I was talking with a friend of mine who showed an interest in dump trucking and thought I'd ask a few questions here to help him out.

MDKW, maybe you could shed some light on this, Gray and Son, (you probably heard of them), pays 61.00 per hour to run asphalt. Other materials are cheaper. Can you or anyone expand on this as to why it's higher for asphalt? Is it harder on the bed? 61.00 an hour seems cheap to me anyway to run a truck on but I'm not sure what it takes to run a dump, ie. ins, maintenance, fuel, tires. Perhaps you guys can break down some costs of running a dump business.

What are advantages/disadvantages to signing on with an outfit such as Gray and Son or whoever or running out of the quarry's.

Are there local brokers for dump truck work? Are you guys able to stay busy with the housing market in the dumps right now?

Thanks guys, more questions to follow I'm sure :lol:

 

Asphalt is very profitable. you usually sit more than you run. I run it sometimes when we get real busy, you may work the truck 8 hours and only run 100 miles or less. most owner ops love asphalt. its no harder on the truck, you just have to keep the bed sprayed down with dot approved release agent to keep the asphalt from sticking.. its not legal to use diesel for this purpose so of course nobody does it

 

Oh of coarse not :wink:

 

I was fueling up the other day and these two BBR's in their dumps pulled up and fueled and then filled up a 5 gallon gas tank with diesel and I was wondering what that was for...

 

they put the "dot approved release agent" in a pump up sprayer and spray the bed down. they would never use diesel fuel since its not allowed, the fuel in the can was probably for their volkswagon rabbit, yea, thats it.

 

maybe it was for their diesel powered motorcycle

 

Grey and son...run don't walk away. They have way too many of their own trucks and beat the heck outta em. And at $61 an hour I would not even start my truck.

Asphalt is great and a bulk of my business. It can dent up your gate if the operator is not paying attention. You can go thru brakes a bit faster if you are getting pushed by the paver(you have to ride your brake to avoid getting pushed out of the hopper).

Quarry work can be ok. Sure you will make 3k a week but you will be spending 1k in fuel. For comparison I made a bit over 3k last week on $260 in fuel. Most of the quarries over here on the western side of the state are not controlled by any single company but rather by the quarry itself. Drop me a PM and I can help your friend find a quarry in whatever part of the state he wants to run.

At least in Maryland dumps can run 6 days a week, year round, rain or shine. You should be able to make about 3k and plan on about $800-$1000 in fuel on average. Just try not to have all your eggs in one basket. I do not know of more than one or two brokers in MD for dump work. Most of it is word of mouth. But if your friend at least gets his foot in the door, he can make contacts rather quickly.

I use my diesel powered motorcycle so much I had a pump and hose reel installed in my tool box so I could fuel it up easy :lol:

 

I owned a few dump trucks a few years back (5 years). This was long before I ever had a CDL. I just bought the trucks and put drivers in them to see what the market was like here. The "rock trucks" as we call them were pretty much a break even deal by the time I paid the driver. The asphalt truck had a good profit margin to it. Most of the work here is just paid by the ton...of course we don't have the traffic to deal with that you guys may have. The only problem I had with the asphalt was just over supply of trucks in this area and very seasonal. In other words, we couldn't keep the damn thing out of the driveway! It made good money when it was working though.

As for the release agents. I think some work better than others and I think their effectiveness differs between the asphalt specs too. As far as I know, nothing beats the tried and true method of getting out of sight of the inspectors and throwing the diesel to it. There are many variations of this method. :wink:

Your buddy should probably do a little research on what size truck works the best. MKW can probably give you a good answer. I know that here in AR, the tri-axles seem to prevail. Just 20 miles up the road, you'll see a lot of tandem axle trucks in MO. As I understand it the weight laws have a enough difference in them that they can run a lightweight tandem axle truck and haul almost as much as they can with a tri-axle up there. In some states, you'll see a lot of quad-axle trucks and even trailers hauling asphalt. I don't completely understand it all, just saying it's something to check into before you start building a truck.

Arky

 

Would you, by any chance, have any idea about the prospects of this line of trucking in the western PA ( Pittsburgh ) area ? Is it seasonal ? Who are the big companies / contractors / brokers in this area, and how much do they pay ? Thanks in advance.

 

Don't really know much about that part of the world north of the mason dixon line. Perhaps Mackman will weigh in, he is from up in those parts.