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Owner Operators: Here’s What We Actually Want — Transcript · YTtoTranscript

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Owner Operators: Here’s What We Actually Want

Never Stop Trucking · 3,234 words · 16 min read · EN-ORIG

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Below is the complete, readable transcript of Owner Operators: Here’s What We Actually Want by Never Stop Trucking on YouTube. Read the full text, copy any part you need, or generate a transcript for any video with our free tool.

Hi, this is Enis from NeverStopTrucking. We always talk about drivers and dispatchers, what we think they want, and how they uh struggle with uh everyday uh problems. Uh but in the next couple of videos, I'm going to be talking about what they actually want. The first video I'm going to make about that is uh based on some

online research that we did, and uh we have a nice list here of uh what drivers and owner-operators expect, and what are their biggest pain points. And in uh another video after that, I'm going to talk to some drivers and ask them uh what they actually should be changed, and what's going to make their job

easier and more profitable. So, first thing here, I'm going to start uh with this research that we did. Uh the research was done uh uh for Usora Express specifically, for our trucking company, because we wanted to see what the drivers want in order to attract them here and make this better for them. So, uh we analyzed uh 20 large

trucking companies. Uh we analyzed some forum sources such as Reddit and Truckers Report, and some YouTube channels. Uh not my channel, but other trucking YouTube channels, right? Now, uh the top pay competitors uh supposedly uh are Covenant Transport, uh Martin Transport, and uh Landstar. Now, I'm going to talk about this uh rate per mile, and about the sign-on

bonus, and uh about these uh driver complaints, etc. The number one driver complaint is unreliable home time and pay not matching recruiter promises. Uh 95% on the Mother Truckers channel report quitting their companies uh in 2026, which is really bad. Now, the home time is mostly, uh in my opinion, for company drivers. Usually, owner-operators will

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have a say uh when they want to be home and how often. And at least here in Usora Express, we bring them home every time, 100%, when they say they want to be at home, unless they have a problems with their truck or or something is wrong with their load, but that's very rare.

Uh owner-operator net income reality, average owner-operator net income is 64,000 uh per year. Uh top third of owner-operators uh net 156K. Uh 85 to 90% of new owner-operator businesses fail within 2 years. Uh also, uh we have some market opportunities here based on the some numbers for the trucking companies, but we're not going

to talk about that. This is about other things. Uh recruitment gap, drivers want transparent pay, uh reliable home time, uh modern equipment, uh mental health support, and career growth. Most competitors fail on at least two of these. Uh Now, the modern equipment, that's for company drivers, uh reliable home time as well. But everything else here, we can also

include for owner-operators. Transparent pay, most owner-operators that we talk to here uh have a problem with transparency. They get promised one thing from the recruiter, but once they start driving, something else turns out to be the case. So, we can help with that. Mental health support, this is really important. I made few

videos about how the industry is ignoring the mental health, especially with truck drivers cuz you're out there. You're by yourself, and it looks like everything right now is against the driver, everything on the road. So, you got to be able to deal with that, and we're already talking here about how how we can help drivers with

that, and you know, stay sane with these regulations, with the pay, with fuel prices, with the way uh shippers and brokers treat drivers, right? Okay, let's go further down here. As far as this proposed insurance minimum increase to 5 million, I don't think that's going to happen. Maybe they might decrease it a little bit, but not to 5

million. That would be That would I mean, like everyone would run out of business if that was the case. So, that's probably not going to happen. Sign-on bonuses are nice until they're not. Uh that's That's really Sometimes it can come back at you if your company offering those, or if you are a driver trying to get those.

Now, in my opinion, if a trucking company has to offer a sign-on bonus, and that's their biggest selling point, then there is something wrong with their pay structure. If they're trying to attract people solely based on the uh sign-on bonus because if if you have nothing else to offer, if you don't have any if you if you had

attractive lanes, if you had something else to offer that that will attract drivers, you would not have a problem uh with recruiting and and keeping those drivers. Uh that's another thing. Uh sign-on bonus uh is structured that way, so it keeps the driver in the company for certain period of time. No company like like this one here, they

say up to uh 4,000. Okay, so yeah, that's up to. Only in a perfect scenario, you might get those 4,000 and it will always be spread apart um for a few months or or or a year. A lot of times it's a year. So, they want you to stay there for for a year

and you're going to get it maybe monthly or quarterly and that's how they're going to pay you. No company is going to pay you $4,000 uh right away or or in like 2 3 months. That's not going to happen. They don't want to lose the money and and they know that um the retention is really bad, you

know, with drivers and they know that this driver might go away, you know, once they get their sign-on bonus, they're just going to get it, uh go to another company that offers the sign-on bonus. So, a lot of companies are just very uh uh strict and and careful with uh with the way they structure them. And then

also, if you are a driver, uh if you are just getting there for the sign-on bonus, you can expect that other things are not going to be that great. So, what would you rather have? An unstable company with unstable rates, with unpredictive future at that company, and a one-time or or or a

sign-on bonus that's spread out through, you know, you have to stay there for year to get that sign-on bonus and deal with all those other problems, or would you want a good company with with good pay, with with good people right away, so you can stay there for long time, right? And then you know who you deal with, and you

don't even you're not even thinking about switching to to someone just because they offer a sign-on bonus, right? So, that's what I have to say about that. And then we have some other companies see that we analyzed as well. And as as in what they offer. And it's really nice to to see what other

companies are offering and how much they're paying, and then you can always think like with your company how you can change, how how you can match that, how can you improve your offer and and be better, so the drivers are staying with you for a long time. Okay. So, we have some notable sign-on bonuses and

competitive benefits right here. Schneider, they do have an available sign-on bonus, but it's not specified publicly. CRST, they say 4,000. Heartland Express, it does not say anything about that, but they have some kind of green zone bonus like 5 cents per mile, newer equipment fleet, benefits, etc. And then Covenant, supposedly they have

annual equity bonus of $10,000. So, that's I don't know about that. Okay. Okay. And then we have some key observations here. Ryder stands out with the employee benefits. That's mostly for company drivers. Prime, I don't know if Prime can be considered a really a good company, but they have some kind of incentives for

independent contractors. And Landstar is totally different. They have a 100% fuel surcharge pass-through. That I do know, so they don't take a percentage of that on that, but they work with a lot of shady agents. And for Landstar, it's a totally totally different game. Now, so what do drivers complain about? Top driver complaints. Low net income

after expenses for owner-operators. This is a big one. I do settlements here in US Xpress, and I can see where the drivers spend their money and how much they're spending, and then I try to talk to owner-operators if I see that their expenses are big, and I always want to give them a suggestion. For example, for

the fuel, I always say use as much as you can, you know, the apps that we have for the for the fuel discounts. You you can get right now with Pilot and Flying J, you can get dollar per gallon for a fuel discount. And you got to utilize that. If you get two to $300

discounts a week, that's a lot of money per year. And we also talk to them how to save money on fuel, like, you know, slowing down, not idling, you know, checking your equipment regularly, just cuz cuz the fuel is one of the rare things, you know, where you cannot control the price of it, but you can try to control

as much as you can the the spending, the fuel usage for the truck. You can try to control that, especially when slowing down. Um another thing is like if you if you're renting a trailer from us, I always encourage people buy a trailer. It's better for you to buy. It doesn't have to be a brand new trailer, but even

even if you get a brand new trailer right now, you're going to be spending less money on on a payment if you get a loan for a brand new trailer as opposed to renting, and it's your trailer. It's an investment because trailer is an investment. It it will always hold value, right? So, get your own trailer

or or maybe if you if you have a a better place or cheaper place to rent, go ahead and rent over there. Uh physical insurance {slash} bobtail insurance um you can always get bobtail insurance cheaper if you go don't go through us, through our account. Uh if you if you go talk to a agent and get physical bobtail

insurance in your own name just for yourself, usually that will be a cheaper rate for you. But you got to know what you need and what you don't need. A lot of these big uh brokerages for insurance, they will try to upsell you a lot of stuff for the physical insurance that you actually don't need.

So, so uh your uh insurance should be around 5% of the value of your truck or trailer per year if you find a decent agent and if you have a decent credit score and driving uh history. Uh if you go through a company, it's going to be way more than that. So, you can save money uh that

way. But now, what I see unfortunately is that since the fuel rates have been up, it's it's it's a problem when when your your fuel is instead of 1,000 to 1,500 a week, it's over 2,000 a week. Now that's a problem. That will eat a lot of your gross income and that that

ratio between profit and the gross income will be worse because right now you're adding at least $500 for the fuel to to your expenses, right? So then now it looks worse when you compare those two. Another driver complaint is a recruiter misrepresentation of job conditions and we don't do that. We always tell you the

truth what the markets are. You're going to make you're you're going to make better what the market rates are, but you can't expect to make like twice as much or you know that it's it's not going to it's not going to work, like we got to be realistic. Missed or unreliable home time. Like I said, I

can see that for company drivers. Even when I had company trucks, I never did it. You know, you can talk to any company driver that was here. I would bring them home even if it's empty and I will pay them for those miles. Like cuz we would always with company drivers like let's

say they have to come back to Michigan, we would slowly start getting them towards Michigan that week whenever they need to be home so they end up you know like Indiana or higher close to Michigan and then that day we'll just find him something short to come here and deliver. If I can't do that, I will bring them

home empty. It's like 2-300 miles, it doesn't matter and I will pay them for those miles. That's what I did. For owner operators, you know, there is there should not be a problem bringing them home in the same way or if they have a schedule, if they want to be home every weekend,

you know, they always do shorter loads. They do like 5-600 mi a day and we can just, you know, bring them around and then again slowly on on Wednesday, Thursday start bringing them towards home and that's that's not a problem. That's 100% doable. Another thing that we have here is declining freight rates

versus rising core costs that we cannot control. That's something, you know, that has to do with the economy. Lack of respect from dispatch management. Of course, we always I mean, we are all humans. People get angry, but you can't uh like the energy is always matched. Like if if if a driver is mad,

then the dispatcher if the dispatcher gets mad, then it's going to make it worse, right? You got to try to calm down the situation. Of course, you can't, you know, if someone is really, you know, bad, you can't uh run you know, let them run all all over you, but you always have to try to

de-escalate uh this situation no matter if you're a truck driver or dispatcher. Um you you got to be uh careful in how you deal with each other. Um the um self-driving vehicles, I don't think that's going to happen. So, we have nothing to fear about that. Uh industry overcapacity and freight recession concerns, um another thing that we have

no control over. Uh what drivers want. They want transparent uh fair pay. And um now a lot of these numbers are for company drivers or for owner operators, depends like what you're doing. But transparent and fair pay, we are always working on that and trying to improve it. Reliable, predictable home time, same thing. Respect and professional

treatment, of course. Modern well-maintained equipment for company drivers. Company drivers also want benefits. They want career growth and stability and honest communication from company. Emerging concerns, same thing self-driving vehicles, tariff driven freight volume decline. Carrier financial instability, this is a big one. If they if someone notices that the carrier is is in financial trouble,

they the drivers will will leave, right? They're not going to like if they have one missed paycheck or something is going on like the fuel cards are not working, then you know, they're going to sense that, they're going to see it and then they're going to leave because um a lot of trucking companies are going

down and you got to watch for those signs. FMCSA changes affecting new carriers, that's another big concern. And rising insurance costs for owner operators. And that's one thing we can always do together is always be safe on the road. Don't speed, don't do anything stupid. Make sure your truck is well equipped, well maintained and make sure that your

logbooks are in order. Don't If a dispatcher or safety manager is telling you or asking you to do something, you know, like no matter what it is, personal conveyance, if your ELD is not plugged in correctly, something, you know, you got to you got to listen to them and you got to do it

even if you're owner operator, especially company driver, but even if you're owner operator, it's same same rules for everyone. The ELDs have to be in order, hours of service have to be in order, your truck has to be in order, and you got to stay legal on the road, drive legally, so that way everyone in a

that carrier is avoiding higher insurance rates, try to avoid accidents, stuff like that. So that way the the insurance stays where it is or hopefully it goes down when the next renewal is coming up, but at least it stays the same, right? You can really see the the insurance rates going down, but as long as we can keep

them steady and and here we kept them steady for 12 years, right? For 12 years we kept the the same rate, so that's good. So everyone can can participate in that. We also have some Reddit discussion highlights and this is really nice. This will tell you about, you know, what people are posting

and the top posts and the top answers. We can kind of look at that and then figure out how to make drivers feel better and and be better here in US Xpress, of course. Now top form complaints, a pay not matching recruiter promises 30 to 90-day payment delays for independent owner operators, that's crazy. Rising operating costs,

poor equipment, dispatcher mistreatment and lack of support. Again, we always try to be different with that as well as other stuff. In-cab camera policies, driving driver exits and then uh 85 to 90% of new owner operators businesses failure rate. What do drivers seek in carrier? They want weekly direct settlements, we have that here.

Transparent pay calculation, same same thing here. Well meeting modern equipment right now we don't have any company trucks, responsive dispatch and management. We do do we do that. Non-force same thing fuel discount. Yes, lease purchase. We don't do lease purchase because I think it's bad for you as a driver and for you

as a company. So for me that's a big no-no. Okay, what are the dominant topics this week on YouTube? Driver dissatisfaction and mass company exits, FMCSA regulatory enforcement, chameleon carrier CDL fraud, English proficiency, fuel price surge, freight market recovery signals, self-driving trucks, independent contractor classification regulatory changes and insurance cost increases for carriers, key industry

warnings and opportunities highlighted. Freight market is showing recovery signals, flatbed and hotshot rates showing strong growth, carrier population stabilizing, and technology adoption. Well, this is what the internet is showing. And then another time we're going to talk about what drivers want. Thanks for watching. Thank you for the support. U Sura Express right here. If you're an

owner-operator, check out our website usuraexpress.com. Let us call you and talk to you about leasing your trucks to us. See you guys later.