Norman gets six-month suspension

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by ELA

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

I didn't say the guy making $55,000 a year was "making a decent living". I said about the guy making $55,000 a year that "That's not a lot of money but it's enough to get by, especially in a small town". That was my quote. I never said that the trainers at the smallest tracks charge $55 a day. I would expect to see $55 a day at some of the smaller tracks, not necessarily the smallest tracks. We have a horse at Mountaineer who has not run yet. I just looked at the bill and the trainer is charging us $48 a day. On the other hand, one of our trainers at Hollywood Park is charging us $100 a day. Depending on what track you're at, you could see anything from around $45 a day all the way up to around $120 a day. There are certainly trainers that charge $55 a day and that's not at the big tracks. at the big tracks, most of them charge between $75-$100.

Are you saying that most trainers don't take a salary? Cannon Shell told you that they take a salary. If they didn't take a salary, they couldn't survive. What do you think the average trainer's horses make in a year? Maybe $250,000? If they didn't take salary, that would mean that the avegra trainer was making less than $25,000 a year.