By the mid-late 1980s, when Jay Hosty was in his mid-20s, he'd already been through three trucks as an owner-operator -- a 1971 gas-powered International and then a couple of cabovers bought used -- hauling containers for Brown Transport. He then made a move his elder container-pulling owner-operators on his Southeast runs told him was going to be a career killer in the out-and-back niche.
It was 1987. "I never thought I'd own a new truck that soon," said Hosty, yet it was working out right -- the trade-in value on the cabover he was pulling with, the cost of the 1987 International 9300 conventional he was about to replace it with... "Associates Finance -- they were famous for doing commercial vehicles, they took me on in the very beginning" for the financing, he said, much to his surprise.
His rate for revenue at the time, as he told: "72 cents a mile, loaded and empty."
He was working with Brown early on running local around New Orleans with a lot of older men. They called him a kid. Owner-operators who've been around a long time may remember Brown for a kind of mascot that was the company's emblem. "They called him 'the Brownie,'" said Hosty. "He looked like a little Robin Hood or something, a little character."
Those seasoned experts amongst the prior generations at Brown and related companies got one look at the kid's sharp new 9300 and "started asking me what my payments were," Hosty added -- $1,400 every month, for five years. "They said, 'You are never going to make it pulling these containers for 72 cents a mile. You're going to have to go over-the-road.'"
