I skipped preventative maintenance to save a dollar. Every time I did, I told myself I'd catch up next month. I never did. And it cost me everything in the end.
Loads moving. Driver on the road. Money coming in every week. From the outside — and from the inside — everything looked like it was working.
It wasn't. The loads weren't profitable. The maintenance was getting skipped to save a dollar. The dispatchers, brokers, and factoring companies were all getting paid. When it finally collapsed, the bankruptcy attorneys and the bill collectors were the only ones calling.
Not the dispatcher. Not the broker. Not the factoring company. They had already gotten their cut.
We went back through two years of data. Every load. Every mile. Every dollar in and out. That's where the OSS came from — and that's what it exists to prevent.
This is what the end of a trucking business looks like. Not a slow wind-down. Phone calls. Every day. From people who had already taken their percentage and moved on.
When margins are thin and the bills are piling up, preventative maintenance looks like a luxury. You push it another week. Then another month. The truck is still running. Nothing has broken yet.
But deferred maintenance doesn't disappear — it compounds. A $500 PM becomes a $4,000 repair. A $4,000 repair becomes two weeks sitting. Two weeks sitting means missed loads, missed payments, and a cash flow hole you can't dig out of.
I skipped preventative maintenance to save a dollar. Every time I did, I told myself I'd catch up next month. I never did. And it cost me everything in the end.
The OMS inside Compass Star OSS exists for exactly this reason — not to track maintenance after it's done, but to prevent the skip that starts the spiral.
This is a real hot shot load. Non-CDL. $1.95 a mile — which sounds workable until you run every deduction all the way through. The load board shows you rate per mile and total revenue. What it doesn't show you is everything that comes out first.
The CPM Calculator runs this math before you commit to the load — so you know what you're agreeing to before the wheels turn.
Run a load right now — freeAfter going through every load, every maintenance record, and every dollar — three problems kept showing up. No load profitability visibility. No maintenance system. No clear financial picture over time. The OSS answers all three.
Both tools are completely free. No trial limits. No credit card. No catch. Use them as long as you want before you decide anything else.
Plug in a load and see what you actually keep after every deduction — dispatcher 10%, factoring 2.85%, $40 quick pay, driver pay, fuel, deadhead. Get a clear verdict before the wheels turn.
Open the calculator →13-point FMCSA inspection form done digitally. Fill it out, sign it, print it or save as PDF. Keep your compliance records clean without the hassle.
Open the inspection form →Run a load through the calculator and we'll email you the results. No pitch. No follow-up. Just your numbers when you need them.
The OMS tells you what your truck needs. We show up and handle it — mobile, at your location, no shop downtime. No guessing. No pushing it another week.
Mobile service within 50–70 miles of Terre Haute, IN. Pro subscribers book directly from dashboard.
It was built after losing a trucking business that looked profitable right up until it wasn't. Two years of loads, a driver on the road, revenue coming in — and then nothing left. When we went back through the data, the problems were all there. They just weren't visible without a system to surface them.
I wasn't making 14 cents a mile. I was losing 14 cents a mile. After paying my driver to run it. After paying dispatch to book it. After paying the factoring company to fund it. I paid everyone else to help me go broke.
The OSS is what should have existed. Every piece of it came from going through that data and asking what would have caught this earlier.
Read the full storyThe free tools are yours right now. Start with one load. Run the real numbers. See what you're actually keeping before you commit to the run.