This week's edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast features the semi-annual ATBS owner-operator income benchmarking session delivered in late September by ATBS Vice President Mike Hosted. The audio contains the full presentation, but know that there's a video version accessible via the Youtube version at this link: https://youtu.be/CYxCHAb1RnY

To follow along with the audio here, download a bevy of detailed slides charting cost, revenue and income trends among ATBS's tens of thousands of owner-operator clientele at this link: https://overdriveonline.com/15769723


There’s plenty in the way of trends analysis showing where we've been up to the present moment in the wider freight economy in Hosted's talk. Since the COVD run-up in freight and rates, though, we suspect most owner-operators know where that’s gone. Hosted put it pretty plainly, looking at contract freight volumes and rates at a certain point in the presentation that you’ll hear. 

"Now we've been contractingi in frieght volume for the last two and a half years," he said. It’s been about the longest contraction (though not always happening quickly these last years) that he and many others have ever seen. There’s hope in some ways for a turnaround, given what he called a measure of stability freight-volume-wise seen in some of the numbers lately. Likewise, hopes for a hit to trucking capacity via the Trump administration's foreign-domiciled drver credentialing rule changes -- or another factor. Not that Hosted plays much of the old prognosticating game this time around. 

"I keep hearing middle of next year, second half of next year," he said, but "i've been hearing that for three years now. I'm tired of saying that. I don't know when things are going to get better," fundamentally. Control what you can control, he added, to rein in costs and keep an eye on generating revenue above and beyond them. 

Hosted has made an effort in recent times to emphasize what’s know as contribution margin, a measure of total revenues incoming minus variable costs incurred. That’d be your fuel costs, tires, maintenance generally, anything you spend to keep the equipment moving down the road to generate that revenue. The contribution margin figure can be used monthly or weekly to help determine just when you’ve met your fixed costs for the same period. Fixed costs are incurred at time intervals and are what they’re called in the very name – fixed, predictable. Know your contribution margin as closely as possible and you can, on an ongoing basis, know when you’ve met your fixed costs for a given month, for instance, and all the contribution margin earned thereafter during that period is pure profit. 

"The important thing is when you hit that fixed cost, your profit per mile is through the roof," he said.  

Owner-operators think about costs, revenues and profit in so many ways, but Hosted wagers this approach could help in choosing freight, and motivating an owner-op to strike when the iron is hot, as it were, not in the freight market broadly but in the run of your own day-to-day business. 

ATBS is coproducer of Overdrive's Partners in Business, which you can access via this link: https://overdriveonline.com/pib

The owner-operator business services provider is accessible via its website: https://atbs.com

Taking control: Owner-operator cost, revenue, income and wider trucking trends update with ATBS

The Overdrive Radio podcast is produced by Overdrive magazine, the Voice of the American Trucker for 60-plus years. Host Todd Dills -- with a supporting cast among Overdrive editors, contributors and others -- presents owner-operator business leading lights, interviews with extraordinary independent truckers and small fleet owners, and plenty in the way of trucking business and regulatory news and views. Access an archive of all episodes of Overdrive Radio going back more than a decade via this link: http://overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio