How much can you make car hauling?

How much money can be made from car hauling?

At Ninja Dispatch we take pride in our dispatch service for car hauling. We’re often asked, “how much money can you make by hauling cars?” The answer depends on several factors, but in general we gross between $5,000 – $12,000 per week. 

Car hauling is a lucrative business when you work with Ninja Dispatch.
A 10 car hauler like the one pictured here can gross upwards of $10,000 in a single week!

In this article you’re going to get an overall breakdown of how much money can be made. We’re going to give you a realistic outlook so that you can better understand this type of business.

We’re going to break down how much money you can earn by three criteria. 

  • Where are you located? 
  • How many cars can you haul?
  • How long do you plan to have the truck on the road?

Let’s start with the importance of your business location. 

Why does your business location matter in car hauling? 

As dispatchers, we’ve worked with clients from all over the world. We’ve noticed the pricing differences between geographical regions.

If you are not located next to a big city, you may have a hard time finding outbound loads. By not having access to nearby dealerships and auctions where can you get your cars? 

As a professional dispatching service we recommend to anybody looking to get into the business to make sure that their business is located in a larger city. This is important because not only does it affect how you start the week, but also the end.

Backhaul Matters

In car hauling and dispatching in general, you need to have a good backhaul to make sure that your RPM (rate per mile) stays high. You won’t get by just by having a kick-ass load leaving your base, you need that great load coming back home, to keep your average high.

What can you do if you aren’t located in a large city? One option that you can look into is finding a reliable driver that lives closer to a big city. You can let the driver take home the truck and trailer at the end of the week. This way you can have a more profitable operation. We work with many companies that are located in one place, however the driver and truck/trailer are located somewhere else. 

What Car Hauling Trailer? 

The next factor we’re going to go over is how your trailer and the amount of vehicles you can haul will determine how much money you can make. 

There are two types of trailers that you can use for hauling cars. Open trailers and enclosed trailers. This article is about open trailers. They are the most used trailers on the road. If you’d like to know how much money can be made with an enclosed trailer, please drop a comment and we’ll write up an article. 

Open Trailers

Did you know that open trailers are the most common ones used by new owner operators. If you’re starting out, we’d highly recommend an open. It’s easier to find vehicles that can fit, since you don’t have the restriction on dimensions as you do with an enclosed trailer. It’s also easier to load and unload vehicles. 

Open trailers start at 1 vehicle and can go up to 10-11 car trailers. 

Obviously, it makes sense that the more vehicles you can haul the more money you will make for your overall gross. For example let’s say your business is located in Atlanta, Georgia and you’re taking a car to the New Jersey area. A realistic rate for this run could range from $500 – $1,000, depending on the time of year and season. 

If you can take only 2 cars that pay $700, you’re looking at an overall gross of $1,400 on a total of 850 miles. Your RPM is $1.67 per mile. 

If you add just one more vehicle, that would bring your overall gross to $2,100. Your RPM is now $2.47 per mile. 

In the world of trucking that difference between $1.67 and $2.47 per mile can make or break a company. It’s imperative that you understand this before getting into the business of car hauling. 

Now apply this same formula to a truck that can carry 10 vehicles. That’s a total of $6,500 for the trip to New Jersey. The 10 car trailer will have an RPM of $7.64 per mile. 

This is what you need to take into consideration when you compare what you need to run a 3 car operation with a 10 car hauler. Therefore, the more cars you can haul, the more money you can make.

How long will your truck stay on the road? 

Next, we’ll go over the importance of the amount of time your truck is going over the road. 

When a driver stays on the road for at least a week, this means you can take loads going longer distances. This is imperative. The longer the distance your truck can go, the higher your overall gross will be. 

This principle is exactly the same as that of the amount of cars your trailer can haul. The more cars you can haul + the more days your truck stays on the road, the more money you will make.

As a beginner company in the world of car hauling, the best idea is to go over the road from Monday to Friday. This is a minimum requirement. It will be very hard to find yourself in profit, not staying on the road for this period of time. 

If you want to drive locally from Monday till Friday, you’ll be working a lot for less money than you’d make going OTR for the same amount of time. In order for you to make the same money local, you’ll need to pick and drop 2 to 3 times the amount of vehicles as you would for just driving OTR. 

The best dispatching service!

As you can see, at Ninja Dispatch, we know what we’re talking about when it comes to the business of car hauling and dispatch. If you’re in need of a professional car hauler to help your business, please reach out to us via email at office@ninjadispatch.com or call us at 1-888-853-4778!

Thanks and we hope this article helped you gain an understanding of how to make money car hauling. 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *