Buying a Fedex Ground Route

bacha29

Well-Known Member
Since you guys know everything and I in your opinion know nothing. Then please accept my apology for suggesting that the man keep a fairly large free cash supply on hand for at least the first year until he gets the hang of it then drop it down as he becomes better able to foresee and anticipate upcoming events and can plan accordingly. Remember profit that's what you give the government. What you live on is your cash flow. I have seen too many cases where guys were taking out too much cash for their own life style enjoyment then had next to nothing available when they hit rough patches or their employees were no longer willing to work for next to nothing while supporting the contractors opulent lifestyle that was being flaunted in front of them.
 

dvalleyjim

Well-Known Member
Since you guys know everything and I in your opinion know nothing. Then please accept my apology for suggesting that the man keep a fairly large free cash supply on hand for at least the first year until he gets the hang of it then drop it down as he becomes better able to foresee and anticipate upcoming events and can plan accordingly. Remember profit that's what you give the government. What you live on is your cash flow. I have seen too many cases where guys were taking out too much cash for their own life style enjoyment then had next to nothing available when they hit rough patches or their employees were no longer willing to work for next to nothing while supporting the contractors opulent lifestyle that was being flaunted in front of them.

You are right!. Don't go into debt and keep your salary low until you can get a feel for what your really making vs. your business expenses. Ex doesn't really pay you enough to run quality trucks with quality drivers. To make any money or even stay afloat you have to get really big or low ball everything. If you go big you can basically clear 2-3%. Also be able to drive all your routes and know them as well as your driver because you can't afford a manager until you hit about 10 trucks. There are absentee managers that never drive. The guy I work for now couldn't do a route if you held a gun to his hid so he hired a part time manager. Sheesh. I never could run my business like these ISP guys do.
 

FedGT

Well-Known Member
If you go big you can basically clear 2-3%. Also be able to drive all your routes and know them as well as your driver because you can't afford a manager until you hit about 10 trucks.
Statements like this make you lose all credibility to anyone that is in the game. So you state that if you are grossing $800,000-1,000,000 you can clear $16,000-40,000 a year. Yeah that's why us bigger guys are in it:confused:
 

dmac1

Well-Known Member
I was making about $100 per driver per week on 3 HD routes with me driving every day to keep driver hours reasonable. I made sure my drivers were making at least $12 an hour. Wasn't worth the trouble because I had to spend about an extra 1-2 hours per day, plus more time spent with dealing with maintenance on vans on days off. In reality, I needed 4 drivers including myself to cover the routes. You need to make sure your back-up drivers get enough hours and pay to keep them from going to another owner. With 5 routes minimum, you better plan on at least 6 drivers plus yourself.
 

FedGT

Well-Known Member
I was making about $100 per driver per week on 3 HD routes with me driving every day to keep driver hours reasonable. I made sure my drivers were making at least $12 an hour. Wasn't worth the trouble because I had to spend about an extra 1-2 hours per day, plus more time spent with dealing with maintenance on vans on days off. In reality, I needed 4 drivers including myself to cover the routes. You need to make sure your back-up drivers get enough hours and pay to keep them from going to another owner. With 5 routes minimum, you better plan on at least 6 drivers plus yourself.

You made around $15,600 a year and did not pay yourself a salary on top of that?? If that is true HD pays complete garbage.
 

dmac1

Well-Known Member
You made around $15,600 a year and did not pay yourself a salary on top of that?? If that is true HD pays complete garbage.

Plus what I earned for what I delivered went down. For having 3 drivers, I made actually a little less than $100 a week per driver, but worked an extra 12+ hours a week, and gave up a lot of the hours I was driving. Since I was spending more time managing, I couldn't drive as much, so lost income that way. Put it this way- I netted about $40k+ taxable when I was driving my one route, but only made about $50k net with 3 routes, while actually putting in more total hours. My income from driving was thus down. I know my income per hour spent on the job went DOWN. I took enough work daily to keep my drivers at 8 hours a day. If I had been required at the time to pay them as employees instead of subcontractors, I wouldn't have made a dime unless I cut the pay to about $9 an hour. The terminal I was in was mismanaged, always ran late, and was the worst run place I ever worked. My drivers could never leave before 9 am. Before I had drivers, I could come in at 8:30 am and be done at about 7 pm. After, I had to come in by seven AM, gas up vehicles, safety check, re-sort packages since the mgmt couldn't figure out how to divide 30 hours of driving(10 hours per route) into three 7 hour routes plus what I was going to take myself. Which still left me with 8+ hours of delivery myself Plus not getting home any earlier most days, plus the extra time spent on days off rotating tires, oil changes, etc. So I was working most days as a kind of 'supplemental' with no extra income for the stops I delivered. Plus HD had no loaders, so I had to pay drivers for the load time. Granted, on light days, I might be done by noon, which was impossible with just the one route. But that happened maybe once a month. And then at peak, I had even more time invested. Really, 4 trucks to deliver 3 routes without any compensation for the fourth truck wasn't worth it.
 
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Bounty

Well-Known Member
Plus what I earned for what I delivered went down. For having 3 drivers, I made actually a little less than $100 a week per driver, but worked an extra 12+ hours a week, and gave up a lot of the hours I was driving. Since I was spending more time managing, I couldn't drive as much, so lost income that way. Put it this way- I netted about $40k+ taxable when I was driving my one route, but only made about $50k net with 3 routes, while actually putting in more total hours. My income from driving was thus down. I know my income per hour spent on the job went DOWN. I took enough work daily to keep my drivers at 8 hours a day. If I had been required at the time to pay them as employees instead of subcontractors, I wouldn't have made a dime unless I cut the pay to about $9 an hour. The terminal I was in was mismanaged, always ran late, and was the worst run place I ever worked. My drivers could never leave before 9 am. Before I had drivers, I could come in at 8:30 am and be done at about 7 pm. After, I had to come in by seven AM, gas up vehicles, safety check, re-sort packages since the mgmt couldn't figure out how to divide 30 hours of driving(10 hours per route) into three 7 hour routes plus what I was going to take myself. Which still left me with 8+ hours of delivery myself Plus not getting home any earlier most days, plus the extra time spent on days off rotating tires, oil changes, etc. So I was working most days as a kind of 'supplemental' with no extra income for the stops I delivered. Plus HD had no loaders, so I had to pay drivers for the load time. Granted, on light days, I might be done by noon, which was impossible with just the one route. But that happened maybe once a month. And then at peak, I had even more time invested. Really, 4 trucks to deliver 3 routes without any compensation for the fourth truck wasn't worth it.
Sounds like you worked at my terminal. Know what you were doing wrong? You were trying to run it correctly (rotating tires,pre and post trips). Paying for load time? Unheard of. That's suppose to be free labor in the eyes of contractors.
 

bacha29

Well-Known Member
Dmac: You perfectly described the kind of life multi route contractors are experiencing at the barn I was at. You end up with 3 trucks per route.1 on the road, 1 in the garage and 1 in the junk yard. Yours was the most honest depiction of what life as a multi route is really like when you are in an area with less than optimum demographics. I in fact hope that Xquestionnan does get routes. Then and only then will he come to the realization that the basic principles of business that he clings to simply will not help him or can be applied when dealing with X.
 

