From 13 Trucks to 60: What One FedEx Contractor Learned About Letting Go

If you've ever felt like you're the only thing holding your operation together, you're not alone — and according to Taylor Maness, that feeling is usually the clearest sign it's time to change how you run your business.

Taylor's path from 13 P&D trucks (working alongside his dad) to a company now running roughly 60 trucks across P&D and Linehaul in three states wasn't about finding a secret shortcut. It was about recognizing, again and again, that he was the bottleneck.

The Real Growth Problem Isn't Trucks — It's People

Early on, Taylor's expansion came from opportunity: buying operations that came up for sale, entering new territories, and picking up well-run businesses at a premium because they already had strong management in place. But he was candid that growth stalls out fast if you don't solve the harder problem underneath it: recruiting.

"If you have enough people, you can rent trucks. You can't rent people."

That distinction — between a logistics problem and a recruiting problem — is one every contractor eventually runs into, whether they're scaling P&D routes or building out a Linehaul fleet of solo drivers.

Give People Room to Fail — On Purpose

One of Taylor's biggest turning points was realizing that stepping back didn't mean lowering his standards. It meant training someone, then getting out of the way long enough to let them struggle with the parts of the job he used to handle himself.

"You sucked at it once, too. If you give them that time to suck at it, and you're the one to correct them, they'll act more like you than you'd think — because they're just going to want to do it how you did it."

That mindset shift showed up in how he built out his team's responsibilities:

Daily tasks — the fundamentals every business coordinator (BC) should own: checking trucks, talking to drivers, coaching safety.

Weekly tasks — payroll, HR follow-ups, anything tied to the operation's ongoing service standards.

Monthly tasks — inspections, MVR reviews, and other longer-cycle compliance items.

Each task came with a simple scorecard: pass or fail, with a clear conversation about what to fix next time. No overthinking, no shifting goalposts — just consistent follow-up until the person didn't need him checking in anymore.

The Two Fears Every Owner Faces When Delegating

Taylor was refreshingly honest about what almost kept him from letting go: recruiting and payroll.

With recruiting, the fear was personal — if he handed it off and a new hire felt misled after joining, he'd feel responsible either way. With payroll, the fear was existential: what if a mistake meant his drivers didn't get paid, and they walked?

Both fears turned out to be manageable. A payroll error did happen — manual checks, a real headache — but as long as drivers were made whole and understood mistakes happen, nobody left. The lesson: the thing you're most afraid to delegate is often the thing most worth delegating, because your team can absorb more disruption than you expect, as long as you're honest with them when things go sideways.

It Took Three Years — And That's Normal

Both Taylor and Ancile's Ronak Shah agreed on the timeline: it took roughly three years to get their operations to a place where they weren't needed on-site every day. That journey looked different across P&D and Linehaul — P&D required near-daily presence early on, while Linehaul allowed for more distance sooner — but the pattern was the same: heavy involvement up front, tapering as trained people proved they could carry the load.

And even then, Taylor was clear-eyed about what "hands-off" really means in this business:

"It'll never become passive income. Nothing in this world... unless your granddad dies and leaves you a bunch of money."

Systems reduce the fires. They don't eliminate them.

The One Exercise Taylor Recommends This Week

For any contractor wondering where to start, Taylor's advice was concrete:

Write down every task you personally handle for the company.

Note how much time each one takes you.

Price out what it would cost to hire that task out.

Ask yourself: how much time do I actually want back?

Then do the math on what your time is really worth — divide what your company makes by the hours you put in. Once contractors see that number, the case for delegating tends to make itself.

The Bottom Line

Scaling a FedEx contractor operation — whether on the P&D or Linehaul side — isn't about working harder or finding a playbook nobody else has. It's about building the financial visibility to know where your money is going, putting the right people in place to run the day-to-day, and having the discipline to step back once they're ready.

This conversation is part of an ongoing series built by contractors, for contractors — a space to learn from other operators' mistakes instead of repeating your own.