This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Jeff Amen and Michael Schneider from ATBS about all things taxes for owner-operators. The conversation covers the importance of record-keeping, tax management, and the benefits of filing taxes as an LLC. Jeff and Michael introduce their app “The Hub” for managing finances and stress the personalized service offered, including a discount for Oakley Trucking clients. They also mention their tax relief pit crew for IRS negotiations while also highlighting their clients’ financial performance, with Oakley clients earning significantly more than average. As we head into tax season, don’t miss this great episode to help owner-operators navigate the ins and outs of taxes.
Key topics in today’s conversation include:
- Introducing Jeff and Michael from ATBS (1:08)
- Oakley’s partnership with ATBS (2:19)
- ATBS’s background and mission (4:02)
- Tax changes and record-keeping (10:33)
- Record-keeping for tax deductions (16:01)
- Profit and Loss Statement Creation (21:14)
- Benchmarking and Business Management (23:37)
- Unique Truck Tax Deductions (25:14)
- Quarterly Taxes and Safe Harbor Estimates (27:40)
- LLC vs. Sole Proprietor vs. S Corporation (34:25)
- ATBS’s new Hub App (41:43)
- Per Diem Calculator and Real-Time Data (43:47)
- Tax Relief Pit Crew (47:33)
- Pricing and Discounts (51:27)
- Benchmarking and Industry Statistics (54:42)
- What sets Oakley apart (1:00:54)
- Final thoughts and takeaways (1:04:24)
Oakley Trucking is a family-owned and operated trucking company headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. For more information, check out our show website: podcast.bruceoakley.com.
Transcription
Jeff Amen 00:12
Our average Oakley client in 2022, made 84% more than our overall average client. And like I said, our average class makes 40% More than guys that don’t use it. So this is 2023. Just like 2021 Maybe was the best year for Israel trucking. People say this year 2023 is the worst year in the history of trucking. Our average client this year right now, looks like they’re gonna make $63,000 in 2023. Our average hopefully client $138,000 120% more than the average out there. It’s just mind boggling. It’s unbelievable. We work with owner operators in every last mile, every last mile, every niche in the industry we work with and you put up numbers. I mean, the numbers are often the clients put up or stagnate compared to what happens to the rest of the industry.
Jeremy Kellett 01:07
Welcome to the Oakley podcast, trucking, business, and family. This show is brought to you by Oakley Trucking, headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. The purpose of this podcast is to communicate with Oakley owner-operators and their families by giving them up-to-date information concerning Oakley Trucking and the trucking industry. From business advice to safety updates to success stories. Also to give an inside to outside truck drivers that might be interested in joining the Oakley family. Hi, I’m Jeremy Kellett, director of recruiting here at Oakley Trucking. I’m your host for this podcast. This is the Oakley podcast, trucking, business and family. And as always, I appreciate you guys listening to this every week, we try to come up with some great content for you on a weekly basis, it drops every Wednesday with new material. And I’ll tell you what we are so glad to get our new listeners. I was looking at how we’ve got over 23,000 subscribers, which is fantastic. And for you new listeners that just found us I encourage you to go back and listen to a lot of the past episodes that we’ve done because we just cover so much stuff here that it’s worth, you know, I go back and listen to some of them. And I’m like, Man, I forgot all about that when that’s pretty good stuff. You don’t need to listen to it again, actually. So I encourage you to go back and listen to some previous episodes that we’ve done in the past and of course the future wants to. We appreciate everybody doing that and subscribe to YouTube. If you haven’t found us on YouTube. Be sure and check us out. Just search for the Oakley podcast on YouTube and subscribe and comment. Let us know what you think and what you’d like to hear. And I tell you what one of my next guests is with me. I can’t thank them enough because they were one of the very first ones when we started this crazy idea of a podcast. They were on board and helped me get it started and get rolling. And that’s ATBS the tech service with Jeff Amon and Michael Schneider those guys have been with Oakley for a long time and they helped me get it going and that’s who’s joining me today and we’re going to talk tech service and ATB is used
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Jeremy Kellett 04:00
How are you guys doing today?
Jeff Amen 04:01
Hey man, we’re fantastic. We appreciate being on like you said we’ve I remember the very first time we did this it was kind of new to all of us, you guys. We’re kind of the Pace Setter and social media and podcasting for your fleet. And it was fun to be a part of it’s been fun to grow with you. So we’re excited to do it again.
Jeremy Kellett 04:21
Well, it’s been fun being partners with you guys for a long time. Matter of fact, Jeff I emailed. I waited too long but I emailed a couple hours ago. Some people Tommy you know Tommy and tear tearing that’s in here. I was trying to go back and see how long we have been doing business together. You know, and it’s possible I still haven’t found out the actual date we started. I know it’s been a long time. I mean, what’s it got to be 15 years maybe
Jeff Amen 04:50
that’s my wild guess was gonna be around 15 years Jeremy Yeah, with like
Jeremy Kellett 04:55
so too. Yeah, but I’ve been doing it for a long time. Yeah, yeah, it’s good stuff. I mean, of course, you guys know, y’all been on here a few times with me. And I really appreciate it because the goal of this podcast is to help our owner operator succeed. And man, there’s nothing more than success when you know you’re a profitable company. And you’re doing good. And that’s what we refer a lot of guys to ATBS because you can tell on that, I mean, you have all the services that you do, and all his tax information. And, of course, everybody’s scared of the tax man, you know, scared of the tax man. You know how to handle the tax man and still be profitable. But you guys make it simple. I mean, y’all do a good job of helping truck drivers. And I always when I talk about ATBS, my favorite thing is to tell them that that’s all you do is truck drivers. And that to me is the thing to do. I mean, when I have a plumbing problem at the house, I don’t. I don’t call a mechanic, I call a plumber, you know, so I want somebody that’s what they do. And you guys do a fantastic job of that. So I sent you over a list of questions and stuff we can talk about. If you guys want to give us a little brief about ATBS. I mean, I think everybody knows, but tell us a little bit about ATBS. And then we’ll get into some of these questions that are sent over to you. Well, I’ll do it.
