the proper information to know what you can and can't write off. Well, that's why you asked questions. There was a time in this country where we didn't have an income tax. I know none of us were alive at the, I can't remember if it was 19 30, 19 34 or somewhere in there. There was no income tax and this country was just fine. We were able to, we had state roads at that we were able to build them. We were able to build bridges. We were able to build dams build a military. We were doing just fine. Now, today with technology and all that this country produces and the, the tariffs, I think we could do away with the income tax. And in all honesty, I have no problem paying an income tax. It should be like a flat rate across the board. Maybe five, 10% of the most of my income. Cap it right there. Well, I can deal with that. We need programs. The tariffs that Trump has imposed to bring it up. Yeah, you said something very, but they need to have a high accountability of where the money is being allocated to instead of sending it overseas.'cause when you really look into it, it's like most of the money that gets taxed on it gets sent overseas instead of being reinvested back into America on our roads and schools. And that's true. Well, you said something pretty interesting, All the tariffs take over paying for everything instead of us paying federal income tax. And I think that's what Trump has definitely said. But I think there've been something interesting going on that nobody ever thought about during this government shutdown. Trump has been using money from the tariffs to operate the government very quietly in his own little way. He's showing them, Hey, the tariffs is operating the government. Everybody's getting paid, nobody's going hungry. And there's, the government shut down. How's that working? He is quietly proving his point that tariffs can operate our federal government. And that was a big article I seen. You won't find that on mainstream media. No, but you're seeing it though. It's coming out. I'm seeing some articles on it here and there. They're buried into rubbish and the bullshit and everything else. But if they leave this man alone and let him do what he's trying to do, I believe this country would be a hell of a lot better off. I mean, I'm not trying to get into political one side or this or that, but I do like some of the things that he's done. He's definitely, I think, done some things for the American people, and I know there's a lot of people would disagree with that. And I'm not trying to go down that political rabbit hole. That ain't what we really try to do. But I noticed that during a government shutdown, we're not really seeing. Things been turned upside down, and I think he's quietly proving his point that tariffs can operate this country. Thought that was a real interesting little point there. We've been paying tariffs to other countries on good that we export as well as import. We're just doing the same thing back to them. I think Fair is fair, but I believe a tax would be fine. Like I said, not 25, 30 or 35%. It's going to keep going up, but if you lock it down at, five to 10%, because I do want to keep a strong military. I do want there to be programs, to help feed people in need. I'm. Welfare. I grew up as a kid. My mom was a single mom raising two kids. And we had to go on welfare. But we got off of welfare. We weren't gonna live on it for generation after generation. And I think there should be a cap on that, that would cut into, there, would kill a lot of need for the taxes right there, no more than a year, you get it for no more than a year. We have jobs. There's plenty of things to do. I remember my great-grandfather telling me about the Great Depression, I said, what did you do? He went out west, he gave up everything he knew. He went up out west and worked on skyscrapers in California. He went and did work on the Hoover Dam. He helped build highways, things he'd never done before because he had a family to support. You don't see that today. You don't see that culture today. And we just tax everybody and primarily the middle class and throw money at this problems and then, so it just gets to be a bigger problem. Kinda like big pharma, got a pill for everything, but never a cure. But we got taxes for everything. But never pay it off. Never get it fixed. Most definitely. And you see it throughout the whole, the retirement, your social security, heaven forbid somebody get disabled, they fight you tooth and nail. I mean, it's like a chess game to try to get any kind of assistance when a working man's not able to work. I was in a situation like that back many years ago. Unfortunately, I was in a bad accident and I had my back was messed up real bad. And of course, I'd made pretty good money. I ended up having to ask for assistance. And these people looked at me like I had three eyes. Like, what are you talking about? There's no way we can't help you. I'm like, okay, but all these years I've helped everybody else, but you ain't got nothing for me. And the lady looked at me and says, yeah, we can't do that. We can't help you. And that was probably one of the most disappointing moments in my life, that it was bad enough that I had to find enough humility to ask for help and then be turned down by the very people that I had paid taxes in year after year to help fund their programs. But there's no money for the man that actually works and feeds the system. They, they gotta keep you out there working. They don't care if you're sick. They don't care. You see this even in your retirement, your social security, they keep raising the gate on that, 65, 67, 70, they up up more and more. And there's something, and I'm not trying to bash anybody, but you know, we got people living on the system out here that don't pay anything for their Medicaid. And then we have retired people that's paid in since they were probably 15 or 16 years old for Social security and Medicare and all this. And then they're forced to pay 150,$200 a month for Medicaid, Medicare, part B. What the hell is that shit? I think they got this backward here. We've already paid for that. So why as a retired senior are we having to still pay for something that we've paid for 30, 40, sometimes even 50 years to get, it's like they try to thumb rale you out of anything and everything, any kind of benefit that you've already paid for. It's your money. Right. And you were saying about, pushing the retirement age back, I just read an interesting article Norway and I guess they've had a very large influx of Muslim immigrants and it's increased to about 40% now. And because of that and trying to take care of these immigrants. They have now pushed back at the retirement age, the beginning retirement age for Norwegians to 73. Wow. 73 years old, so that these people can continue to work and pay income tax. And that's they pay a lot higher tax than we do, as it is. I believe they're up around 40 something percent of their pay goes in for taxes. I'm assuming they're probably a socialist country. But that's kind of what I'm seeing happen here with the undocumented immigrants that are here. Somebody's having to take care of'em and we all know it's our tax dollars going to feed them, to house'em, to educate'em, to put clothes on their backs. Everything. So that they're getting, that's not free. That comes from the the working man and our tax dollars. I wonder now, is that why they're wanting to push back our retirement age? They need us to keep working so they can keep collecting that money. Well, it's not just to keep working. It's where they can keep pulling more of the money out of that Social Security pot. They've got scientists, they've got medical experts that set and look at you as a whole. And they say, okay, what's the chances of this guy living past 70, 72, 73 years old? And that percentage goes way down past 60, 65 years old. So they can. Figure, okay, well we can use X amount of percentage out of the social security and still keep it balanced. That's what a lot of that's about. They want to keep robbing the pot and for other things. They want to keep spending money taking care of illegals and, and one of the biggest mistakes that we make is we are very close-minded when we look at the immigration problem in this country. It ain't just in our country, it's worldwide. The Ukraine, Canada, I mean, everywhere is starting to have issues. Probably with an exception of some of the more hardcore places like China or Russia. I don't really think they would have an influx, but who knows? They may do it, but the inflation. Is globally. I was looking at some of the world financing the other day and the spike of global financing is global. It just ain't, we're so used to looking at us as a country. It is just not just us, man. It's, it is everywhere. If you look at the cost of living in Australia, Austria, All these other country, Poland, Switzerland, it is astronomical. And it is just the same as what we've been getting the last couple of decades here. It's been on a slow incline and then it just keeps getting worse the last four years before Trump got back in, the inflation went through the roof. And a lot of people don't understand, when you kick the doors wide open on a border and you let millions of undocumented people come into your country, you throw off your scales of balance, you throw off the wheels of balance. Because our price is always done up by the price of goods is always controlled by supply and demand. And that's probably one of the biggest things that we don't always think about. But when you have millions of people flooding this country, now, say like we kill 4,000 head of cattle a day, when all of a sudden we're going to need 60,000 head of cattle a day to feed all these new people that come into our country. Well, all of a sudden now you're coming up short. Now there's a shortage. A shortage always follows an increase in price and it's, it goes across the board with housing everything went through the roof. You know that, that's led a whole lot of our inflation. A lot of people don't realize, we sit back and think, man, why do they always want the open border? I mean, why do they wanna let people in the country, why do they keep doing this? Well, there's your answer, and when you have, you go from$3 for a gallon of milk to$10 for a gallon of milk, guess what goes up with that tax money? And guess who gets the tax money? The people in charge of the gate. But you know, you look at it across the board, you gotta be proficient in operating a business if you're going to survive with a cost of inflation, the cost of trucks, the cost of mechanical breakdowns, the cost of tires, you name it, you're up against the world trying to be an owner operator out here. And you can be profitable, but you gotta be very frugal. You gotta operate that truck and get maximum fuel mileage. Don't run that truck down the road 70 miles an hour.'cause man, that cost a lot more money than running it down the road. 62, 63 miles an hour. Right? But you know the difference more and tear on it. So maintenance costs go up. Exactly. You can run that truck down the road 62 miles an hour, and the whole truck just kind of relaxes. You can feel it, the stress, the, on the wheels, the tires, the brakes, the whole nine yards, your suspension goes down an astronomical percentage. It's not just getting fuel mileage. It is basically bringing your overall maintenance cost down per mile. And if you wanna survive in a market that we're in, you definitely gotta be a businessman. You gotta know what you're doing. It ain't just about hanging onto that steering wheel, kicking that truck in the ass and saying, let's go. You've got to put some thought into it. I know the show goes out a lot and it's growing and, yeah, it's good to see that. And then, I don't know who all's listening, but you know? if there's anybody out there that listens to this podcast and you're a new driver you're starting out, you think you're doing good. You really do. And you may be doing good, but not as good as you could be. You really ought to look into this. I know I've known Stacy for a long time and I know he has a program. He works with drivers. He worked with me many years ago and I really thought I had this game down and my income shot through the roof, just listening to him and swallowing what I was hearing from him, I didn't always like it with, you just hit the nail on the head, would slow the truck down. I was lead foot. I saw a lot. Know a lot more of my fuel surcharge going into my pocket instead of my tank. I saw the wear and tear on my engines, I was in the shop a lot less, but I was spending a lot less money. So if anybody out there wants to help or advice I believe you, you still have a program or you do. Oh yeah. We help people counseling thing day in, day out. It's, I put, every time we upload something online or Facebook or anything, I put the email in, the truckers radio PD at Gmail. All you gotta do is drop me a line, dude. It may take me a day or so. I'll get back with you and we will, we'll just run through. Honestly, it's really not that expensive, I don't charge an astronomic, I mean, honest. I try to just help people. Of course I gotta bank a little money for my time. But a lot of my rewards, just seeing someone else do better. You've worked every penny and I, it's been many years since you worked with me. Are you doing anything with taxes? Helping people to understand Yeah. How to do their taxes, what, kind of bookkeeping or anything because that's the main key For me, bookkeeping would've solved a lot of headaches. Not only for me, but for the tax preparers that I had to hire to, to fix my mess. Right Now, I'm not a CPA, but I do know how to put your stuff together, get you on the right track, and then you need to get yourself a CPA to do the rest. But the way I do things, I keep my own books and that's kind of where you need to be. You go down here to the convenience store and walk in and ask that guy. What his operating cost is. I bet you he can tell you because he operates on a very lean budget and you should be able to do the same thing. And that's your first ticket to making money is knowing if you're making money, you gotta know what you're operating cost is before you can fine tune a business to be profitable. That's the first lesson of business right there, is knowing what you're dealing with. Yeah, that is the main aspect. Learning your operating cost. You get a lot of these guys out here, we've talked about it before, you know that hey, I was making 35 cent a mile, a company driver. Now I'm over here. I'm getting a dollar 50 a mile per load. And, they don't realize it's cost them 85, 95, sometimes a dollar, 10 a mile to run that truck. Well, now they're right back to where they were as a company driver. Yeah. I mean, right now you're upward probably a dollar,$30, 40 a mile right now just to run a truck down the road. And sometimes if you are not careful on the loads that you take, you're actually paying those people to haul their freight, and that's not a good Yeah. And there done that. Yeah. People, there's so many different angles to fine tune your business strategy, and I go through all of that, I go through all that depending on how many, we break'em up in 30 minute sessions, an hour session. Whichever one you want, which one's easier for you to pay for? And as we go, you learn a little more each time and you start learning how to negotiate. If the broker says, Hey, I got$1,700 on that load, said no, man, I need 2,800. And you can't just take that. You have to negotiate. I negotiate everything. Even if it's paying really good, I still will negotiate a little, even though I know, hey, this is a great load, I'm gonna go ahead and get it. But it doesn't stop you from in negotiating, see if you can get a little more on a stop pay or a tarp pay if you're running flatbed, there's always somewhere to put a little more money in your pocket. And that's a lot of what I teach, right? That great paying load's, not just great for you. It's great for that broker too. So he's got some wiggle rooms. There's always a couple hundred extra bucks or so he can throw out there at it, but well, you take a couple hundred dollars a day, that adds up. Yes it does. That's taxes, that is like the number one killer for drivers out here. Not handling your taxes, right. You know that the amount that we're already having to pay, but not taking care of things and getting behind on them can ruin you. It can put you out a truck just as fast as you can get into one, but Right. Like all the taxes a silent killer.'cause you'll be flying along thinking you're doing great. All that money in your pocket, and all of a sudden the IRS lowers the boom on you and then it ain't pretty. Then they freeze all your bank accounts and now you can't pay your truck payment. Now you can't pay your trailer payment. Boy, man, they could put you out of business quick. They don't play, they don't give two shits about you staying in business if they're not collecting taxes from you, I can tell you that right now. They'd rather have you as an employee out there where they know they got their tax money. And that's where a lot of, I feel like the world's moving too. Is getting rid of a lot of the entrepreneur and independent driver or business owner because we do have a lot more angles and write offs and pay less taxes than you would a regular employee because you have nothing. As a regular employee, I will always keep more of my money as a owner operator than I ever would as a company driver. You may make really good money as a company driver, but I guarantee the IRS is going to take a big chunk of that, so are you really coming out? That's yet to be said. Depends on how you know your situation and everybody's situation is different. I mean, you may have Larry over here with eight kids. He got a hell of a lot of write off shit. He ain't got a damn thing to worry about. You keep raising them kids, Larry, you got all kind of tax write offs you got but if you ain't got eight kids, you gotta learn some strategy, And I even say, sometimes being conservative also means spending a little money sometimes too. Sometimes you gotta spend money to make money to better yourself and meet yourself at a better situation. That's good. It really, it is. But you also gotta remember at the end of the year, if that truck needs tires on it, you'd probably need to put'em on it before the first of the year. Because if you don't, and let's say you have to pay the IR RSS out five grand. Well, that five grand would've put some tires on that truck, and I'd rather much put tires on my equipment than to give the IRS$5,000. I always kind of keep my eye on the ball where I'm at. And that's part of knowing your cost and your operating cost and where you're at, where you're going is when you start getting that last couple of months of the year, you already know if you need to spend some money, you may need to, put some brakes on the truck or do some upgrades that you've been waiting to do. You've been conservative all year, but right now's the time, maybe to let go a little bit of money so you break even. If I'm going to put money out, I'd rather it be into my equipment. Not to the IRS. Absolutely. That's probably some of the biggest parts right there, is just, figuring it all out, and it takes time. I've been out here for 30 years and I know they've been cats out there longer than me, but I've worked in this industry and I've had to figure out a lot of it, and I wasn't born in the front seat of a truck. I always tell people that, man, I mean, I've dug a lot of this out myself. I've stumbled across ship, just hard licks, learning the hard way, but sometimes them hard lessons are your best lessons, it's not that I know everything. It's, just experience, that's how I teach. I haven't heard Thomas in a while. He said he was out west tonight. He's done really good. We started out with him, about eight years ago, kind of back and forth a little bit. Kinda giving him a lot of advice, I think you trained him back, what, eight, nine years ago? Yeah, something like that. And then we kind of just took him under a wing with, he was kind of a really likable cat, and we just kind of took a liking to him and he just learned as he went with just kind of a rules of association, I think slapping him in the back of the head. Well, he paid attention. Yeah, he did. He's a smart kid. He paid attention. He hung on every word that we said. We told him he didn't question, he didn't try to come out here and change the trucking industry Like so many, guys think they can do, it's been this way. Been for a long time for a reason. And he hung on a lot of what you told him as well. I mean, he was actually one of your prodigies as much as mine. And he's done good for himself, being smart and he is younger generation. He is tech savvy. That's helped him out a lot. Yeah. He's kind of took over a whole lot of our websites and our tech stuff there a little bit. I was floundering. I managed to build them, but you know? I got, I'm old man. I've got a, I got a learning curve when it comes to building websites and all that. I mean, I managed to get it, but, I kinda like passed a buck over to him to kind of figure out a few things. I didn't, but he's working a lot of that stuff. I have to get him to help me with my cell phone sometimes, yeah. A lot of these kids nowadays are very tech savvy, and that's good. Because, they have a lot of programs and stuff out here nowadays online that helps with, figuring out your road cost and stuff, I remember back in the day, my owner operator program that I loved the most was a notebook and a pencil and paper. The calculator was my go-to in old habits die hard. I'm going to tell you that right now. I have held onto that damn notebook and a pencil on a paper. Till I had to start learning to use computers for everything, but I tell you what, I could sit down with a pencil and paper just in a matter of a few minutes, and I could tell you every single thing you wanted to know about my truck, what my cost was, what my fuel cost per mile was, what it cost me to run that truck down the road. It's going to vary a little here, a little there, but if you know what it cost you to operate your truck in the middle of the road situation, now you got a focal point. If that truck cost you a dollar 40 a mile pretty common sense that you're going to have to ask for a little more money than that. To make money, you gotta pay yourself and you gotta pay the truck's gotta make money too. Just running it down the road. Don't always take care of the truck either. You gotta think about that. But I definitely think that there's a lot of things out here that, a lot of good potential. We have a lot of good drivers coming into the industry, like Thomas, he's been there about eight years, actually. Hell, Thomas was jumping into it about the time I was training my son to get into it, so he was kind of right there in that little pod listening and learning I was able to take my son with me for a couple of months and then I dropped him off to get his CDL, but I wanted to make sure he learned everything he needed to learn before he went to go get his CDL through the little school. But, I mean, you don't just throw your son to the wolves, you gotta make sure he knows what the hell he is doing. He does a good job, just like Thomas does. I think they're both about the same age actually. Most definitely, the way the world runs out here today, we got a different group of guys coming in and there's a lot of potential. I was talking to a guy the other day, he was wanting to get into trucking. Him and his wife, they were just tired of living paycheck to paycheck. Hooked them up and everything and they're signing up for their first month worth of stuff, I'm gonna start coaching them into the trucking industry. Help'em find a school, get their CDL, help'em find a company. The dos, the don'ts. I mean, just kinda like leading them down the path where, they can enter into trucking without the beat. So much of the bullshit, you're always going to have some bullshit no matter where you go. And unless you've just got a pocket full of money and you can go to the best CDL schools there's a lot of things that vary there. I mean, if you want to go through the company sponsored school, yeah, you're going to put up with some bull there a little bit, but it depends on if you get the right one. There's a few out there that are really good programs. They are. And you're going to pay your dues just like anywhere else. A lot of people, they want to hit the ground running and making$150,000 a year,

54:04

But that's not always possible. Everybody has to come out here and pay their dues and just, it's unrealistic for them to come out and think that they're going to just make$150,000 a year. And, uh, don't get me wrong, I appreciate everybody's ambition, but you do have to pay your dues. And when you come outta here on the road, this is definitely something that. Everyone's gotta take the learning curve. Take your time, worry about your safety first, money later. We're gonna go ahead and wrap this up for the truckers Radio podcast. I appreciate everybody tuning in. We'll see you next week.

Dolores 54:44

You’ve been listening to The Trucker’s Radio Podcast, powered by Sabren Group LLC, and hosted by Stacey Yearout. At Sabren Group, we’re proud to stand beside America’s drivers offering owner-operator consulting, mental health support, relationship and trauma recovery coaching, and the kind of real talk this industry needs. To share your story, ask a question, or get connected, visit TheTruckersRadioPodcast.com or email TheTruckersRadioPD@gmail.com Until next time stay safe, stay strong, and keep those wheels turning. This is The Trucker’s Radio Podcast, the voice of the American driver.