Originally Posted by
Rawz
Mainfreight's truck drivers choose to be contractors so they can own their truck. Its painted in Mainfreight livery sure, but the truck is owned by the driver.
The main benefit of contracting and owning your own truck is after a few cycles the truck is nearly debt free. And when you have a long haul tractor + trailer unit you can be talking around $600k in a freehold asset.. most truck drivers prefer this vs on wages with holiday pay, sick pay etc. Companies like MFT like it as they dont have to for example 1000 x $600k truck/trailers on the balance sheet.... repairs and maintenance on P&L blah blah
You can do okay in NZ driving trucks. You can pay yourself up to $100k a year in a salary and work on that freehold truck cycle. It's not bad. You dont need an expensive education. But must love driving. I certainly couldn't do it lol. But if i was to i would chose to be a contractor rather than drive on wages.
Edit: a cycle typically being 5 years. I.e. 100% finance a truck over years 0-5. Trade in truck and fund 80% of next truck years 6-10, trade in and fund 50% year 10-15 etc etc