JoeH Posted December 12, 2019 Share Posted December 12, 2019 The easy answer is "as much as possible!" But I'm wondering if any business owners on the site here can tell me what kind of profit should be made per employee working for you. Looking for benchmarks to compare my family's business to as I take over ownership and management of it. Not necessarily looking for dollar amount, ratios would work well. I.E if you pay employees 50k/year and they generate 60k after their truck's maintenance and operating costs, payroll taxes, etc. Then it would be a 20% profit on them after their 50k is taken from the 60. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaptainCrutch Posted December 12, 2019 Share Posted December 12, 2019 (edited) A friend of ours has a trucking company in WV hauling dry bulk cement, if you’re just a driver they pay you about 35% of the load. If you lease one of their trucks you get about 75% of the load and they still take care of some regular maintenance. But they have a deal with a guy who owns a bunch of trucks and lets people operate them so for every load that gets done with one of his truck they pay him 80% of those loads and I think I heard he divides out close to 45% of what he gets to his drivers. He drives himself too... and business is booming btw! Just a few years ago they got to haul cement to build a rocket launch pad after one of the rocket came back down way too early and decimated the last one. My mom’s one of their dispatchers part-time. They have their own mechanics in house so that saves a ton on maintenance costs as well. The reason this isn’t a more popular place to work is that you’re lucky to get two loads a day and each load is typically 3-4 hours there and back, and they don’t work weekends unless they get a call for a load on Thursday or early Friday. The current owner was lucky because the business was built up by her dad so now she just works as a dispatcher and collects that 10-60% of each load, and there’s only 4 other dispatchers that all but one is part time and then 2 full time mechanics so wages aren’t that much from that 10-40%. No payments on trucks and no payments on the land. I hope that puts it into some perspective. Edited December 12, 2019 by CaptainCrutch Quote Who needs a back yard when you could have a Yard?! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timmyb Posted December 12, 2019 Share Posted December 12, 2019 A few old blokes I spoke to gave me a bit of advice. 1/3 on fuel, 1/3 for the driver (me in this instance) and 1/3 for the truck. This is just a guide. Obviously if you swing a few spanners you can help with the cost of maintenance. But the fuel costs and driver costs haven’t been too far from that. Down under we have a few extra costs with employees like superannuation and workers comp which I’m not sure if you have over there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoeH Posted December 12, 2019 Author Share Posted December 12, 2019 My costs are a little different from typical trucking as we run a concrete delivery business. I'm not just operating trucks, I'm buying materials & manufacturing concrete. Currently it's just my dad and I that drive, and we fix our own trucks, but sometime soon I need to hire a driver and grow the business a little. I'm trying to come up with metrics to gauge what is reasonable to target for revenue/profit per employee. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
h67st Posted December 12, 2019 Share Posted December 12, 2019 1 hour ago, Timmyb said: A few old blokes I spoke to gave me a bit of advice. 1/3 on fuel, 1/3 for the driver (me in this instance) and 1/3 for the truck. This is just a guide. Obviously if you swing a few spanners you can help with the cost of maintenance. But the fuel costs and driver costs haven’t been too far from that. Down under we have a few extra costs with employees like superannuation and workers comp which I’m not sure if you have over there. What is superannuation...is that like our Social Security? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timmyb Posted December 12, 2019 Share Posted December 12, 2019 It’s an amount set aside by your employer (9.5% of your wage) and put into a fund which you can’t access until after a certain age, around 65/67. At the moment the elderly can receive a pension, but with superannuation every one will look out for themselves. In theory. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ivanuke Posted December 22, 2019 Share Posted December 22, 2019 (edited) On 12/12/2019 at 6:21 AM, JoeH said: My costs are a little different from typical trucking as we run a concrete delivery business. I'm not just operating trucks, I'm buying materials & manufacturing concrete. Currently it's just my dad and I that drive, and we fix our own trucks, but sometime soon I need to hire a driver and grow the business a little. I'm trying to come up with metrics to gauge what is reasonable to target for revenue/profit per employee. This sounds very similar to our company. Its my dad and I handling the maintenance, I handle all the business side of things as well as improve our maintenance processes, as well as do all the troubleshooting for our trucks. We have 5, currently 3 working and 2 being converted to dumps. We mainly haul dirt locally, After 3 years of trending the numbers and maintenance I can safely say the 1/3 driver 1/3 truck(maintenance and insurance) 1/3 profit is about right. Were located in Houston Tx so YMMV. The going rate is 35% around here for drivers. I plan to keep it there, and improve my process in the back end to increase profits. Edited December 22, 2019 by ivanuke 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoeH Posted December 22, 2019 Author Share Posted December 22, 2019 (edited) 5 hours ago, ivanuke said: This sounds very similar to our company. Its my dad and I handling the maintenance, I handle all the business side of things as well as improve our maintenance processes, as well as do all the troubleshooting for our trucks. We have 5, currently 3 working and 2 being converted to dumps. We mainly haul dirt locally, After 3 years of trending the numbers and maintenance I can safely say the 1/3 driver 1/3 truck(maintenance and insurance) 1/3 profit is about right. Were located in Houston Tx so YMMV. The going rate is 35% around here for drivers. I plan to keep it there, and improve my process in the back end to increase profits. Is fuel thrown in with maintenance? And are you expensing parts for new truck assembly under that 1/3 maintenance or are you appreciating the parts into the value of the trucks? Edited December 22, 2019 by JoeH Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ivanuke Posted December 22, 2019 Share Posted December 22, 2019 (edited) 13 minutes ago, JoeH said: Is fuel thrown in with maintenance? And are you expensing parts for new truck assembly under that 1/3 maintenance or are you appreciating the parts into the value of the trucks? The Fuel and parts are in the maintenance. Majority of the cost of maintenance besides fuel is tires. If we paid independent mechanics for each time our trucks needed something we would make no money! Were getting ready to hire a full time mechanic so we can average that cost into the maintenance of all five trucks. Being frugal with parts goes a long way, in the past 3 years i have averaged 1,500 in parts per year per truck excluding tires. Trucks are 12-18 years old so im always replacing something but its usually not expensive. Edited December 22, 2019 by ivanuke Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
david wild Posted December 23, 2019 Share Posted December 23, 2019 If the drivers were to pay for their #*%$ ups they would end up owing you money. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoeH Posted December 23, 2019 Author Share Posted December 23, 2019 2 hours ago, ivanuke said: The Fuel and parts are in the maintenance. Majority of the cost of maintenance besides fuel is tires. If we paid independent mechanics for each time our trucks needed something we would make no money! Were getting ready to hire a full time mechanic so we can average that cost into the maintenance of all five trucks. Being frugal with parts goes a long way, in the past 3 years i have averaged 1,500 in parts per year per truck excluding tires. Trucks are 12-18 years old so im always replacing something but its usually not expensive. Our trucks are all Mack. Mack. A '79 R686ST, a '95 RD688S, and we bought a 1988 RD690S that were rebuilding a mixer for. I haven't broken the maintenance expense accounts down to individual trucks, but the trucks cost us very little apart from tires. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
janewn2 Posted July 19, 2022 Share Posted July 19, 2022 (edited) My wife owns a business related to beauty services, massage, and more. Everyone employee in her beauty salon should make at least the average American's monthly salary. That is, even if it's a simple manicurist or hairdresser, their salary is at least as high as the average salary of working people in our country. My wife takes pride in the fact that her employees love her. I recently suggested that she start selling beauty-related products as well. She is hesitant but has already found a company called belkins.io to help her with B2B deals. It sounds like a great scheme to me. Are you interested in these questions because you're thinking about what kind of business to start? Edited July 22, 2022 by janewn2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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