thinking about buying own truck and trailer and pulling hopper bottom is it a good or stupid idea

 

do you have a solid business plan??

if you don't than it is a bad decision....

 

Before buying the equipment, make sure you check out the business needs. Being in MO, you should be pretty decently situated for working a hopper bottom.

 

I would recommend that you put this in the Owner Operator forum, where more people would be able to look at it. Or most likely have more advance. But you came to the right place, someone is bound to give you a good answer wish you the best of luck.

 

Cameron, how much driving experience do you have? Have you pulled hopper bottoms before? Have you checked with shippers or brokers to see to see if there is sufficient year around business and how much they are paying? Do you plan on getting your authority or lease to a carrier? Do you have plenty of money set aside to run your business until you get your money coming in? Before any of us can advise you on what you should do, we need to know more about you and your situation.

 

That aint no lie!
Along with what GMAN said, in this day..you better make sure that you have some money set aside. Grain haulers can make money, but you are gonna have to be fully loaded, if you want to pull a hopper bottom.
Some grain haulers follow the harvest. A lot of smaller custom harvesters hire grain haulers. They make pretty good money, hauling grain from the field to the elevator. Short runs, you dont use a lot of fuel, and you haul a lot of loads every day. Especially, wet corn. (irrigated) A lot of guys haul grain from the smaller grain elevators that dont have rail cars, to the bigger elevators that do have rail cars.
Once the harvest is over, it can be tough, finding loads in the off-season.
You can run year around, but you want to be where the grain is. For an example, there are guys around here, hauling cotton seed, and Milo. One problem with pulling a hopper bottom, there are a lot of dead head miles. That is something that you have to look into. How much will you be getting per bushel, and how many miles will you have to dead head to get another load.
The money that you can make per load looks good on paper, but you have to look into how many miles that you will run empty, and how many loads you will be able to haul.