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$250K/Month Renting Out Things He Doesn't Own - Ep. #340

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$250K/Month Renting Out Things He Doesn't Own - Ep. #340

Eli started a semi-trailer rental business in November 2019 after working as a truck dispatcher in Connecticut. When his uncle, a truck driver with poor credit, asked to rent a trailer, Eli found a large leasing company willing to lease him a 53-foot trailer for about $350 per month with no deposit and no credit check. He rented it to his uncle for roughly $750 per month, and after buying a $4,000 annual insurance policy, he was in business. He realized he could replicate the model and began posting trailers on Facebook Marketplace with boosted posts, charging $180 per week and taking deposits. The business grew quickly, reaching about 100 trailers and $75,000 per month by the end of 2020, and eventually 300 trailers generating over $250,000 per month with net profit of $40,000 to $50,000. He ran everything from his phone while traveling in Colombia, relying on two bilingual virtual assistants from Upwork and a payment processor called Pay Simple. Facebook ads costing about $5,000 per month brought in roughly 25 new clients monthly. Major challenges included missing trailers, insurance claim complexity, and the need for GPS tracking and stronger contracts. Eli believes the model remains viable today, especially with AI tools.

Transcription

6090 Words, 31553 Characters

English
Speaker 1250k a month? 250k a month, yeah.
Speaker 2Wow. Just from Facebook Marketplace posts?
Speaker 1Yeah, just from Facebook Marketplace posts. I've been traveling to Colombia for years now because I could do everything from my phone. It's straightforward stuff. Any AI really can take you 90% of the way
Speaker 2there. How much money did it take to start this business in total?
Speaker 1I just had to pay for my
Speaker 2insurance. By the end of this episode, if someone has no experience in the industry, will they be able to have enough knowledge to where they could start this business themselves?
Speaker 1Oh yeah, definitely. I had no knowledge when I was starting this business. I had no idea.
Speaker 2You know those big semi-trucks driving down the highway? Well, someone probably leases those trailers to them, and today that someone was Eli. In 2019, he was a real estate agent in Connecticut who'd started matching truckers with loads for about 80 bucks a pop. Then one day, his uncle asked if he could rent a trailer for a semi, and Eli didn't know anything about this business, so he found a company to lease him a 50-year-old trailer. He was a real estate agent, and he was a real estate semi-trailer from a big company for about 350 bucks a month, and then he rented it to his uncle for about 750 bucks a month. After getting an insurance policy, he was in business, and that's the whole startup cost. Six years later, he had 300 trailers and was profiting over $50,000 a month with two virtual employees that he'd never met in person, and he ran this whole business from his phone in Columbia. Please enjoy. Okay, well, why don't we start by you just telling me who you are and what you do?
Speaker 1Cool. My name is Eli. I run a trucking company. Basically, I rent trailers to truckers. I got started in November 2019. I got into trucking. I started dispatching truckers. Basically, I was looking for loads for these truckers, and a lot of them were like, we also need equipment. I found a supplier. I found someone to give me inventory, which meant I found someone to give me trailers. They would give me flatbeds, and they would give me drive-ins, and so I started off with a couple for me and for I had a driver at that time, and then my uncle was like, oh, you know, I don't have really good credit. Are you able to rent me a trailer? I was like, yeah, I can rent you a trailer, and from there, I was like, wow, well, if I can do this with my uncle, I can do this with a whole bunch of other people, too, and so I started off with one trailer. I was in November 2019. I probably started making a profit probably by May or June 2020.
Speaker 2Okay, so let's back up. In 2019, you were like dispatching trucks. Is that right? Like, you were trying to make loads, like match loads. Is that right?
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah. I was matching loads to truckers, so I had a trucker who was available in a certain area. It was a pretty good gig, too. I mean, everything was virtual. I always try to be virtual in everything that I do, so yeah, it was pretty good. It was virtual, too. You know, I would find a trucker who would be looking for work, and they would tell me, look, I'm available this day. I'm available this time, and then I would match them with loads. There's load boards that you can get onto, and you would try to, you know, give them loads, you know, match them loads.
Speaker 2Was there any licensing you needed to start matching loads to truckers, or you just find these boards, and you just start calling?
Speaker 1No, yeah. You don't need a license to dispatch. You do need a license to broker. Loads, which means it's on the other side. You're representing the shipper, and you're finding them the driver. On dispatching, you have the driver, and you're finding them the load.
Speaker 2And anyone can just do that. What are some websites where you would go to find loads?
