What is your time worth? Re-engage with owner-operator business fundamentals to know the answer

"Time is money," as the old saying goes, and as such "time management is money management." That was how the great Red Eye Radio host Eric Harley put it near the beginning of the final edition of the Partners in Business short podcasts on Overdrive Radio, which are talks excerpted from a long roundtable at the Mid-America Trucking Show this year.

Time, not just distance, should be a key factor in your analysis of any load to truly assess profit potential. Overdrive released a bit of a tool to help in that process -- it's a custom spreadsheet that was made available for download around the time of MATS and the big update to this year's Partners in Business owner-operator handbook. The tool offers a clear way to see how added time within any load's schedule dilutes revenue and adds costs per mile as fixed costs continue to mount with any delay. It enables you to calculate that impact more or less at a glance, with the input of just a few of your own numbers.

The Overdrive/ATBS Partners in Business owner-operator business education program is sponsored by Rush Truck Centers, the premier solutions provider to the commercial vehicle industry with 150-plus full-service dealership locations in the United States and Canada. The new PIB book is now available for download.Longtime Overdrive contributor Gary Buchs built the spreadsheet in his efforts coaching individual owner-operators through business decisions large and small. In this episode, you'll hear Buchs, but also moderator Eric Harley setting up the discussion of time management. He's followed by Overdrive editor Todd Dills, then ATBS Vice President Mike Hosted expanding on the topic with some insight into market timing.

The speakers all stress, too, the value of re-engagement with owner-operator business fundamentals possible through the PIB program both generally and specifically. As noted, there's a reason pro sports players have a coach -- and make a routine of running through drills, plays and more over and over to perfect their own fundamentals. Here’s hope the talk, the last of four special Partners in Business shorts (catch them all below), and broader program both give you plenty to practice, plenty to chew on as you assess business prospects and performance the remainder of the year:

As mentioned in the talk, Matthew Mickenberg's story of valuable timing: he saved $50K on the price of a new truck purchase on account of it. 

Find more advice on assessing costs and revenue, among a myriad of other owner-operator business topics, in the brand-new 2024 edition of the Overdrive/ATBS coproduction of the "Partners in Business" book. Download it here. 

Access more shorts in this series via the playlist below featuring both 2023 and 2024 episodes: