“I wanted to be my own boss,” says Slaughter, who considered hauling cars, “but I was too cautious to go out and buy a large rig and go into a lot of debt.” He bought a 2005 Dodge 3500 dually for $25,000 and found a new $7,000 Kaufman three-car wedge trailer, and he was in business.
#Hot shot truck and trailers for sale driver#
A self-described cautious type, Slaughter drove a gas tanker as a company driver for 12 years. While Slaughter says he’s doing better than the approximately 55-cents-a-mile hotshot income today, he views the hotshot route as having been ideal for him getting started.
He brought in $1.35 a mile in revenue running hotshot, including deadhead, he says. He transitioned earlier this year from an open car-hauling trailer to a 53-ft. Slaughter guesses he ran his own 20 at about 80 cents per mile, a good deal lower than his $1.20/mile average thereafter in a car-hauling Class 8 (minus any tractor payment - Slaughter’s currently part of Freightliner’s Team Run Smart group of operators).
Joey Slaughter operated primarily as a car hauler when he started Blue Ridge Transport in 2010 after years as a Class 8 long-haul company driver. Fon Du Lac, Wis.-based hotshot owner-operator Greg Cutler says he can run his gas-fueled 2010 Dodge Ram 2500 at 85 cents per mile, much less than what the average Class 8 operator will spend. The advantage for all hotshot customers is avoiding service downtime while minimizing costs. The niche survives to this day and has benefited from the growth in U.S. Most agree the hotshot term originated in the Texas oilfields, where decades ago pickups delivered quickly-needed parts to offroad drilling and pumping operations. Jeff Ward of the Atlanta area says the local and regional loads he hauls with his one-truck Brady’s Hotshot Hauling are “true hotshot freight.” That freight – often power company equipment to keep the electrical grid running – is needed as soon as possible to avoid a shutdown. Hotshot freight is hauled for a single customer and needed in expedited fashion. auto manufacturers’ three-quarter- to one-and-a-half-ton cab-and-chassis rigs or pickups outfitted for weight-distributing gooseneck- or fifth-wheel-type connections to a trailer. The truck often will be one of the big three U.S. In the former sense, it’s normally a Class 3-5 truck used in combination with a variety of trailers to run for-hire freight, whether for a single customer or less-than-truckload, though there are exceptions (check out this “hotshot on steroids,” for instance). In trucking, the term hotshot commonly refers to either the truck or the freight – often both. In addition to running cars with the three-car wedge trailer pictured, owner-operator Joey Slaughter also moved RVs for dealers when he started out his independent business as a hotshot. For more current hotshot trucking pros and cons, read Overdrive ' s July 2020 feature on the allure and some drawbacks of hotshot trucking for owner-operators.