Speaker 1D-A-T, Loadboard. There's a bunch of load boards. They're called load boards. Okay. And, you know, people post, shippers post their loads, and sometimes they post it with the rate that they're willing to give you per mile. They're required, what kind of load it is. And, you know, you just call them, tell them, look, you know, I have this driver. You know, they check the driver's MC number. And then, you know, they tell you that if he's good to go or not. And then they tell you the rate and stuff like that.
Speaker 2How long were you doing this before your uncle asked about renting a trailer?
Speaker 1I was doing it only for like, like six months.
Speaker 2Okay. And were you finding success?
Speaker 1With the, I mean, yeah, with the dispatching, it's kind of like you're, you're, you're, you're taking a very small margin per load, you know, because the margins are already thin. So it's like, yeah, I wasn't making, I wasn't making too much money. You know what I mean?
Speaker 2What's an example of a load and the margin you would make from it? Like an average load.
Speaker 1Oh, this was like seven years ago. Let me see. It was like maybe a load from Connecticut to upstate New York. And these rates are much different now because remember diesel is much higher now, you know, so diesel goes into these rates too. Tolls goes into these rates. So I'm going to take a load from Connecticut to New York, paying maybe like $800. And each load, you would think that you're going to be taking at least a margin of 10%. So that's, that's kind of what, where you're at with it.
Speaker 2Okay. So your uncle asked, Hey, I, he was already a truck driver or he wanted to be a truck driver. He was already a truck driver. Okay. And he wanted, he needed a trailer and you would say trailer. We're talking like the 42 foot 18 wheeler semi trailers.
Speaker 1We're talking about 53, 53 foot trailers. So the trailers connect to the truck. They're not part of the truck. They connect to the truck. So they're, they have eight, eight wheels. Let me see. Yeah. Eight, two, two on each, on each side of four on each side. So yeah, eight, eight wheels. I think a big part of this type of business is how you're billing people. So, and how you're being billed, which I think is really important for a lot of types of business. You know, you can apply this to a lot of types of businesses. For example, I'm getting billed for the first piece of equipment, net 30. So I get it this month and then I pay for it at the end of next month. Right. And so I start billing it right away though. I don't bill net 30. I start billing right away and I take a deposit. So I would take a deposit and I would bill weekly, which was key because I would start cash flowing right away. Yeah. Yeah. And so. So I found these people that were able to give me the trailers and you know, they didn't charge me a deposit. They charged me net 30. They didn't charge me per mile fee for, for any mechanical stuff, like repair stuff, because some companies they charge you and they charge you by how many miles you use the trailer. They charge you like a mileage fee, like, I don't know, like 20 cents per mile or something like that. And then they add it to the, to the final fee. And so to the end of the month, I'm like, okay, I'm going to pay you back. I'm going to pay you back. And so, you know, that's, that's, that's something that was really critical.
Speaker 2Okay. So what was the first thing you did when your uncle asked that question?
Speaker 1So the first thing I did was, was create contracts, you know, to protect myself and protect, you know, the business, protect the trailer, you know, any, you know, it was kind of like a boilerplate sort of thing while, while you have the trailer in your possession, it's, it's your responsibility. Don't use this trailer for anything illegal, you know? And from there, I, I, it was the first contract. Wasn't really like airtight. I had revised the contract over the years based on situations that would happen to me, you know, you know, like I needed an emergency contact after a while. So then I got my insurance, you know, that was kind of the biggest expense for this type of business. I got a trucker policy for the trailer, which was really like a ghost policy because really when an accident happens, your trucker policy is going to be going to be trailer is the one whichever trailer that's connected at the time of an accident is the one that's going to be getting the claim so you know i had to get that that policy but really no trailer was ever going to be connected to one of my trucks at the time of an accident so i always had to get a policy from the people that were renting and i had to be additional insured sorry
Speaker 2why wouldn't your trailer ever be attached i don't
Speaker 1get it my truck my truck would never be a track attached because i'm renting it my i'm renting it to i didn't have any trucks and i'm renting it to people that have trucks so it went to the
Speaker 2at the time of the accident the claim went to the truck the owner of the truck not the owner of the trailer but you still needed something just to like be extra safe yeah
Speaker 1yeah definitely you always want
Speaker 2to be safe what did that policy cost
Speaker 1that policy cost like four thousand policy cost a year a year yeah for one trailer in the big yeah in the beginning yep afterwards i was probably paying on a month on a on a yearly basis like 13 000 after a couple years so did you have
Speaker 2to get a separate four thousand dollar policy for every trailer or that four thousand dollar one was like an umbrella policy for your company and all the trailers under it until they they told you hey you got to up your policy because you got too many trailers now yeah that's exactly what it was
Speaker 1that's exactly what it was
