Bruenger Co Lease

About 3 weeks ago I applied to Roadrunner Transport wanting to do T2T LTL, so I applied and after a few days the phone rings. Hello, this is Hollie with Bruenger Co, and we would like to offer you a position. I reply who?? She says Hollie, with Bruengner, you put in an application with Roadrunner. I'm a little confused but ok. We would like to except your application for lease driver. Well I find out Roadrunner owned about 10 smaller companies and Bruenger Co is one. I assume this is where I would just do orientation for Roadrunner. Nope! This is where I will do Orintation for Bruenger as a refer driver. Now I have never hauled refer freight so new adventure I guess.

I live in Kansas so yesterday I drove to Wichita for the first day of orientation and start lease process. Really nothing to orientation thrust far. I went and inspected the truck I would lease, came up with a long list of repaired that need addressed before I sign my paperwork. Truck went to shop and I'll find out more tomorrow. As for the office staff, nice group of lady's who will honestly answer questions. If they don't know they will find out.
On this lease we get 70% + 100% FSC. I am not doing the Lease to buy the truck but to learn the business side of Trucking. I will Lease for 30mo and if I want to I could buy truck for a ballon payment of $15,000. by that point the truck will have 700,000 miles and they can keep it. I get a free 2 1/2 year business degree in trucking. It is a non forced dispatch, but you have payments so beware of being too picky.

I plan to treat this as a busyness and even pay myself a milage rate. I hope to have better days than bad days and save money if I can. I will have some out of pocket cost such as Health Insurance, and am shopping the market. I hope to develop this thread as I move toward and share my success and failure, while learning the inside and outs of LP.

 

Well darn I had a long post earlier about my day to orientation and I thought it posted I guess it didn't. Hell that's alright I guess I'll go over my 2nd day of orientation, and bring everybody up to speed. Day 2 of orientation pretty much we met five different individuals and three of the five went over the same exact information. The duplication of re-sharing the same information it's probably something they could fix in future orientations and focus more on one area at a time that specific to that department.

The first department that we met with was the day time dispatch manager, seem like a really nice guy and shared a lot of information as far as what dispatch expects when requesting time off or things that would help like pre-trip planning.

we met what was called a driver advocate who's there to assist the lease purchase or if they're having issues for cannot work out problems with others within the company.

Met the lady who I assume to be the CFO and she spoke about paperwork and what was needed in order to be paid on your settlements. Really appears like there's a lot of little things that could get you in trouble or cost you money when it comes to paperwork. It will be very important to learn their system very quickly and be very accurate at what you do.

I met the chief mechanic who did not seem like he was having a very good day, or it could've been that he just does not like truck drivers. He informed us that the hourly rate to have the truck worked on in the company shop would be $85 an hour, but they had twice as many trucks and less drivers than they did a few years ago and we could expect long wait times to have things repaired. One of his mechanics informed me that us lease purchase a drivers expectations are unrealistic as far as what we think we should be getting when we start a lease. I left that conversation with him as I disagree and feel that for the cost of the lease you should be getting a good quality unit that you're able to drive your business into the future with. I hope that the mechanics were just having a bad day and hope for a good working relationship with them in the future.

Met the vice president of operations, I read another post that he'll pretty much say one thing and do the other or he's very hard or difficult to get a hold of. I imagine when you're one guy overseeing approximately 250 trucks and all the other departments you probably pretty busy. He of course made the same promises to my group give us all his card, and informed us that we can call him either day or night if we needed help. He also push the safety vs load subject and informed us that safety was always first. He also informed us that we had 30 days of warranty on our truck that we lease into that for the first 30 days they would take care of any maintenance issues that arose. I pressed the conversation with him and asked about catastrophic failures such as an engine, and what was the company's plan if something like this was to occur. Lucky for me there was a driver from California who happened to experience an engine failure and was there to rent a company truck for the week while his truck was being repaired. The cost for the rental of a company truck was $70 a day and seven cents a mile and the company was working with the driver to get repairs to his truck and they would add what he owed into his weekly settlements. The driver of the truck probably would not make much money but he would be able to pay off his weekly payments insurances and still possibly bring home a couple hundred dollars for that week instead of just sitting around and not generating revenue.

Having never worked refer myself, I do have some concerns of how this job will fit me as a driver. I do have some assurances now after I was told that if I do not like reefer work , that being part of the Road Runner family I could leave this company take my lease truck and go to work for any other of Roadrunner10 company's.

As far as trucks go there were three other individuals who attended orientation one from Florida one from Tennessee and one from Louisiana. The driver from Louisiana ended up getting a 2012 Peterbilt with an I SX 13 speed. This was a really nice truck I would've called it the Cadillac of trucks and it also came with an APU. Both the Florida and Tennessee driver got the 2013 Volvo idrive. I also could I had a Volvo but having heard a lot of bad things about the idrive I chose to stay with the Freightliner Columbia 13 speed with the ISX. I was not so lucky when it came to trucks as I've stated earlier I found a lot of maintenance issues that need to be addressed. I still have not or will not sign a contract until these issues are addressed. They did put brand-new brakes all the way around on the Freightliner, and are going to put recap tires on the back. I tried to push the issue for virgin rubber but am learning I have to pick my battles. Virgin rubber would've been an option if I would've paid the difference between the recap and the cost of the new tire. I did notice that my cruise control still does not work and address the VP regarding this issue again and he assured me that they would get it fixed.

I have returned home today as I still have four days of employment with my current employer then I will return Monday to start over the road with my new company that's if my truck is ready to go and the repairs have been made. That's far it has been a good experience I have met some friendly people that seem intent on helping me move forward as a lease driver. I will share in a little bit a sample of a settlement that was given to us to explain how the insurance payments and all and other factors of this work.

 

So want to sample report they had a driver who drove from Kansas out to California log approximately 1412 miles. He dropped his load and picked up a load in California and took that to Ohio for 2302 miles. He is paid 70% of the load so for his miles along with his fuel surcharge he made $4258.80.

After paying his weekly truck payment escrow and maintenance state feel taxes plates permits unloading costs and feel a check was made to the driver for $1497.15 ... This comes to approximately .45 cents a mile.. Of course you still have to pay you state / fed taxes and health insurance cost..

 

I am sorry, let me better explain this. The driver can request money to pay the lumper fees or pay them and be reimbursed. Ultimately you'll charge the shiper for the lumper fees. Let me know how it goes with AAA express I believe they're Also Rd., Runner company? Would like to know what the differences are between the two.