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Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin
Are you including their salary? There are hundreds of trainers across the country whose horses earn under $200,000 for the year. These guys are obviously making more than $20,000 a year. I'm not saying they're getting rich. I'm not saying that by any means. I'm sayng that they're getting by and making a living. Let's say you have a trainer at one of the smaller tracks and he has 20 horses and they earn a total of $200,000 for the year. Let's say the trainer is charging $55 a day. What would his salary be? He'd probably be making around $6 a day per horse. That means he's making $120 a day, so his salary would probably be around $3,600 a month. So this guy would probably be making a little over $50,000 a year total. That's not a lot of money, but it's enoiugh to get by, especially in a small town.
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This is where your theory is inaccurate and flawed. If a trainer were charging $55 per day they wouldn't be living in a small town and couldn't be making a decent living at $55,000 per year. We are completely neglecting the real cost of living and I am not talking about some hypothetical nonsense where we believe that the inflation rate is 3%, and a person's cost of living is stagnant.
I have a trainer at Penn National -- a high %, leading trainer. The guy shoots very good. He charges $45 a day. So your theory of "he'd probably me making $6 a day per horse" is, a) completly hypothetical and nothing more than a guess, and b) flawed because the $55 per day is not realistic. He couldn't possibly make the same amount of money you claim he is making (in your purely hypothetical claim) at $45 a day as he would be making at $55 a day. The economics make no sense.
I think most trainers don't make money on their daily rate and if there is a salary built into the equation, there is not enough room to make a so called "living" exclusively on the daily rate. At best it might pay for some personal expenses. I know too many trainers who aren't "making a living" off of just training horses. I think the money is in the portion of the 10% they get to net or keep, the bonus or commission, if you want to call it that, on a big horse being sold, and other variables.
There are economies of scale that most trainers cannot take advantage of unless and until they get their operation to a point of scale where they can make money. I have heard of trainers making money on the daily rate by potentiallycutting corners on help, doing the work of a man/woman themselves, cutting corners on feed, equiptment, or cutting corners some other way.
We have a trainer here telling us the real and accurate situation. I see no reason not to believe that other than to perpetuate some massive facade.
Eric