Speaker 2now where did did you already own a trailer to rent to your uncle when he asked or did you have to go find
Speaker 1one no these were all subleased so i would lease it and then i would sublease it to
Speaker 2him okay so how does how does that look where do you find a trailer to sublease and what does that
Speaker 1cost so i just went on the internet i googled places that were around me at that time like in connecticut you know there was a bunch of companies and i found a company that really you know the cost was really good which was 350 dollars per month so they were charging me 350 per month it was you know it would be net 30 which means that i could take a deposit i could start billing and then i would pay at the end at
Speaker 2the end so your cash flow positive from day one
Speaker 1one so i would i would be cash flow positive from day one which i think is is something that can be applied to a lot of businesses yeah if you you know
Speaker 2are able to so they're charging you 350 a month and do you have to pay a deposit to the sub to the subleasing company no i don't have to pay deposit okay so for 350 bucks you've got a trailer and do you need good credit to get that like your
Speaker 1uncle didn't have i mean i didn't have spectacular credit i had like 650 at that time okay yes did they check it so it wasn't anything in order to rent to you they just told me to send them they just told me to send them a screenshot and i said send them a screenshot they didn't check my credit they didn't run a check yeah and they were a big company it wasn't like a small company you know what i'm saying yeah it was a multi like 50 yard company like they had okay a lot of now if your
Speaker 2uncle hadn't had known about this company could he have leased it directly from them or no because he didn't have good credit
Speaker 1no because he didn't have good credit yeah yeah
Speaker 2okay so then how did you know what to charge your uncle like did you do research or did you just come up with a number and what did you
Speaker 1charge him i kind of came up with a number honestly and i stuck with that number probably throughout well i i raised it a couple of times i think i started doing 180 per week that i was okay that i was billing him so like 750 a month give or take
Speaker 2you're like trying to double your money basically i'm trying
Speaker 1to double you're always trying to double you know your money when yeah you know at least double if you can triple because you know you have to think about taxes and insurance fees and things like that so a third is you know for for paying whatever you need to pay a third is your expenses which is you know the taxes whatever payroll you have and then another third for your profit
Speaker 2so first trailer you're like break even on the insurance right yeah okay very cool did your uncle push back on that price at all
Speaker 1no he didn't he just needed a trailer because these people you know i mean the truckers they need the trailers to work to
Speaker 2get to work yeah okay so he was happy with it and you're off to the races okay so i
Speaker 1was like well how can i replicate this how can i do this 100 times and so i asked my vendor if they would be willing to give me more trailers and they said yeah and so it was at that point that i really you know created the company created the llc you know you always have to test your ideas before before creating the llc creating a bank account things like that see if it will make money and if it will make money at least something at least one client in my opinion i don't know you know i started doing all that stuff i started getting everything together and then the thing that really was really game changing for me was facebook marketplace because i think the facebook marketplace started in like 2019 and i was like one of the only people that was doing trailers you know renting trailers and people would and i would do like the boast boost post boost yeah and yeah boost post and so you know people would hit me up on facebook i would get back to them i would tell them look this is available even if i didn't know that i i would basically be matching them inventory matching inventory to the driver wherever they would need it and then i would yeah so that's kind of the premise behind everything like eventually it was like we're matching you a trailer to where you need it and then we're billing on a weekly
Speaker 2basis okay so and all right so yeah go ahead no
Speaker 1and so that's that's that's eventually it got up to multiple states you know we started doing it in uh up up to florida we did florida new jersey new york massachusetts pa so what did you do
Speaker 2with facebook marketplace exactly what did you post and what did those posts look like
Speaker 1yeah so they were super basic i would post a picture of a trailer inside i mean outside of the trailer and some inside pigs some some pics of the tires i would say you know a 53 foot drive-in for set for rent were flexible with new companies because a lot of trailer rental companies were not flexible with new companies they wouldn't allow new companies they wouldn't want to rent to new companies and so i would say that i would say you know the year of the trailer the make of the trailer where the trailer was located it was really simple information basic information and i would put that on facebook marketplace and i don't remember i post multiple posts in different areas because they were able to give me trailers yeah they were they were able to give me trailers in different areas and this can definitely be replicated today too so what what happened when you started posting these you got a ton of inquiries i got a ton of inquiries yeah right off the bat i started boosting the post like i told you right off the bat too and that was in november december of 2019 and then you know i kept working january february it was kind of it was that i definitely i started having clients for sure people were interested in both drive-ins and the flatbeds which is the you know platforms 48 foot and so the need for equipment also doubled or tripled during that time people are always going to need equipment so yeah so what
Speaker 2did your numbers look like like first after your uncle how long did it take you to rent out you know your first five or ten trailers
Speaker 1five or ten trailers it probably took like two months but then from there marketplace posts yeah just from facebook marketplace posts and was that five or ten how many in your first two months probably that was probably 10 yeah because i was doing probably like two a week
Speaker 2okay and were you using the same company for all of these i was using the same company for all of them do you have any examples of like company other companies or any companies that people could use to find these trailers
Speaker 1yeah penske rider um let me see what else penske rider i think there's a what is it called premier premier leasing what else yeah companies like that companies like that there's there's also small companies that do renting so in grokba i would tell them you know do like i want to do ad management with facebook and instagram and stand up all of these bots for me and i was just seeing what it would do how it would source the inventory because it's straightforward things it's just you got to kind of put them together in the right way and rockbot would definitely be able to have it it would probably if i had it in the first year it would have probably
Speaker 2saved me like two years now we have ai agents like rockbot do you think considering everything right we don't have covid but we do have ai is this business easier or harder to launch today than it was in 2019 i mean people
Speaker 1are always going to need equipment like i said people are always going to need equipment i think that grokbot kind of levels the i mean it's you got you're talking about operations versus demand for a specific asset i mean i don't think it'll be as quick as it was for me because my business exploded i probably got to 100 trailers in the first two years holy cow yeah and then you know by the time i i mean you know this is 100 trailers but this is not 100 clients i probably had much more clients because i would give a trailer to a client you know someone would be returning and then i would give them that trailer so i didn't need a new trailer you know what i mean by the end i had 300 trailers but i had more than a thousand two thousand clients because you know i was used i was reusing the trailers
Speaker 2okay so first two months you had about 10 trailers were you charging three what 750 a month for all of these or what was your average price on
Speaker 1the first 10 i was charging weekly 180 dollars okay and that was really an advantage to me i think because people really like that weekly charging thing they wouldn't really notice it they wouldn't really notice it and they had the asset they had the trailer that was working well you know and so they were happy to pay the 180 so so you
Speaker 2were making 7500 a month recurring in your first two months yeah okay after that so that's like that gets you through 2019 what does growth look like in 2020 how many trailers are you adding every month and how many trailers are you adding every month and how many and do you increase your prices or are you staying at 180 a week
Speaker 1i stay i stuck with the prices because i i figured that i needed the volume instead of the i figured that i could raise the prices later but i wanted to get the people in the door first because when when you have an asset like that when you have a piece of equipment like that it's kind of difficult to get out of it and then get into a new one so it's very like sticky as they say and so you know i wanted to
Speaker 2get them in the door gotcha okay what what like how do you get them in the door how do you get like headaches did you encounter unexpected like you know horror stories that first full year
Speaker 1unexpected horror stories let you because like
Speaker 2you said you had to revise your contract over time like you had to add emergency contact i'm assuming because you couldn't get a hold of someone like did someone try to steal your trailer like what learning curves did you have that
Speaker 1were tough the main learning curve that was tough was probably the gps on the trailers like in the first year i didn't think about putting gps on the trailers which is something that i should have done from the first first trailer and it was a mess because you know they would go missing and i would have no idea you know how to get them back they would eventually turn up or some would eventually turn You know, I think over the years, over the six years, I probably had like 10 or 15 that never came back out of 300. Out of how many? 300. All right.
Speaker 2So like three to 5% just disappeared. What happens when that happens? Do you have an insurance claim? Do you have to pay up to the subleasing company?
Speaker 1I had to pay up to the subleasing company. Yes. We're able to do an insurance claim. Some were not. That's kind of a bigger conversation. Insurance is a big conversation. It's very complex, you know, because a lot of times insurance companies don't want to pay. So you have to structure your insurance policy and the policy that you get from the renters in such a way where they will pay. So that was another learning curve, you know, how to structure these contracts and how to structure what you ask from people in terms of additional insured. So that when something happens, you're actually covered, not theoretically covered. You know, so that was a big learning curve, you know, just kind of getting people in place for repairs. When repairs happen, that was, that was another learning. And do they care that you're renting it out? I didn't tell them in the beginning. I just kind of grew the company. I didn't think to tell them really, but eventually I did and they were cool with it. Yeah. And that was a big part of selling the company, being able to sell the company to another person. You know that they knew what exactly he was doing.
Speaker 2Yeah. Okay. And for those, you know, 10 to 15 that went missing, what did those costs when you had to replace them?
Speaker 1They would cost, I mean, it would range anywhere from 15,000 to 25,000. Okay. Jeez. Some were, some were covered by insurance claims. Some were not some, some were complete and total. I mean, not all of them were stolen. Not all of them were missing. Some were complete losses that I couldn't recover from the, an insurance claim. Or from the client because the client had no money. And so I had to pay for the unit and you know, the people that I was, that I was renting with were really cool because they would give me like payment plans that I could pay over time.
Speaker 2Yeah. So at the end of 2020, you've got a hundred ish rented out 75 K a month. Is that what you're making?
Speaker 1Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. By the end, how much of that was make profit?
Speaker 2Like net profit?
Speaker 1Probably like, probably like 10,000. 10,000, 15,000, thereabouts.
Speaker 210,000 a month of the seven, uh, 75 K a month. Okay. So like 15% net margin profits, net profit margins. Yeah. Okay. And then you said you, you got it from, at the end of 2020, it was 75. And then up until you sold it, you got to do two 50 K a
Speaker 1month, 250 K a month.
Speaker 2Yeah. Wow. Okay. So how many is that? It was like 300 rented out, give or take 300 trailers. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And what was your net profit? Per month at that scale.
Speaker 1At that scale, it was like 40, 50,000. Wow. Did you have employees at that point? I had two virtual employees. Yeah. And they had to be bilingual because a lot of my clients were Spanish speaking. So then they, you know, they were, they were overseas. So what I paid them, it was less than what I would pay someone over here, but for them, it was a lot of money. You know, I had one for, from Venezuela and one from, uh, Brazil.
Speaker 2Yeah. Where did you find them? Like Upwork or?
Speaker 1Upwork. Yeah. I used Upwork and then I moved them off of Upwork.
Speaker 2Okay. Yeah. And then what, what were their job titles? What were they doing for you?
Speaker 1So I had one employee that was running Facebook ads and she was running the ads and also closing the client. So she would run the ads, people would respond to the ads. She would call and follow up with these people and see if they wanted to rent. And if they did want to rent, she would send them the documents. She would coordinate, you know, the billing and then she would coordinate the pickup and then move on to the next person. So that was something that, you know, took a lot off my plate because that was basically what I was doing day to day.
Speaker 2How were you billing? Like what tools, what software could they pay by credit card, QuickBooks, Stripe? What were you doing?
Speaker 1I was using a payment processor called Pay Simple, which was super, super great. I don't, I don't really like Stripe because in the beginning Stripe, I had Stripe, but they would like. They would freeze my funds over no reason. So I was like, you know, I'm not, yeah, I'm not using Stripe anymore. Pay Simple never, ever did that to me. Even when I was like billing, like I said, 250,000 per month. Imagine if you're billing 250,000 per month with Stripe and then they, and then they freeze your funds for no reason. And then having to like go through this process, lengthy process, not quick in order to unfreeze your funds. It's for no reason. So it's like, what, you know, what am I, what are we doing? So Pay Simple was super, super good. And I was, I was running everything from my phone too. So I had Pay Simple, I had the payment processor, like that, that that's what enabled me to travel. That's why I've been traveling to Columbia for, you know, for years now, because I could do everything from my phone. And I think with like an AI too, it would enable me even further. It would have enabled me even further, you know, and, and that's a big kind of thing that I think people don't really know about, or maybe people that are just beginning, you know, putting money into paid ads is for me, at least was critical. Like every time I said, wow, I want to move more inventory. I want to get more clients. You know, what do I do? The answer for me was putting more money into paid ads. That was always the answer. It was never like anything else. It was never anything else really.
Speaker 2Yeah. What's like the, what, what worked for you on paid ads? Like US only. Did you let Facebook choose the audience? Did you choose the audience? Were you doing video still image?
Speaker 1Yeah, it was still images. It was throughout the United States because truckers, we learned after a while that truckers, if they, if they see a good deal, they will travel to get to the deal. I had people traveling sometimes from Florida to New Jersey in order to get a trailer of mine. They would. They would travel sometimes from Chicago to New Jersey, Chicago to PA. Sometimes they would travel from Texas to New Jersey in order to get a trailer. And so I would do ads. So that enabled us to do ads in the country, you know, nationwide, you know, our audiences were, were male. You know, we would do the, did you tell Facebook that we would do
Speaker 2the interest only show it to men. Okay. Now what did your Facebook ad numbers look like? How much were you spending? What was your return on ad spend?
Speaker 1Well, I was spending towards the end, 5,000 a month on Facebook ads, which is not a lot. And I was getting probably 25 new clients per month on Facebook for, from Facebook ads. That's not from my referrals because by the end people were referring, you know, other truckers to me because I had been doing this for a long time. So we were getting like 25 new clients. So 25 times, you know, I would say the deposit of seven 50 times 25. It was, that was kind of our, I, I never really analyzed our return on ad spend though, you know.
Speaker 2But I mean, you're spending 5,000 to get 25 new clients. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, you were spending $5,000 to get, to make 18,750 a month. Yeah. Yeah. And that's just new clients.
Speaker 1That's just new clients. Yeah. That's not the clients that I got from last month that are still here from last month.
Speaker 2And then how long doesn't a client stay on average? How many years or months?
Speaker 1They would stay. I had a minimum time that they needed to stay with me, which was three months. They needed to stay with me three months or else they would lose their deposit and I would charge them sometimes a penalty.
Speaker 2How much was their deposit and how long did they end up staying on average?
Speaker 1Their deposit was seven 50. And like I said, they use these units to work. And so if they have it and they're good with the price and they're working and they're making money.
Speaker 2Okay. So seven 50 times three, you're making like 2,100 bucks on average per client. Yeah. So let's say 2,100 times 25. So you're spending 5,000 in Facebook ads to make $52,000 give or take. Yeah. So 10 X return on ad spend.
Speaker 1Facebook was really good.
Speaker 2And just a still image that said, Hey, we'll like rent truck from us.
Speaker 1Like, yeah, I would say, you know, we have the, yeah, it was very simple. We have this trailer, look, brand new trailer, 53 foot trailer, drive van, food grade because they would need a food grade. Yeah. DOT inspected because we would DOT inspect them, which is, you know, department of transportation inspection that these trailers need yearly, you know, so it would come already inspected people like that. And then, you know, we would say inventory available, you know, things like that, you know, simple things.
Speaker 2How much, how much money did it take to start this business in total?
Speaker 1I just had to pay for my, my insurance, which was 4,000.
Speaker 2What was your solution to the GPS? Like what company did you use to provide those or whatever?
Speaker 1My subleasing company did provide GPS as they were, they were willing to install GPS is, but I just never took advantage of that. You just got to ask, right? Just ask. Yeah. I just had to ask. I just had to ask. And, and that's a really good lesson for people that may be starting out. Ask them really, what can they do for you? What are the terms? Can you do net 30? You, you want. something called triple net, which is. that you take care of the maintenance so that your cost on a monthly basis is the lowest possible. And when it's the lowest possible, you can start cash flowing immediately.
Speaker 2You mentioned other equipment. In a hypothetical scenario, if someone could not do trailers for whatever reason, what other equipment out there do you think has a lot of opportunity to rent out?
Speaker 1You can do smaller trailers, the types of trailers that people use to move a motorcycle or you know what I'm talking about, like the smaller, the 20-foot trailers, 15-foot trailers. You can do this with that type of equipment. And those are super popular too. You can do this with storage, with storage equipment as well. You can lease mobile storage equipment for if people need it for home projects or if people need it for any other thing. You could lease that and then sublease it to a client. I think that the way that you make ads and the way that you test a market, I wasn't able to test the market or see data into a market. And that's something that you can do now for what, like how much does it cost? Like $20 a month or $40 a month, you know, for whatever AI.
Speaker 2Eli, this has been amazing. If people have questions, where can they find you or reach out if they want to reach out? I don't know.
Speaker 1My email, my email is eligolarza33 at Yahoo. dot com. You know, if people have questions and things, I'm not selling any sort of course or anything like that. So. Okay, perfect. Thank you, Eli.
Speaker 2All right. All right. Thank you, Chris. Hey guys, if you're still listening to this, it's probably because you haven't had a chance to take your AirPods out. You're still mowing the lawn. You're still driving. What have you? If you're still here with me, I would really, really love and appreciate a five-star review on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. It would mean a lot. If you want to go the extra mile, share this episode with a friend that, might have an interest in starting a business, it would mean a ton. Hope you have the best day of your life today.

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Eli built a trailer rental business starting in November 2019 by subleasing semi-trailers for $350 per month and renting them to truckers for about $750 per month.
  2. He started with one trailer for his uncle, then used Facebook Marketplace and boosted posts to scale to roughly 300 trailers and over $250,000 in monthly revenue.
  3. His only major startup cost was a $4,000 annual insurance policy, and he structured deals as net 30 with weekly billing and deposits to stay cash-flow positive from day one.
  4. He ran the entire business from his phone while traveling in Colombia, using two bilingual virtual assistants hired through Upwork.
  5. Facebook ads were the main growth driver, spending about $5,000 per month to acquire roughly 25 new clients at an estimated 10x return on ad spend.
  6. Key lessons included adding GPS tracking to trailers, revising contracts over time, and structuring insurance policies carefully to ensure claims would actually pay out.
  7. Roughly 10 to 15 of 300 trailers were never recovered, costing $15,000 to $25,000 each, with some losses not covered by insurance.
  8. Eli believes the business model is still replicable today, and that AI tools could make operations and market testing even easier for new entrants.

Summary:

Eli started a semi-trailer rental business in November 2019 after working as a truck dispatcher in Connecticut. When his uncle, a truck driver with poor credit, asked to rent a trailer, Eli found a large leasing company willing to lease him a 53-foot trailer for about $350 per month with no deposit and no credit check. He rented it to his uncle for roughly $750 per month, and after buying a $4,000 annual insurance policy, he was in business. He realized he could replicate the model and began posting trailers on Facebook Marketplace with boosted posts, charging $180 per week and taking deposits.

The business grew quickly, reaching about 100 trailers and $75,000 per month by the end of 2020, and eventually 300 trailers generating over $250,000 per month with net profit of $40,000 to $50,000. He ran everything from his phone while traveling in Colombia, relying on two bilingual virtual assistants from Upwork and a payment processor called Pay Simple. Facebook ads costing about $5,000 per month brought in roughly 25 new clients monthly. Major challenges included missing trailers, insurance claim complexity, and the need for GPS tracking and stronger contracts. Eli believes the model remains viable today, especially with AI tools.

FAQs

Eli subleased semi-trailers to truckers. He leased trailers from suppliers for about $350 per month and rented them to truckers for about $750 per month, eventually scaling to 300 trailers.

The main startup cost was insurance, which was about $4,000 for the first year. He did not need a deposit for the trailers because he used net 30 terms with suppliers.

Dispatching involves finding loads for drivers, while brokering involves representing shippers and finding drivers for them. Dispatching does not require a license, but brokering does.

He primarily used Facebook Marketplace posts and boosted ads. He posted simple photos and details of trailers, which generated many inquiries and clients.

The biggest learning curve was not using GPS on trailers initially, which led to some trailers going missing. He later learned to ask suppliers for GPS installation.

He used a payment processor called Pay Simple and billed clients weekly. He took a deposit and started billing immediately, which helped with cash flow.

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