Poor house

Same story different driver. Stayed out on an average of 4+ weeks at a time-the ONLY way to even come close to making a decent living. Was there just short of a year. Got home once(!) on time for my daughters wedding. The equipment is cheap-got stuck with a Columbia (Freightliner's biggest piece of crap) with the mercedes motor (another joke) and the autoshift (pathetic piece of garbage). Was actually quieter in the cab with the drivers window down than up. Spent 32 days in the shop-first trip 2 months after getting into this crap. Was down for 8 days while the dealer took care of 4 recalls on the engine and replaced both diffs. Freightliners warranty is as good as their junk trucks-guess who pays for shipping on all of the parts (many which should have been stock items). Second stay at the shop was to replace evrything in the bell housing-rear seals, flywheel, clutch, etc. 8 days downtime. Different dealer same nonsense-nothing in stock. Bend over.
Home time? Surely you jest! After staying out 6 weeks tried to get home for Thanksgiving. I live in N.Y. 20 minutes S.E. of Rochester. Was at the Flying J in Carlisle, Pa. Nothing going my way I was told unless you want to deadhead home. 10 minutes after another Dart driver asked for directions to a Rochester receiver. Driver was also trying to get home-you guessed it, the opposite way. Asked him about the load-it had been sitting there in Harrisburg waiting for some one to take it-from the day before. Took a load to Tyler, Tx. Only thing in that area going out was to upper Minnesota. Deadheaded to Shreveport, LA. Petro. Had to take a load to Mississippi out of AR. BUT-they deducted the miles from Tyler to Shreveport> Said made an unauthorized move. Stuck again. Put in for home time at Christmas-another 4 weeks out. 4 days before Christmas in S.w. Ohio same B.S. loads going to TX, extreme N.W, Minn., Upper Wis. none to N.Y. told the day dispatch I would wait until the next day to see if anything came up. Messaged dispatch after "The Man" (Dart drivers will know who this is), went home. Got a load going 4 miles from home delivering 2 days before Christmas. Was told by night dispatch that it had been sitting for 2 days-no one wanted to take it. Explained to night disp. what had happened-when I told them who I had been dealing with they they understood perfectly. December 27 got a call at 4:30 A.M. from "The Man" to ask about a load that live loaded at 13:00 THE NEXT DAY and delivered west of Chicago the next morning. Got out of bed-walked to the truck-checked the quall-messaged back "Can't do legally". Received quall message 5 minutes later "call operations after 08:00 Central time. Operations called me 08:05 to cancel operating agreement. Reason-Communications Issues! What!!?? Called the A team (figured out what the A stood for). Wasted call. Returned the truck, no hard feelings there. I lost my maintenance account $. They took them to pay the Jan lease payment-another rookie (I assume) driver took the truck in time to pick up the payments from there. Broke even;walked away from the whole nightmare. Lease-purchase plans should be illegal. At least I was home on time for once to take a cruise we had already paid for. Got a local job a week after we returned making well over what we did at Dart. Maybe I should thank "The Man" he helped me to do what I had been trying to do for quite some time-get off the road.

 

I've read the lease/purchase problems and these stories are not new. In 1972, there were lots of companies selling and reselling the same trucks over and over. It never changes.. There's a large company in Missouri right now that (I've been told) has a class action lawsuit against them for the same thing.

However, IF you already own your truck when you lease to DART, it's not a bad company. We've made much better money elsewhere, BUT we are able to stay in the area we want to run with DART and we couldn't do that before. It all depends on your timing and priorities.

If we had a big truck payment, we could not make it at DART.

 

Its awful what these types of companies get away with.

 

How is Dart out of IL for company drivers? All the negatives I've seen so far are on the lease options.

 

:smt102.
well! i,m glad i read those msges about dart.
i was about to put my app online and had called them previously.
the one thing that caught my attention was that when i called the first time(about a few weeks ago) i asked about the trucks a nd was told to pick the truck b4 going to orientation.
it was like i had no choice as to what color or whether the truck was in good shape(condition wise). anybody recomend a good company to do lease purchase?.
if anybody has info it would be greatly appreciated.
i also wanted to add that i,m previously driving for wstrn xprs.
i left them a bit ago and ran for an o/o, made good money untill was pushed to run illegal constantly.
i return to wstrn for more punishment.
good miles to start,now my miles hv dropped.
been told cause of reccession.
also ran with transam almost 2yrs ago as lease op.
what a mistake!!!!!! no support what so ever!!
gave notice to quit and was told OK!.
aw heck! u can't win!!! ROYAL SCREWING!!!

 

All trucking companies who lease equipment are about same - Dart is probably as good as they get - some are much worse than what I've read here. You are almost always better off to have your truck independent from the company you are leasing to - if you get in a nest of snakes, you can take your truck and go to a different company without losing what you have already worked for.

There are two or three other nationwide leasing companies, one of which does not require brand new equipment. Don't recall which one it is, but with the economy like it is now, I would never buy or lease new.

Depending on how long you have been driving, there are other options:

1) If you have a good relationship with a banker, go talk to him/her. That's how we bought our truck and our bank doesn't finance trucks! But we've used them for 17 years and they know us, so they loaned us the money. Had a 7% loan when the best truck loan you could get was 14%..


2) If you haven't had any credit problems, check with leasing companies (like LCA). You can do a lease purchase through them (which means you have to do the capital gains thing, taking depreciation allowance on the equipment for three, four, or five years - your tax man can tell you what's best for you) OR you can do a STRAIGHT LEASE, which means you can deduct 100% of your lease payment, plus all expenses, and then walk away at the end of the lease... You will not own the equipment when the lease is over. (You can buy the equipment instead, at lease-end, usually for 25% of the purchase price, if you should want to keep a particular truck)

 

CPLMAC2

My husband has talked to a couple of their drivers; they were fairly pleased with their jobs. Said they had plenty of miles, got home as often as they had been promised. But that part depends on where you live, as I'm sure you already know.

 

Now I have to do "detective work" since I don't know who "The Man" is... We live a sheltered life in the "Super South Division"... Glad your story had a terrific ending! Congratulations and God Bless you!

 

After all I have read about leasing trucks I don't understand why anyone would lease from the same company you drive for. Buy your truck independently and lease on to a company. That way you can take your truck and move on if it's not working out and you keep the truck. Besides, if you buy a used truck the payments are going to be much less than if you lease it.

 

If they are going to treat O/O that way then I doubt you have much to look forward to driving for them.