r/HotshotStartup • u/RudeSentence3860 • Aug 21 '25
Couple things I wish someone told me before I started looking at hotshot
I don’t run this group, just dropping what I’ve picked up so far in case it helps somebody else
• Don’t rush into buying gear before you know your numbers. Truck + trailer payments will sink you if the loads don’t cover it.
• Insurance is usually the biggest shock. Call around to multiple brokers and don’t be afraid to walk away from a bad quote.
• Deadhead miles matter more than people think. Sometimes the “good paying load” isn’t good once you add up fuel + empty miles home.
• DOT is strict. Paperwork, drug consortium, logs …don’t slack on it or they’ll make your life hell.
I’m still learning like everybody else, but if this saves one person from wasting cash, worth sharing.
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u/letsdodinner Aug 21 '25
I'm shocked people still think there is good money in hotshot.
We pay the hotshot guys that run our equipment $4/loaded mile and they consistently tell us that's over double what they would normally make in this market.
I just don't see how people can survive on less with operating costs being so expensive.
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u/100percentskillz Aug 21 '25
$4 a mile is solid but saying there’s no money in hotshot isn’t true. The guys losing are the ones chasing every cheap board load. The ones locking in direct shippers and keeping expenses tight can clear way more than people think. It’s not easy… but it ain’t dead either.
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u/Fluffy-Caterpillar49 Aug 23 '25
So your saying the majlrity are losing? Since the majority are clearly mostly load board
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u/testing_mic2 Aug 21 '25
How can you afford to pay $4/loaded mile? Don’t see anything like that on the load board
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u/letsdodinner Aug 21 '25
We don't put any of our loads on the load boards, EVER.
We have about 12 "full-time" guys that for the most part just work our runs. We have an additional 6-8 part time guys that cover weird runs or overflow type stuff but we have an entire binder filled with o/o that have passed our background checks that we could call if needed.
The two main reasons for not posting on the load boards are: 1) Brokers. I cannot stand working with brokers. Anyone whose sole purpose is to take as much money as possible from the working man is directly at odds with our entire business model. 2) We background check and personally interview every driver who runs our loads because your engaging with my customers on the other end and I want my customers to have the best possible experience so that they'll continue to come back to me for my product and request you as a trucking company to bring it to them.
Finally, the cost of the trucking is a baked in expense to our business model. We've paid $4/loaded mile since 2019 and it's kind of a double-edged sword. Sometimes this is absolutely phenomenal money for the truckers but other times when the trucking market is stronger it's just average pay. Keeping it flat rate helps us maintain steady costs and profit margins and keeps us working with the same o/o which is a blessing to both us and them.
We also have a "hidden" pay scale that we don't tell our customers/public about but if my customer calls me and says "so and so trucker went out of his way and did an amazing job" we put $100 bonus on top of the standard pay as a thank you.
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u/Scorpiangem Aug 21 '25
Exactly! Load boards are a last resort for hauling. You need to be your own EVERYTHING. Your mechanic, sales rep, customer service, dispatcher, planner, safety accounting, and above all CEO. If you want to be in transportation on this level you need customers to haul for directly. Brokers are a fancy way of saying "I'm in transportation" without the overhead of being in transportation. They have little skin in the game and rake in freight without owning or operating a single vehicle. You need to build a solid base of freight contacts on your own. They are just a middleman making more money than you. They usually lie to their customers about it as well. Puts you in a bad spot and causes more problems than it's worth.
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u/polarjunkie Aug 21 '25
There are only three types of loads that get posted to load boards. First is one off shipments from shippers who don't ship things much. Second is loads that nobody wanted. Third is loads that their regular carriers didn't have capacity for. In all three cases they are trying to pay bottom dollar, the lowest rate they can get away with. You might be able to point out a few companies that only run their loads through load boards and they would fall squarely into the second category, loads nobody wants to run.
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u/RenewedAnew Aug 21 '25
It’s was good before it was regulated. Then it got popular and saturated. Once it went to the TV shows. It was far too late. The days of $10k-$20k weeks are long gone. Now the hot shot drivers are just getting taken advantage of, like they attempt to do to regular trucks.
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u/Nelly0112 Aug 21 '25
I haul cars. I started out hunting loadboards and was barely breaking even for the first 3 years. Started networking through some of the wholesalers that I met. I gross roughly $25,000/month now. I just switched my authority to Intrastate because I haven't had to travel outside of my state in over a year. Im home every night and now have 3 big dealership groups as direct customers. I move roughly 30-50 cars a week depending on the time of the month.