Jeff Amen 06:22
I’ll try and make it quick. So I’m Jeff Amon as Jeremy Ceph is and Michael Schneider is sitting beside me here. I’ve got two brothers, Jeff Todd and Matt. Two brothers, the three of us own a TBS, we began our lives in trucking as diesel mechanics when we were 12 years old. So I actually had a 60th birthday a couple of weeks ago. So I mean, I’ve been doing this for a long, long time. And congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. So like I said, we started in trucking. We were 12 years old, we’ve got diesel in our veins. When we got out of college, we had our own trucking companies. We had a truckload carrier with about 600 trucks, we had an LTL carrier with about 150 trucks. And then we had a brokerage operation, a logistics business. And we ran those for several years. I won’t get into a lot of details, like I know we have in the past and some of our podcasts. But suffice it to say we sold our LTL business 97 And we sold our truckload and logistics brokerage operations. In January of 98. We started ATBS, literally the day we sold our last trucking company. And our sole mission ATBS is to help the owner operators make as much money as they can possibly make and give as little as possible to the government. Right? Nobody wants to pay taxes, we don’t want you to give us any of it to the government that you don’t have to so that that was the you know, the the mission behind our company. And from a philosophical perspective of how you’re going to go to market. At the end of the day, what we do is required by law, if you own your own business, you’re required by law to account for that business and to file taxes. So our philosophy was we do that better and less expensively than anybody in the country. Everyone or operation wants to be your client. And so to this day, we really don’t have a sales department at ATBS. Our business all comes to us via word of mouth, which we’re very proud of. We don’t we don’t go out and aggressively pursue clients, word of mouth clients come to us. And so we’ve, we’ve been doing this, like I said, we started this in January of 98. So we have been in business. This is our 25th anniversary ATBS this year. It was just unbelievable to think back because it’s gone by in the blink of an eye. But for 25 years we’ve been helping him or operators run their business. And we started the scene in the course of 25 years. And like I said, word of mouth is how we get our business. We bring on about 1000 new clients a month to ATBS which while believable, we
Jeremy Kellett 09:16
bring how many y’all got? Yeah,
Jeff Amen 09:18
So in everything we do, this number is unbelievable to me, but everything we do we work with around 80,000 owner operators. Holy cow. Yeah. So we bring on about 1000 new owner operators a month. And what a statistics that we’re super proud of is, even though we’re bringing on so many new clients that just have not had an opportunity to be with us for a long time because our new clients, our average, overall average clients have been with ATBS for four years. So I mean, we just really don’t lose clients unless something life changing happens. You know, they retire or they decide to get out of trucking or something like that. But in general, we just don’t lose clients. And we’re super proud of that. Yeah,
Jeremy Kellett 10:04
That’s really good. That says a lot right there when you’ve got that many, I had no idea it was that many operators or truck drivers that you’re dealing with. I mean, that’s, that’s a testament to what kind of services generally provide for sure. So, which I mean, I guess let’s get into that. If, if you’re ready to, to talk about that, you know, you know, of course, we’ve got how long you’ve been providing tax services for truck drivers, especially owner operators, and how many clients you have. We covered that. So let’s get into the tax stuff. I mean, that’s what you know, these owner operators want to hear is the stuff that’s changing, which I’m assuming is changing every every year in it
Jeff Amen 10:45
does sometimes for the better sometimes for the worse, but it always changes.
Jeremy Kellett 10:50
Well, that’s a good point, I guess. Is there good stuff changing for the better for an owner operator?
10:57
So there’s always stuff changing, like we just talked about a couple of things that, you know, we’re coming off of those two COVID years that we just went through where things like meals were 100% deductible. This year, we’re back to that normal 50%. So not necessarily for the better per se but some folks need to be aware of those meal deductions that per diem deduction they take, that’s going back to that old rule 80% per diem. So for businesses like a TBS and like you guys Oakley, if you do meals, that’s 50%. Those drivers do still get that step up that higher dollar amount of per diem, which is $69 a day. So that piece I like to point out specifically because as you mentioned, we do trucking specifically. We know those trucking specific laws, those standards, CPA firms, local CPA firms, they know their accounting, their tax, but they’re not trucking specific. So they’re not going to catch things like that. $69 a day per diem.
Jeff Amen 11:56
We do see that a lot and Michael, you’re exactly right that they they’ll they’ll they’ll take the same per diem that Oakley rate TBS does instead of specific per diem that’s available for truck drivers. The other thing we see in terms of mistakes, were missed opportunities. When other tax people are doing tax work for owner operators it is ATBS we do a partial day premium. Most will just take a whole day per diem. And if if you’re not gone the whole day, they will take per diem for you if you’re not part of the day will do a partial day per diem will do pretty em Have you gotten a spouse were writer in the truck will do per diem for that spouse, the writer, all things that are missed by virtually every accountant out there.
Michael Schneider 12:38
Another big one that I like to talk about is that came with tax cuts and jobs going all the way back to 2018. And that’s when that law came into place. They made use of the equipment available for depreciation, just the same as new equipment. So it used to be back before 2018, you can only buy new equipment, new truck, new trailer, something like that would be fully depreciable 100%. Now that is available for used vehicles, that’s still the case going into 2024 and for 2023. So one thing to look out for is another big change that some folks might be surprised by. For bonus depreciation specifically, it’s gone from 100% to 80%. And so that’s going to keep going down, they’re going to phase that out as they sunset, that tax law that tax cuts and Jobs Act 20% a year, it’s gonna go down until zero in 2026. So we’ll see what Congress does like we talked about, they always act and they always do something crazy with the tax law. But that’s 80% this year for new unused equipment. So if you have the opportunity and you’re talking to your tax accountant or you’re talking to ETS will do all that math for you, there’s still 100% For me, sorry, depreciation available, but that’s under a different part of the depreciation tax code. That’s section 179. Not bonus depreciation. So we got to pay a little more attention to that depreciation line this year. Are you using section 179? Like you’re supposed to? Do you want to use a bonus? Are you using that like you’re supposed to? There’s a thought process there a calculation you want to go through this year,
Jeff Amen 14:15
even though we know we have 1000s of clients. Our work is very customized for each individual client. We don’t treat the population as a whole and like Michael said, when somebody joins us as a new client, we ask for their past tax returns and depreciation is something that we rarely find if somebody else’s screwed up when they’ve gone somewhere else to get their tax word.
Jeremy Kellett 14:36
Yeah, so that depreciation marker you’re talking about? Was that something they just came up with on used equipment recently and it’s going away or it’s not going away?
14:50
It was back in 2018 when it went into effect so fairly recently, and now use the new equipment both have qualified for this free Association. We’ll see what happens come 2026 When this goes away the sunsets like most tax laws, they’re kind of patches or band aids just for a couple of years or in this case several years, but yeah, we’ll see what happens with it. Okay, good lives
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Jeremy Kellett 16:01
talking about some record keeping? You know, to me, this is one of the things that truck drivers have the biggest challenge with is the paperwork you need, the records you need. I’m sure you’re constantly calling them and telling them hey, can you send me this? Can you send me that? What would you tell the guy the best way for you to get all the information you need? So you can make the best decisions for them? You know, as far as saving the most money?