echo

Active Member
You guys covered it all pretty well. I've been doing HD 13 years and yeah the growth is off the chain which is what you want in a business. In my former life I was in management. With X I never expanded and just ran 1 route. Why ? Because X's model breaks a primary business rule that you have all identified. Your staff wil make or break you. I ran solo and put 14 hour + days in because I wanted it to go smooth daily and put as much in the bank as I could. In other words I already knew I was screwed and facing a long day rather than getting the " I Quit" phone call at 6 am. Finally hired a supp this past Nov and kept him on while trying to sale my route. The supp is top notch but he has a reason for doing this due to taking early retirement he needs to get his 40 quarters in. The contractors I see with the least turnover have high volume areas where the driver can be done by 3 or 4 pm and still pay for themselves. The rural areas have high turnover due to a much longer day and you can't pay enough to keep them. One of the most successful contractors simply had a large family. Had cousins brothers etc. driving and they show up everyday. One of the unluckiest contractors had 2 employee's that were roomates and one of them lost the keys but was parked behind the other truck. So mid december the contractor is short 2 employees and 2 trucks. The rest of the business model works. It is not bad money. The turnover is the biggest challenge.
 

bacha29

Well-Known Member
Mr. Echo: I took the same approach. I stayed a single route for the same reasons. I wasn't about to send someone out to do a job I wouldn't do my self or make him go into some God forsaken rat hole whereby if you didn' t know ahead of time what it was like he would have been almost certain to wreck or get stuck or break through somebody's rotted out wooden plank bridg A nd try to find a guy who wasn't bogged with domestic troubles( PFA's child support, DUI's probation etc) that was nearly impossible This was the kind of miseries the multi routes had at my terminal in abundance but this was all they could get for the money the had to offer. In fact I had to put on as a supp a guy that UPS fired after 20 years due to all of the complaints . Didn't take long to find out why. But that's all there was and a few weeks after i left and another guy who had to him take found out. He never came to work one morning because he failed to show up at a court ordered divorce master hearing the day before. Never called his employer Cops were waiting at the terminal for him the night before Spent two weeks in jail then just showed up one morning stupidly thinking that his job was secure enough to allow him to behave like that. WRONG. Then he came back and wanted to drive for the company during this past peak season. Needless to say that none of therm were willing to say out there until 9PM every night in order to cover those 100"s of miles of unpaved township and private turkey path roads. So what do you do? The only thing you can do, do it yourself and be done with it.
 

echo

Active Member
er: 58386"]Mr. Echo: I took the same approach. I stayed a single route for the same reasons. I wasn't about to send someone out to do a job I wouldn't do my self or make him go into some God forsaken rat hole whereby if you didn' t know ahead of time what it was like he would have been almost certain to wreck or get stuck or break through somebody's rotted out wooden plank bridg A nd try to find a guy who wasn't bogged with domestic troubles( PFA's child support, DUI's probation etc) that was nearly impossible This was the kind of miseries the multi routes had at my terminal in abundance but this was all they could get for the money the had to offer. In fact I had to put on as a supp a guy that UPS fired after 20 years due to all of the complaints . Didn't take long to find out why. But that's all there was and a few weeks after i left and another guy who had to him take found out. He never came to work one morning because he failed to show up at a court ordered divorce master hearing the day before. Never called his employer Cops were waiting at the terminal for him the night before Spent two weeks in jail then just showed up one morning stupidly thinking that his job was secure enough to allow him to behave like that. WRONG. Then he came back and wanted to drive for the company during this past peak season. Needless to say that none of therm were willing to say out there until 9PM every night in order to cover those 100"s of miles of unpaved township and private turkey path roads. So what do you do? The only thing you can do, do it yourself and be done with it.[/QUOTE]
I hear ya man. That old saying ....If you want something done right....
 

MrFedEx

Engorged Member
Sounds like you worked at my territorieterminal. Know what you were doing wrong? You were trying to run it correctly (rotating tires,pre and post trips). Paying for load time? Unheard of. That's suppose to be free labor in the eyes of contractors.

Fred is throwing the single contractors under the bus and making their routes bargains for the big dogs who have the means to buy them out. I can remember not too many years ago when Ground contractors were selling-out cheap just to get the Hell out. Craigslist and the papers were full of "business opportunities" on the cheap.

Mr. Smith conveniently looks the other way when it comes to safety, maintenance, and labor laws. After all, those are all responsibilities of the "independent businesspeople" who own their own business, which really means that they pick-up most of the costs and Fredward skims off most of the profit because it's really his business masquerading as someone else's.
 

bacha29

Well-Known Member
Spot on Mr. Fedex: If anybody thinks Fred S is going to worry about what the future has in store for Ground route contracotrs big or small they have been seriously misled. As time goes by more and more of these so called " entrpreneurs" will begin to realize tha their investment is by no means secure and it's fate to be decided by entirely by X they too will be trying to get out for whatever price they can get.
 

dvalleyjim

Well-Known Member
Statements like this make you lose all credibility to anyone that is in the game. So you state that if you are grossing $800,000-1,000,000 you can clear $16,000-40,000 a year. Yeah that's why us bigger guys are in it:confused:

You know something. I did this for 18 years. I never wanted to be big. I was happy running three trucks. I got out in 2011 by accepting a cash buyout. I was not forced out, I was not terminated, The TM put in my file a recommendation to contract again in the future. I don't want to. I took my money and got out. I now work as a driver. I have money. I made money when I contracted and sold for a profit. So If this in your eyes make me a loser-failure I don't care. Now let's look at your figures. I'll has them out and post again just for fun.
 

dvalleyjim

Well-Known Member
Statements like this make you lose all credibility to anyone that is in the game. So you state that if you are grossing $800,000-1,000,000 you can clear $16,000-40,000 a year. Yeah that's why us bigger guys are in it:confused:

You know your right, you will retire a very rich man!
 

FedGT

Well-Known Member
You know your right, you will retire a very rich man!
Don't need to be rich but thanks for your confidence in me. I have no idea why you think I called you a failure, I said nothing of the sort. I did call you a liar on the statement that a 1 million dollar grossing contract will pay back $20,000-30,000 a year. You and I both know that is complete garbage
 

echo

Active Member
You know something. I did this for 18 years. I never wanted to be big. I was happy running three trucks. I got out in 2011 by accepting a cash buyout. I was not forced out, I was not terminated, The TM put in my file a recommendation to contract again in the future. I don't want to. I took my money and got out. I now work as a driver. I have money. I made money when I contracted and sold for a profit. So If this in your eyes make me a loser-failure I don't care. Now let's look at your figures. I'll has them out and post again just for fun.
Same here. Never wanted to get big. But you build a business up expecting to make it at least part of your retirement plan and instead you get thrown out like trash
 

bacha29

Well-Known Member
When it is an established fact that X does not consider a single term or condition in it's unilaterally drafted and implemented contract to be binding upon itself and makes no attempt to hide what it believes to be it's right to change the terms anytime any place for any reason, why would anyone want to make a larger investment in this than the minimum reguired. Now if you were to take a closer look at the Kansas State Supreme Court ruling on the matter which many believe will be the basis for many if not all future appeals court rulings it would no doubt give anyone pause when it comes to how large a commitment you want to make going forward.
 

FedGT

Well-Known Member
When it is an established fact that X does not consider a single term or condition in it's unilaterally drafted and implemented contract to be binding upon itself and makes no attempt to hide what it believes to be it's right to change the terms anytime any place for any reason, why would anyone want to make a larger investment in this than the minimum reguired. Now if you were to take a closer look at the Kansas State Supreme Court ruling on the matter which many believe will be the basis for many if not all future appeals court rulings it would no doubt give anyone pause when it comes to how large a commitment you want to make going forward.

Don't see why. No news here. Took 15 years to get a decision will take another 15-20 more than likely to get another verdict. 4 years from now the challenged model will be obsolete. If does come out negatively for FedEx it doesn't challenge the grounds in regards to ISP model and the next challenge would likely take another 10-20 years to get a verdict on. During that time hundreds of contractors will sell/buy, grow, split, sell.
 
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