As people try to come into our industry many decide to work for owner operators as drivers. There is nothing wrong with doing that as long as you have done your homework first and know exactly what you are getting yourself into. Everyone is in business to make a buck, but making money off someone else by not paying them for the work they do can be a sure way of putting yourself out of business. Recently I have heard of a few owner operators that have created small mini fleets with a carrier they are with. They hire drivers for each truck thinking things are going fine, until the drivers get together and talk. They find out they are being paid well below the industry standard and they leave. Even worse is when they are being told to wait to be paid because of cash flow problems or some other problem developed by the owner operator. Often times an owner operator will be successful with one truck and think by expanding they will make more money. The truth is that expansion is a different ball game to owning and operating a truck on your own. If you are doing things right then you have the passion and willingness to take care of your equipment and hopefully make sure your business is running profitably. When you hire that driver however, they are not thinking the same way, they don't have a stake in the truck or care about your cash flow for that matter, they want a job. Because expenses can be high in transportation it doesn't take much for someone to get behind, excessive fuel costs, large variable expenses, and other factors can take a profitable business under very quickly. So many operators think they can save a few bucks by paying the driver less than industry wages. The drivers take the job in hopes of gaining much needed experience. By the way this just isn't for the small operators, when I hear what some of these well established carriers are paying it makes me crazy. The wages some are paying now are less than they were 15 years ago. In my course for owner operators I go through the scenario of expansion, how will they handle that, what do they look for, what pitfalls are out there? There are many problems on both sides so it is important all sides do their homework before embarking on a for hire agreement.