Jeff Amen 16:31
Boy, you know, that’s a fantastic question. Because I mean, if you were to say we could tell you, I mean, we know all kinds of you know the little secrets of tax deductions we can take that most people don’t know about for truck drivers. But if you were to ask what is the single biggest thing somebody can do to minimize your tax burden, capture every conceivable expense that has some to do with their business so that as you said, Jeremy, keeping track organizing and having your paperwork and receipts in order is critical. Now, you know, again, our philosophy growing up in trucking. And this goes for just about every business out there, nobody starts a business because they’ve got a dream of doing their own bookkeeping and accounting and tax work, right? That is the necessary evil that goes along with owning a business. And we know that they’re not truck drivers on the planet, deciding when to become an owner operator, because he had a dream to do bookkeeping and accounting. So our philosophy is we don’t want to touch their paperwork. We think, if they’re dealing with paperwork that can be bad things, it means they’re driving all day and dealing with paper at night. Or, instead of driving, they’re dealing with paperwork not generating the revenue that they could be generating. Or they’re out on the road for a week or two or three weeks at a time they come home and instead of quality time off with family and friends, their spouse, or having to deal with all that paperwork. So when we built our business, it was designed for us to do all that work for them. And so then this has changed over the years what that looks like. But we’re when it comes to paper, we’re the entire back office, we don’t expect our clients to be tax experts. If they go to any other account that counselor and tell him, You need to figure out what’s deductible was not deductible, you need to categorize it all you need to total it all. And then you need to handle those totals. So we put it in a spreadsheet and give you back your tax return. We don’t do it that way. We give them a list of everything that’s tax deductible for owner operators. But then we tell them, Don’t only pay attention to this list. If you have anything that you think might have some to do with your business, send it to us and let us figure it out. We don’t expect you to be a tax expert. Send us everything. And so how do they send it to us? We can take it any way they want to give it to us if 95 plus percent of our clients do, we have an ATBS app. And simply under the smartphone, they open the app. They say they came out with a truckstop or out of Walmart or someone or they opened that app. And they take a picture of that receipt. And that’s 100% of their bookkeeping responsibly. Once they open the app and take a picture. They’re done with it at that point, we’ve got a digitally they never have to worry about it again. We’ve got it forever. And so that’s how they get their paperwork to us now. Some guys, you know the only reason they have a smartphone is because they can’t buy a flip phone anymore. They
Jeremy Kellett 19:12
I hate technology.
Jeff Amen 19:15
Technology will send a mailing envelope so they can mail us those receipts. Some really sophisticated guys have computers and scanners and stuff in their truck they can scan and email to we take it any way they want to give it to us but again we don’t we don’t ask them to organize it if they mail to it’s gonna be watered up little balls of receipts it however they want to give it to them every year it can be two years ago it can be last month it can be today, we just tell them says anything that has some to do with your business. Open that app, take a picture. We’ve got it and so like I said, Hey, good. A Walmart spouse could buy a bunch of stuff from the house and maybe some of the stuff you buy for the truck could be using the truck windex for the windshield or aren’t. They take a picture of that two foot long Walmart receipt we go through and figure out what the document was not deductible in that receipt. And by the way, we’ll say, tell us the mileage your spouse drove in the car to go buy that stuff. Because when the write off was personal miles and your personal vehicle, those are the kinds of things and then we just tell them to give us everything. So they send us that stuff on a real time basis every single day, or it’s up to them, but they won’t give it to us once a week, once a month, someone gives us a box full of stuff at the end of the year. We like it, as you mentioned, specifically, Jeremy, we like it as quickly as we can get it. And the reason we do it is because the faster we get it, the quicker we can give it back to them in a format where it’s giving them feedback on how their business is doing.
Jeremy Kellett 20:41
So Right. That’s what I was gonna talk about, because we are guys, we send you their settlements every week.
Jeff Amen 20:48
That’s exactly what I’m gonna say next. And this is a huge benefit of the relationship between Oakley and ATBS, we have a data interchange, where if there’s an owner operator that’s running for you, and he’s one of our clients, you give us every week you give us through data interchange, you’ll give us there are some a statement electronically, so they don’t have to worry about anything revenue or expense, it’s on their settlement statement, because we’re getting it automatically. And that’s going to cover probably 80% 85% of what’s going on in their business. And then all they have to worry about is that other 15 or 20%, which is minimal, they worry about that, take the pictures or mail it to us, get it to us however often they possibly can, we’d love it daily. And then we take all the information, and we create a profit and loss statement for him every single month. And, and so the one thing I think that’s also different from with us versus other accounts is they go anywhere else, they categorize, sort, categorize total stuff and give it to their accountant. When they’re given us their receipts, we don’t just take what they give us, we look for what they forgot to give us. We look for things that are busy expenses that they didn’t give us and we reach out, we say You know what, we don’t think your truck is getting 80 miles to the gallon, we’re missing some fuel, that’s fine. And so we can write it off. We don’t think your maintenance is three cents a mile, we think you’ve got a lot more Mandy’s expense, let’s go find this week and write it off. Or, you know, we know you’ve got this going on with your family, with your wife or with your kids or et cetera, et cetera. We know all these things going on in your world. These are things we write off, give us that stuff. So we can write it off. And you know, a statistic I think is absolutely shocking. But it’s the same. Every single year since we started this business for 91% of our clients, we do their tax return for 91% of our clients, we find stuff they forgot to send us, we reach out, we haven’t found it, give it to us, we take additional deductions because of that. So we don’t, we don’t just depend on them to give us their stuff, we look for things they forgot to give us. And then you know, as you said, Jeremy, we build that profit loss statement every single week. So they can see how their business is performing every single week. And then once a month, month a month is over, we close out an entire month and produce a profit and loss statement for that whole month. And I’m just gonna say one more way around the topic you didn’t, you didn’t really ask the question, but you did. You talked about the importance of paperwork and managing paperwork and how to deal with it. And like I said, Our philosophy is that drivers shouldn’t have to worry about it. That’s our job to manage that back off and deal with that paperwork. But the byproduct of that is that we’re the only company in the world that can do this. Every month, when we do their profit and loss statement, we benchmark them against other drivers who do the exact same kind of work they’re doing. And we literally we put green dots where they’re doing good, we put red dots where there are other drivers doing better where they need to make changes. And so every month when they get their profit and loss statement, even if they don’t want to redo the detail and profit and loss statement, all you got to look at is our benchmarks red DOT Hey, this area, I’m doing great. Maybe I’m doing great fuel and maybe in maintenance, or maybe I’ve got bad insurance or paying too much for physical damage insurance or something they can come with, they’ll get flagged and with a red DOT they’ll call their business on the day TBS will say hey, here’s what you need to change, to be a best practice and making as much money as you can. And, you know, the end result of that is when people benchmark our clients ATBS owner operators versus owner operators that don’t use ATBS our clients average 40% higher net income than the same owner operator not using us. And I think that benchmarking piece is really why so I think you really hit the nail on the head that it seems like a mundane, necessary pain in the butt to have to deal with paperwork. But if you do it for the right reasons, it’s a huge advantage for him because number one, like we talked about, is going to give you the maximum tax expenses to deduct from your taxes. And number two, it gives you the tools you need to manage your business and to make sure you’re running as efficiently as possible. Oh
Jeremy Kellett 24:51
yeah, yeah, but you guys see a big a big savings when truck drivers come from other tax professionals that don’t do trucking and they come to you. And then all of a sudden, they’re blown away with all these truck tax deductions and laws that other people didn’t know about. I can only imagine how that was.
Jeff Amen 25:13
You’re exactly right. It’s unbelievable. Mike would probably talk about some of the unique deductions. We talked about a few of them that we do. And if you have any
Michael Schneider 25:23
people even know about, yeah, we actually have a product specifically designed for that when folks are coming in. They think the prior year may be incorrect. We can review that tax return forum, tell them what the last person missed on their tax return. We see crazy stuff like people messing up depreciation, we already talked about that. Tax repairs, not even including per diem at all, no deduction for meals on the road. So there’s, you know, 14 $15,000, if you’re just looking at that expense, we’ve got folks messing up mileage, they’ll put mileage on the tractor trailer like that mileage in the tax code is allocated for passenger vehicles like you and I drive. Not for tractor trailers, that’s a whole different ball game. There’s a whole set of deductions for tractor trailers. So we see all sorts of stuff from home office to guys telling them you know, your sunglasses and safety equipment aren’t deductible? Well, sure you use it for your business, your sunglasses are deductible, your safety vest, your cones, your chains, anything like that is deductible. But Mako,
Jeremy Kellett 26:26
I’ve had the same account my whole life. That is, my family knows him. We go to church with him. They’ve done it forever. They know taxes. Now. I mean, that’s what you hear, you know, a lot of times. Absolutely.
Jeff Amen 26:38
Yeah. As Michael said, it’s so specialized like a home office, I would bet. I bet one half of 1% of the owner operators in the country do a home office deduction. And we’re able to do that for a ton of our clients. Take a home office induction deduction.
Jeremy Kellett 26:53
That’s a
Jeff Amen 26:55
great one, you know, if they’ve got a dog in the truck, we don’t require it to be a German shepherd or a Rottweiler. If they got a chihuahua in the truck that can bark, we’re going to call an alarm and take a guard pop. I
Jeremy Kellett 27:06
actually had that written down on my notes to ask about pets. If that was something that
Jeff Amen 27:13
we’ve got, we’ve got a client, this guy to pig in the truck that we take a guard animal deduction for, because it makes a racket, if somebody bangs on the door is trying to get the truck. Yeah. So I mean, you can write off food and vet bills and all those things. Yes. But that’s the kind of thing where there’s no chance that the typical accountant takes those kinds of deductions.
Jeremy Kellett 27:35
The most of these owner operators pay quarterly taxes to
Jeff Amen 27:39
boy, what a great question. That’s a whole nother topic. So by law, I
Jeremy Kellett 27:44
don’t know if they wait till the end of the year and just do it or if it’s better to do quarterly taxes. Now, you know, I mean, to me, it sounds like it should be but you’re
Jeff Amen 27:53
you’re you there’s a lot of nuances to your question. And it’s a great question. One of the most important questions in trucking when it comes to managing your business and your tax affairs. You know, taxes are one of the single biggest reasons guys get in trouble and in about a business and losing their trucks losing their business. So by law as an independent contractor, which doesn’t operate that contract by law, you are required to pay quarterly estimates. If you choose not to, you pay interest in penalties as a result. But here’s the thing the IRS allows, in what almost every account on the planet does is what’s called Safe Harbor estimates. And essentially what the safe harbor estimates are, is you take what you paid in taxes last year, and you divide that by four. And once you’ve divided by four, you’ve got four payments, quarterly payments, those are what your estimates are this year. So you take last year’s tax bill divided by four you pay each quarter this year. We think that’s the kiss of death for owner operators and we despise that accountants do it. But the reason they do it doesn’t cost them 10 cents, right? I mean, they do the quarterly estimates. They pick up a calculator and they say how much you paid last year divided by four. Okay, here’s what you paid four times this year. It doesn’t cost them 10 cents to give them safe harbor estimates but we think they’re doing a huge disservice because never two things first off, never last year, the same as this year. So if you’re paying your taxes this year, based on what you paid in taxes last year, you’re either overpaying or under paying a lot of times you’re under paying. And then what happens is in April, when taxes are due, you look at what you paid in estimates versus what you owe. And that’s when you make up the difference. So if you pay these quarterly estimates based on last year, and then in April when you reconcile that find out you owe 1000s of dollars in extra taxes. April’s the worst time of the year for any of us to come up with money for the IRS. We overextend ourselves during the holidays, the first quarter generally slower than any other quarter. We’re lucky to you know, pay our rent and pay our mortgage, put food on the table. are families, we don’t have extra money to give the IRS in the first quarter. So that’s not when you want to find out, you know, 1000s of dollars. And that’s what happens with the safe harbor method, it’s inaccurate. And then here’s the second problem was safe harbor, it tells you to pay the exact same amount each quarter. While our business is trucking, we’re not flat, we don’t make the exact same amount each quarter. And so if you have a slow quarter, first quarter slow and you owe a ton of money in a quarterly estimate, you don’t have it. Now you don’t pay that estimate or you’re behind. And you’re on the run is just the beginning of the end of the death spiral for owner operators. So we spent literally millions of dollars on our software, we do our estimated taxes. Because we’re doing your books every month, we know exactly what your business is doing. Every month, we look at spouse income, everything going on in your world. And we base your estimates this quarter on exactly what happened this quarter, not what happened last year divided by four. What happened this quarter? Two reasons. That’s super important. First off, because you’re paying your taxes each quarter, you’re paying your quarterly estimates each quarter, and exactly what your business did. Your estimates are accurate. So you get to April, it’s a few $100 of adjustment, not 1000s and 1000s of dollars for adjustment. So April’s no big deal. Tax Time is no big deal. The second thing, though, that I think is even more important is because we’re basing your estimates on what your business did each quarter that matches your cash flow to what you own estimates. If you had a slow first quarter, it’s okay. You’re not gonna do anything and estimates if you had a great second quarter, you’re going to align estimates. But okay, you had a great quarter, you’ve had the money to pay a lot. So I think those two things match your cash flow to what you owe, it makes it super easy to pay your estimates and it makes an APR amount of it. It’s just super easy.
Jeremy Kellett 31:43
Yeah, yeah, I can see where that would be nice to have it not be a surprise, because that’s the way a lot of people live these days with the RS is it’s it’s all man I don’t I wonder what I’m gonna owe in taxes? Well, with you guys, you’re gonna know if they do things, right, they’re gonna know. And it’s not a big surprise. You feel how you make better decisions as a businessman, when you know that kind of stuff, you know,
Jeff Amen 32:10
taxes because this is somewhat important. And that’s something I really plan to talk about. But since we’re talking about other tax people, something that’s important is what we do with our tax returns. Every return that leaves our offices is reviewed and signed by one of our CPAs or Enrolled Agents. The reason that’s important is if these guys ever get audited, I guarantee a truck driver at some point you’re gonna get audited and it may not be next year. It may not be five years from now, but at some point, you’re going to get audited if you’re a trucker if you’re an owner operator. If a person is because our CPAs Enrolled Agents are reviewing and signing your returns if you’re audited, we provide full audit support and we can represent you in front of the IRS and we don’t lose audits if if you’re going to h&r Block Jackson Hewitt whoever your cousin or whoever you’re using somebody else to do your taxes that’s not I mean, those companies are not CPAs and enrolled agents if if they’re doing your tax return and you get audited you’re on your own they’re not CPAs enrolled agents they can’t defend you you’re on your own to defend yourself in front of the IRS which is very daunting awful
Jeremy Kellett 33:14
thing that is yeah, that’s good to know right there because that’s that I’m sure there’s guys out there that you know as soon as they realize they’re getting audited, scared to death. What have I got to produce for you now can you find the stuff and if they’re dealing with you they’ve got it all you guys have got it? No.
Jeff Amen 33:33
They don’t have to represent themselves, we represent it for the IRS. Yeah,
Jeremy Kellett 33:36
Yeah, that makes a big difference out there. So there you know, some of these independent contractors I know I think we actually went over this question last time we talked about you know, because either stay in a sole proprietor or be in an LLC and I know everybody’s situation is different. I’ve been asked that question I don’t know how many times you know, with the being being here at an owner operator company and I you know, I mean, I can’t tell them I don’t know if they need to see an attorney about that and what they need to do if they need to see you guys or an accountant or what but no, there’s there’s pluses and minuses to everything. There’s not just one blanket answer for that is they’re on whether they should have an LLC or so.
Jeff Amen 34:24
Your questions are fantastic. And this is as you said, I mean these guys are getting blasted on the radio, Sally radio all day every day they’re hearing about it and truckstops incorporate incorporate incorporate right and do it in Delaware and do it wherever we spend more time if you want we do any formations in every state in the country for we do it every day. Bigeye should be an LLC or an S corp or something. And I’ll talk a little bit in detail about that but we do it for melodies. We know a lot about that work. The first thing I would say is if anybody listening is a C corporation. Call us and let us dissolve that immediately because C corporations are often there’s no reason for any owner operator to be a C Corp that I can think of. I can’t think of a single time in 25 years, we’ve had one where it made sense. And the reason is, there’s double taxation, and they’re paying taxes on the profit of the corporation, then they distribute those profits to themselves and pay taxes on it again. So it is a horrible deal. Anyway, the C corporation calls us so we can talk through it. And I think that interested me to dissolve it. Now two more important questions, would you ask Jeremy is sole proprietor LLC? S Corp? What makes sense? And that’s an awesome question. So the first thing I’ll say is, you know, I personally own several businesses, every one of them is an LLC. I like LCS, because they provide legal protection like a corporation, as opposed to a sole proprietor, where you get sued personally, as an LLC. They’re suing the business now you personally, so I like LLCs. From a legal perspective, we’re not a law firm. So it’s a great gift for me to give legal advice. So I’m just saying personally, my companies are all LCS, I think it’s, it’s smarter from a legal protection perspective, from a tax perspective. I love LCS, and we love LCS, the reason we do is let me go back. Why should I be a sole proprietor? Why should I be an S corp? And then because I think this feeds into the LLC question. So here’s, here’s, here’s the tax reasons why you might want to be a corporation, as a sole proprietor, and this is I’m gonna, I’m gonna make this I’m gonna give us a, you know, the 80,000 foot level, we can get into detail as an easy, 1000 foot level, this is how it works. If you are a sole proprietor, you’re paying self employment tax on all the profit that your business generates. So every dime of profit you’re paying self-employment tax on, if you’re a corporation, an S corporation, what we do is we set you up as an S corp. And then we’re going to make you an employee of your corporation, you’re going to pay yourself a salary out of your corporation. And at this point, instead of paying self-employment tax on all the profit of the business, because you’re an employee of your corporation, now you’re only paying FICA tax on the salary that you paid yourself out of the business. So not the end, and you’re not paying self employment on everything you’re paying FICA, on your salary. And that will save guys. So we start seeing this become effective somewhere around 70 to $75,000 of profit, net income in their business, that’s when it makes sense to think about filing your taxes as a corporation, and saving money. And they can save, you know, four or $5,000 up to $20,000. Plus depending on what their business is doing. Just by filing as an S corp, instead of as a sole proprietor. Now, it’s more complicated to be an S corp, you’ve got to do payroll, you’ve got to form your corporation, you’ve got to do payroll, you’ve got to file payroll taxes, you’ve got to stay current with the Secretary of State and all that. So like everything we do at ACBS, if you want to be a corporation, we’ll do all that work for it. We’ll formulate any if you want us to, we’ll do your payroll, we’ll file your payroll, we’ll do all that work. So this takes us so we do an analysis for every client every year is we’re doing their taxes, we do an analysis of what we can save them, if they file it as a corporation, then we reach out, okay, if you’re gonna if you file as a corporate we file for you as a corporation and stuff. So prior, here’s how much you can save. Do you want to make a switch and file as a corporation going forward? Now? That’s good, too. Yeah. So this gets to your question, Jeremy. What is the best entity to be sole proprietor LLC Corporation? The reason we love LLC is that because it’s an LLC, you get the legal protection of a corporation. But as now see, you get to choose whether you want to file your taxes as a sole proprietor or as an escort. So if you’re an LLC, and we’re going through that process of saying, Hey, we can save you $12,000 If we file your taxes as a corporation, do corporate returns, personal returns all that work, it’s gonna cost you a little more for us to do all that work, but there’s not much we can save you as an LLC. You say yeah, I want to do it all we do is notify the IRS for now on this LLC will file taxes as an S corp instead of a sole proprietor so now let’s see you’ve got the flexibility to file taxes in the most advantageous way to you as opposed to be locked in if you sole proprietor you can’t file as a corporation, your corporation you can’t find out as an LLC as a sole proprietor. If you’re an LLC, you FIRE File whichever way contagious to you.
Jeremy Kellett 39:38
Yeah, that’s good. I mean, it’s helped simplify it for me for sure. And hopefully, for our listeners because that’s a big question. You know, a lot of people have answered it when you said that you guys evaluate their stuff and then recommend, whether here’s what you could save if you did do this so fantastic.
Jeff Amen 39:58
Joyce We tell them how much they can save if we do it and it’s up to them whether they want us to do it. Oakley
Jeremy Kellett 40:04
Trucking is a 100% Owner Operator company. We specialize in Hopper, bottom and dump and pneumatic drivers. We provide the trailer free of charge and you provide the truck. We have a large customer base that reaches the whole United States as well as parts of Canada. Our owner operators live anywhere from Texas to North Carolina to Pennsylvania to Wisconsin and everywhere in between and we get them home weekends. We take it seriously when you join Oakley trucking because we need you to be successful. Oakley offers great benefits and a competitive mileage base. So you know that when your wheels are turning, you’re generating money, no matter if you’re loaded or empty. We understand that you want to make a good living and that you make our living. We only take on independent contractors and to be honest with you, we are very particular on who we lease on. You must have a good driving record, good work history and clean, dependable truck. So if you’re interested in Oakley trucking or just want some more information, you can go to Oakley trucking.com. Listen to our weekly podcast, the Oakley podcast and subscribe to our YouTube channel. How is this? This new technology? Helping you guys communicate with your client? I mean, I know. You know, when we started talking, you had mentioned the app which I had got on your website and looked at some stuff earlier today. And I saw that app there. It was called something else. Hmm, yeah, it was called the Home ITBS. Home. I like the name I like to have so how’s this stuff? I mean, you’re always got to be trying to make it simpler and easier for everybody. With technology, aren’t you?
Jeff Amen 41:43
We have heard man your questions are fantastic. And I didn’t even know you knew about that. We just literally, again, we spent a gazillion dollars, we’ve had an app for a few years, but we spent a fortune. I won’t use swear words, but it is expensive to do this work. But we spent a fortune and built a new app, if you will call the NGBs home. And it works. It works on the smartphone as your app from your smartphone as you can use it to a laptop or iPad, whenever you’ve got a tablet, you can use the hub and and this hub, the way we designed it to but I love about it is it communicates anything and everything that our clients need to know about their business. And, and so you know, we classify our clients in different ways. We’ve got clients that we call Eagles, and the eagle, you know, is somebody that just wants the big picture, tell me what my revenue looks like, what my expenses look like, how’s my contribution margin, my fixed costs? How, what’s the big picture of all that? How’s it looking, how the stacking up, how’s my business performing, and we’ve got charts and graphs that deliver that really simple, easy, cool to understand way, big picture. And then we’ve got clients that we call ourselves and our owls, man, they want to get in the weeds. And they want to, they want to see big picture charts and graphs, and they want to look at the p&l. And they want to drill all the way down to the receipt level on that p&l and understand every single number on that p&l And what made up those numbers on the p&l so so with our new hub, they have the ability to look at these things in any way they want to look at. whatever’s best for each individual. It’s just super neat and super easy. We rolled it out, kind of maybe three weeks ago. And I mean, it’s just our clients are going crazy over it and absolutely love it. We’ve had a lot of guys call it one to sign up because it’s information at their fingertips. For companies like you Jeremy, where we’re getting data downloads on a regular basis, they can watch I mean, every single week, they can see what’s every single day of the week, they can see what’s building, what their p&l is looking like and how their business is performing on a daily and weekly basis. They don’t wait until the end of the year to see how much money they made that kind of thing. So it’s a real
Jeremy Kellett 43:58
time. I mean, you’re getting close to real time, every day. I mean, absolutely
Jeff Amen 44:02
it is. The other thing is really neat as Mike was talking about what a massive deduction per diem is. There’s actually a per diem calculator on there where all you have to do every day, they open the hub and there’s a calendar and they just found that the calendar is there full if they’re out if they’re away from home is a full day or is it a partial day? And it captures and that will give them a running total of what that deduction looks like for the whole year to date. They’ve been in the truck so yeah, there’s just a I can literally I just did a two hour presentation on the hub to to a group if we could do a whole other podcast on the hub what delivers and how it works and and great tool it is but it Yeah, you’re right technology has allowed us to deliver our products, a lot of really neat and unique ways to our clients. But we also talked about the guys like I said, some of our clients despise technology and whatever flip phone they could still buy. And for those guys, I mean we have Guys, we asked him if he wants to do business electronically, or if he wants to do business on paper. For guys, why do business all on paper, they mailed us receipts, we’ll mail them, their p&l, we will do, we still may all just over 3000 p&l every single month to our clients, the ones that go on electronic, we’ve got three, or 3000. Clients that want everything on paper we deliver to them by paper can be a combination. They say what we know, for us to be successful, we’ve got to be the path of least resistance for our clients, right, we’ve got to be the easiest way to do business. So whenever they want to do business, we’re able to do business that way.
Jeremy Kellett 45:33
Y’all deal a lot with the spouses. Boy,
Jeff Amen 45:38
we do. Our client says we can’t. So that’s one of the questions when we onboard a new client. When somebody signs up for our service, we reach out to him within 24 hours. And they get what we call a business consultant, they’ve got business there. So a lot of people will get steps like, Oh my God, you’re dealing with 10s of 1000s of clients. I’m just a number there. That’s not how we do it. Every single client has their own personal business and sold here, that business holds there from cradle to grave. So that business all knows them, their family, everything going on in their world. And when the first question is, we onboard a new client, when the first thing we ask is, who do you want to have access to your information. And if they grant access to a spouse, we will talk to that spouse, if they don’t want to talk to the spouse we want. They tell us who we can talk to about what’s going on. And then with our business consultants, we’re not like accounting and law firms that start and stop clocks every time he has talked to him and send you a bill for talking right? We are communications free, they can call their business or their spouse can call the business anytime to talk about anything. There’s no charge for it. And we’ve got some spouses that will call us three times a week or twice a day to talk about something they want to talk about and it could be business or personal right. Maybe I need to do a credit card consolidation. Or maybe I want to talk about a second mortgage or what did they call anytime talking about anything we’ll talk to
Jeremy Kellett 46:59
That’s good. Anyway, that’s good to have that open line of communication for sure. That makes them feel better to have what’s going on is similar to a dispatcher, you know, at a trucking company that’s got a bunch of guys on display. It’s made December like that. So a couple other questions for us to wander down. One is, as I’m looking at your website, which I recommend everybody go to. I’m assuming it’s tbs.com. I forgot that at what the pit crew is, I’m looking on the website and it’s showing the pit crew. What’s the pit crew?
Jeff Amen 47:33
That’s pretty interesting that you saw, I noticed that so you know, trucking had the best years in the history of trucking coming off of COVID. And this year has been an unmitigated disaster for trucking. There’s a lot of owner operators and a lot of trucking companies are in panic mode. I was just talking to a group of Wall Street analysts that had a massive meeting with a lot of carriers around the country. And the number it was, it was a confidential conversation. But the numbers they gave me work were unbelievable. Staggering. They told me that they believe right now 80% of trucking companies in the United States are losing money. 10% are breakeven and 10% are profitable. And we see the same thing with owner operators. There is a massive shift in the owner operator population from carriers to the spot market when free was through the roof the last two years and the spot market dried up like it was non-existent this last year. And a lot of those guys are failing or fleeing to try and get back to carriers. So anyway, to long winded intro to your question, what is our tax relief pit crew. So this is our tax resolution team. If if you know any drivers that can be a company driver, owner operator, if you’ve got anybody you know, that has tax trouble, tell them to call us we we deal all day every day getting people out of trouble with the IRS and we’ve got so our pit crew team, that’s all they deal with is negotiations with the IRS we can get we can negotiate debt and we’ve had guys at over 400,000 that we’ve negotiated down to less than 30,000 Payable over you know, six years interest free. We just negotiate all day with him on payment plans that they can afford. We it’s just that is our group that helps guys that have back tax issues. It’s not a profit center for us, per se. We do it because once somebody has worked out a deal with the IRS, the IRS requires them to stay current and all their bookkeeping, accounting and tax work. They use us to do that for them. If they ever decided that they weren’t going to file a tax return, all of a sudden all that debt they owed comes back to them. So it for us it’s a win win again, you know, so many guys are out there, they got behind they’re afraid to tell anybody and they’re just on the run from the IRS and the IRS finds them at this carrier where they quit and they go somewhere else they just on the run until they get caught and get in trouble and end up in jail. All right, so the money monkey off their back, man, if any, you know anybody’s got trouble with the IRS have called us. And we’re not, we’re not like the ones you hear, like my brother in law is the head of sales for the largest tax resolution company in the country. And I watch these companies and how they operate, they charge these guys 10s of 1000s of dollars, and they don’t do any work for us, that’s probably too big of a statement. But that’s how it feels. We don’t do anything without first telling the client what we think we can accomplish and what it will cost for us to do it. We don’t say give us $5,000 . We’ll look at it, we say here’s what we think we can negotiate, here’s what we think the outcome will be. Here’s what it’ll cost: do you want us to do it or not. And so, I mean, it’s just and like I said, it’s not a huge profit center for us, we just do it to bring clients and get them on the right track and keep them current.
50:48
Going forward. We also have that monitoring product. So we’ll get the IRS notices the same as the client will. So we tell the IRS, hey, while you’re sending that notice, the client sends a copy to us and you can buy that product. So even if you’re not home HBs got the tax notice that is sitting in your kitchen, and we can read that and reply to it while you’re out on the road work. And
Jeremy Kellett 51:11
that comes with I guess you have different packages to suit everybody, whether it’s weekly packages, or monthly packages or, or whatever, when it comes to pricing. And they can find all that stuff out on the website. No, but
Jeff Amen 51:25
they do. But something along those lines, it’s important I looked it up just before I came in, Jeremy because the benefit of the relationship, like Oakley and ATBS have, is that you do send us some information electronically. So it’s easier for us to process instead of just waiting, you know, if you didn’t do that, we’ve got guys that, you know, at the end of the year, they’re gonna send us a Jack Daniel box with 2000 receipts in a mess. Because we have data interchange, it makes it easier for us to do business. And you also do sentiment deduction, which makes it a lot easier for clients to pay. We’ve got a lot of clients that when they think about switching carriers, they will go somewhere if they don’t do self introduction form because they won’t have to deal with credit card payments and that kind of stuff. So you’ll do some introduction to pay for our services, which makes it super easy for the client and easy for us to collect. Because you send us one cheque instead of us getting you know, 1000s of checks, we get one check. So it’s easy to process and we get their settlement data electronically, which makes it a lot easier for some processes. So because of those things in our relationship, we give a discount to our opening clients. So as you mentioned, we’ve got several different products based on what an individual might need. The product that 90% of our clients buy from us, is what we call the ATBS professional services and our professional services. I just looked up our weekly price. So our weekly price for professional services is $31.99 a week, our Oakley price for that service is $24.49 a week. So we have a 23% discount guys, or at least Honda Oakley versus just calling us and buying our services. And every time they pay us is tax deductible. So they’re going to get a big deduction, deduction, and the cost of our services. So I mean, that includes we do a business plan and a budget and all their bookkeeping, their monthly p&l Is their benchmarking. The quarterly tax estimates, urine, state federal tax returns, unlimited business holding all of that is included in that 21 $24.49 a week. Okay, so it’s two cups of coffee a week each for their entire back office, and their tax returns at the end of the year. So that’s the product that 90% of our clients buy, like I said, if somebody needs a real specialized service where, you know, they need to do payroll, payroll taxes and cash flow statements and balance sheets, and they need corporate returns and personal returns and that kind of thing. Then there would be some add on charges, we tell them what those are. But yeah, we do our clients or upgrades or at least to hopefully get a huge discount on our services.
Jeremy Kellett 53:58
Because you know, we got and said that about our owner operators. Jeff and Michael we got a lot of guys of course, are with you TABS that are here at Oakley. And I like what we talked to you about a little bit earlier about the benchmark and I want to make sure our listeners understand you know what you mean when you say benchmark when you’re comparing them. You have so many explanations that are just a little bit. You have so many companies that you compare them to other owner operators at other companies and I guess where they write maybe how you explain it better than I can. Yeah,
Jeff Amen 54:41
So every month we’re doing their p&l as we highlight, we benchmark them against other drivers doing the same kind of work and highlight where they need to make, where they’re doing great and where they need to make changes in their business. So these are best practices and maximizing their profitability in their business. But the other thing we do is as a company twice a You’re, we’ve got the big because we have more. The next biggest firm working with truck drivers in the country has less than 1000 clients. So like I said, we’re dealing with 10s of 1000s. We’ve got the largest database in the world on what’s going on with owner operators in trucking in the United States. And so twice a year, we do a massive study to see how the industry is doing, how every segment of the industry is doing reefer flat dry tankers, specialized work with heavy flatbed, then we look at, so we look at how the different segments are doing. And then we look at how carriers are performing inside those segments and the Department of the Justice, Department of Justice because of antitrust laws, the Department of Justice won’t let me publish a list and say, you know, here’s landstar, and JB Hunt Schneider, and hopefully in quality carriers and blah, blah, blah. And here’s how their drivers do or here’s how the companies do. I can’t I can’t publish that. But what we do is we give every one of our carrier partner carriers every carrier in the country that we work with, maybe 200 carriers, just about every carrier, government robbers we work with, we give them a unique random number that only they know. And so they can see how they compare to all the other fleets that are doing any kind of work. They see how they stack up. And so, you know, I pulled this literally this morning, because every time I pull it, man, I just get excited. We love working with Oakley owner operators, because it’s so fun for us to work with people that are successful, help them be more successful and help them to minimize what they pay in taxes and those kinds of things. And, and so I mean, I think these numbers are staggering. And I don’t think it might be sharing them. I didn’t tell you I was going to share them. But I pulled them out and I want to share them because like I said to me, they’re staggering. So I mentioned that when people don’t matter IT consulting firms like McKinsey, different magazines and publications, different consulting groups look at trucking and they find that owner operators that use ATPs average 40% higher net income than owner operators that don’t use a TBS. So that’s huge. That’s out there is probably making less than $50,000 a year the middle third of owner operators at ATBS I looked at what our middle third is our middle third of owner operators make right now and 2023 they’re making 86,000 a year that’s big number significantly higher like I said versus the less than 50 that the average owner operator is making out there now if you take all of our that’s that’s our middle third and that’s it. These guys have been with us for over a year. If you take all of our clients which includes like I said the guy who’s been with us less than a year are brand new around bridge view, occlude everybody, our average owner operator is making about $63,000 This year, still way higher than guys than the average owner operator out there. But these numbers are staggering. So here’s what I’m gonna do. Jeremy I pulled up the last. Okay, here’s 2020 and went back to the end of the year 2020 At the end of the year in 2020. Our industry average owner operator at ATBS made 68,000 Our average Oakley owner operator made 107,000 Wow. 58% more than our average client or Oakley clients made unbelievable. That’s awesome. 2021 Our average owner operator in the trucking industry made $71,000 Our average Oakley client made $120,000 70% more than our average client and our average clients made 40% More than the average. It’s unbelievable. 2022 Our average so 2022 pen.
Jeremy Kellett 58:51
Unbelievable. I mean, it was just Yeah. brutal
Jeff Amen 58:55
year. Our average owner operator went from making 71,000 down to 64,000. In 2022. Our average Oakley owner operator made 118,000. So our average client went from 71,000 down to 64,000. Our Oakley clients went from 120 to 180 all the way down to $1,000. Our average Oakley client in 2022 made 84% more than our overall average client. And like I said, our average class makes 40% More than guys that don’t use it and so this is 2023. Again, a lot of people will say this is the worst year in the history of trucking. Just like 2021 Maybe was the best year for Israel trucking. People say this year 2023 is the worst year in the history of trucking. Our average client this year right now. Looks like they’re gonna make $63,000 in 2023 Our average Oakley client $138,000 Wow. 100 and 20% more than the average out there, it’s just mind boggling, dude. It’s unbelievable. Like I said, we work with owner operators, every carrier in the country works with owner operators in every facet of the industry, it can be sand and gravel, oil, gas, it can be refrigerated, flat, dry. I mean, just anything you can imagine. We work with owner operators in every niche, last mile, final mile, every niche in the industry we work with, and yeah, you put up numbers that I mean, the numbers part of the clients put up are staggering, compared to what happens to the rest of the industry.
Jeremy Kellett 1:00:33
Wow, that’s man, that’s so awesome. I didn’t know he’s gonna do that. But that is some great numbers right there just to know, and these guys can, can compare meaning see for themselves that you make money by being with ATBS they make money by being with Oakley, you put a you put us two together? I mean, exactly, you fail, can you find a combination. But you know, a lot of it goes back to Jeff. Mako is Gasset. And that’s the guy making decisions and, and that guy driving right and doing right and, and working hard and all that. I mean, it goes back to him and that independent contractor and his work ethic and how he gets things done. And we’ve got a bunch of good ones Oh, weird Oakley, I’m telling you, we are blessed with some good ones. Yeah, we are blessed with some really good ones and, and continue on, and we’re having some good years. So it’s been a great, great ride for us, for sure. And gonna continue to do that, too. So, man, I appreciate you guys sitting down and joining me with all this, you know, wealth of information when it comes to taxes, because you just can’t I mean, and I encourage all our listeners to go back and listen to this over and over again. Because there’s so much good information in here that you and Michael shared with us on stuff that I know is gonna make a difference in what they’re doing. You know, I mean, we, we, of course, promote ATBS. But whether it’s ITBS or some other tech service, you need to make sure they know trucking, and you make sure you’re putting your, your livelihood and your money in good hands with somebody. So we recommend you go. We recommend you guys here for sure. Because I mean, the numbers say it all. I mean, that’s that’s a, we
Jeff Amen 1:02:23
I appreciate it. I agree with what you said, you know, if you’re not using us, make sure whoever you’re using is providing the services we’ve talked about today. And then the other thing I’ll say, I think courage, even if they’re not a client, and have zero desire to be a clan, I still encourage them to call, we’ve got a whole enrollment team. I encourage them to call and just talk to our enrollment team. Because if even if it’s not a client, if your guys that are need to be as clients, they give us their email address, we will give them we put out at least a couple times a week we put out newsletters, they will talk about what’s happening in the business, what’s changing, if there’s tax law changes, like we’ve talked about what those changes are. So even if they’re not using us, they take our material and hand it to whoever’s doing the workforce so that they know they’re people are up to date and looking at this stuff. So like I said, they don’t have to claim to get that stuff. Just call the tackler Enrollment Department and you don’t want it, you don’t want our services. Don’t sign up for him. Give us your email address. And let us provide you with that information. So you’re handing it to whoever is doing that work for you. Yeah, it’s and and the other thing I guess I’d say or appraising? Like I said, are the cost of our services cups of coffee a week? If somebody’s not sure. I mean, I’d encourage them to run side by side for two or three months. It’s not going to cost them hardly anything to do it. And they can look at what we’re providing versus what they’re getting today. And what they’re getting is great, don’t make a change if they’re getting better information from us. You know, at the end of the day, like I said, we don’t have salespeople we don’t want, we just don’t want anybody. We don’t have carriers, Jeremy comes to us all the time to pay for our services. Because when guys are making a lot more money, turnover goes down. Repossession rates go down for finance companies and banks and leasing companies. And so we always have people who want to pay for our services, but we refuse to accept that money. We will only let a client pay for the service, we will let somebody else pay for him because we want them to. If they’re paying for it, they have a vested interest in understanding it , using it and benefiting from it. So that’s just our philosophy.
Jeremy Kellett 1:04:22
That’s very good philosophy. Good point, too. I appreciate you guys. Visiting with me today. Good information man. As always with y’all today. TBS, y’all do a fantastic job, man. I really do appreciate it. And I’m sure our listeners do too.
Jeff Amen 1:04:36
As has been our privilege to be a partner since the beginning of the podcast and many years we’ve done business together and look forward to a lot more years doing this together.
Jeremy Kellett 1:04:47
But Michael, thank you guys, I appreciate everybody listening to the Oakley podcast you guys. Man. There’s some good information out there. You need to listen to that, take it to heart and make some good decisions about your business because here at Oakley, we want you to be successful. If you’re successful, we’re successful. appreciate y’all listening. We’ll talk to you next week. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Oakley podcast: trucking, business, and family. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate or review the show on the podcast platform of your choice and share it with a friend. We love hearing from our audience, so if you’ve got a question, comment, or just want to say hello, head over to our website, theoakleypodcast.com, and click the “leave a comment” button. We’ll get you a response soon and may even share some of the best ones here on the show. We’ll be back with a fresh episode very soon. Thanks for listening.