let's talk fleet managers

Good luck dude. Perhaps you will be one of the few who make it through the first year. I recommend folks run company first to figure it out, not to dis you, but to help get past the 4 out of 5 failure rate. The deck is stacked against new drivers, and anything they can do to help prepare themselves is money in the bank. Make sure you have an accounting system... relying on a CPA in April doesn't do anything for you during the other 11 months.

 

Ironpony ive seen you tell countless new guys not to start off leasing. For the most part i agree. Usually they have no cash reserves. YA GOT TA HAVE CASH RESERVES IF YOU PLAN ON STARTING A BUSINESS. Likewise you absolutely positively must know your operating numbers dont wait till the end of the year in February when you do your taxes when your accountant looks at you and says. HEY STUPID YOU DONT MAKE NEARLY AS MUCH AS YOU THOUGHT. Any lease or o/o out there should be able to give a few numbers by memory ytd gross, ytd net, gross all miles, net all miles, ytd fuel expense, ytd mantenance, and ytd misc expense. But that has to do with math and diligence not experience. I have always wondered though why guys describe leasing to the new people as if its very difficult making statements like you no idea what your getting into. You would think leasing must be as difficult as running a fortune 500 company. Heres my case. What do you really have any control of when you lease? Do you have access to the load board and thrus you plan your freight lane? Do you negotiate your rate with a broker? Do you have the ability to modify the truck make it faster or more efficient? I dont get it if people who lease have such little control then what can they really do all that wrong? Kinda hard to make wrong decisions when you dont make any. They send you the load, you request fuel routing, you plan your trip . What do lease drivers really do that company drivers dont i dont get it IP. Please explain it to me.

 

Agreed, but experience is something that helps even with numbers. One tends to go the difficult route if doing it themselves with spreadsheets until you get the game figured out. The less work you have to do, the easier it is to keep up with it.

No it's certainly not "running a fortune 500 company," although many of the things that you do to run such an operation are applicable (scaled down properly) to one guy in one truck. However, I'll stand by the statement that an inexperienced driver fresh out of training has no business getting themselves hooked up with a truck lease. That's the last thing one needs, especially from the standpoint that they have no clue about whether they can deal with the stresses that OTR driving puts on one, or even if they can stand the job. Hating your life because of what you're doing day in and day out from an employment point of view is no way to live your life.

There are strict limits to what you can do, but that's the case in many situations in trucking. Let's start with the truck... in the case of a straight lease, you cannot make changes to the truck that cannot be reversed when you turn the truck in. In the case of Prime, you're signing a 3-year lease contract... so installing a bypass oil filter isn't in the cards. Choosing to pay for low rolling resistance tires is a decision you can make, instead of buying the cheapest Chinese junk tires you can find... and that does have a big effect on your bottom line. You can hone your driving technique to the point that your fuel economy can be better than many folks with full control of what they can do with their truck, and a full suite of performance mods. That takes experience, and the place to get it is on the company-side... not while you're having to pay for a truck lease AND whatever bills you have to finance your life.

In terms of loads and dispatch... some leases do afford the ability of a driver to choose from multiple loads. That's something that a newb with no experience really can't be expected to do well. At Prime, the load planners present the best load available for your operation at the time you come to the top of the local dispatch queue (you're not being considered for loads in LA when you're near NYC for example.) Sometimes it comes across as the full load assignment... sometimes as a preplan. You have the right to reject that load. If it's a full load assignment, you go back to the bottom of the queue if you reject it. That prevents one driver from cherry-picking the best loads, and makes it a bit more equitable for all. The point being is you can reject that load... without incurring retribution... unless your FM is a total scumbag. As for choosing freight lanes, one can certainly work something out with your FM so that you are only doing certain lanes/regions of the country.

Now I will agree that's not the same as an owner/operator running his own hardware, but a lease truck isn't yours either. It still belongs to Success Leasing Inc., and you have an operating contract with Prime Inc.

The biggest "wrong decision" you can make in this is abdicating your control over what is available for you to control. There are plenty of decisions you make from where and how you buy fuel, to who works on your truck. Allowing the Prime maintenance advisors to make decisions about how your money is going to be spent is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. Someone right out of training really doesn't have the experience to make such decisions, and the way to get to that point is running on the company side.

Allowing Prime to make your route and fuel decisions is another huge mistake that inexperienced drivers make. The macro 27 fuel routing is programmed to keep inexperienced drivers out of trouble, and to determine how much fuel and at what price that is in the best interests of Prime. Abdicating that control can cost you thousands of dollars every year. Macro 27 is optimized to keep company drivers from bankrupting the company via the fuel bill... not to make you as much money as possible as either a lease or owner op.

Prime's routing will send you on routes that go straight up the sides of mountains to save a few miles, and run you on toll roads that cost hundreds of dollars. A driver with experience can make much better routing decisions than either macro 27 (shortest route) or macro 15 (fastest route.) I took issue with the OPs question on another thread concerning routing... avoiding perfectly good routes on limited access US highways and interstates (non-toll) just to run the fat line on the map called the Indiana/Ohio/Pennsylvania toll roads. Decisions like that are the kind of thing that are the difference between wishing you were a company driver because they're making more than you are, and making a lot more money based on your better decisions than the company makes for you.

The key to this is operating your truck 100% more efficiently than the company guys at the direction of the company. The lease operator failure rate both industry-wide and at Prime attest to this... the deck is stacked against the inexperienced driver. The way to get around that is by educating yourself through practical experience on the company side, and studying the subjects necessary to make yourself a knowledgable business person. At Prime (which has a better rate than the overall industry) fully 75% of the people starting leases will not complete them... most in the first year. Only between 1 out of 5 to 1 out of 4 actually are successful. That means the deck is stacked against you.

 

I think you should do company first,beside any one of the good FM are not going to touch. You they probably have a full board.I hate to agree on this with Ipony go company first man,this is my first week on a lease I tell you that year that I spend on the company side is helping a lot,especially with the fuel ,where you buy it and how how to save it.Good luck man.

 

I was lazy and didn't read most of this thread, but I'll chirp in and mention that my TNT trainer leased from day one and has been very successful. He does have a good fleet manager and a good relationship with him, which is probably one of the most important factors when it comes to leasing.

 

My gosh IP what a long post. thanks for taking the time to post all that. Im still only seeing a few things that are different and if i had to summarize your post it would go like this. 1. You choose which tires you run 2. You choose routing and fuel stops that are common sense which you learn about using the same tools avail. to a new guy i.e. map book, gps, marco 15 & 27, even internet. 3. You choose who works on your new truck when it does get work done that isnt covered by warranty. Will company driving actually help here? Kinda thing you just gotta get your feet wet on. 4. 1 out 5 fail. But thanks true with just about anything in life. How many people succeed and make it into the upper class? What is the success rate of any new business? Look IP anybody with some dedication, hard work, and common sense can do just about anything in this life and so can you OP. Good luck on your lease man! Leasing isnt some lost voodoo art its just work IP.

 

How much do you know about diesel engines? Can you diagnose the cause of the wear patterns you see on your tires? What's a feathered edge, and what does it mean? Can you calculate the base price of fuel. We already know the OP can't figure out what the cheapest route to run is... where can you find parking in Seattle at 8 PM? Can you explain the split sleeper berth rule, and what it can do for you? These are the kind of things you really need to know BEFORE you stake your financial future on a truck lease... and you shouldn't have to train in order to pay your bills. Why do you need to know this stuff? So the moron in the truck garage doesn't take advantage of you. So the slick tire salesman doesn't sell you a tire that will run forever, but cost you thousands every year in fuel. Because we live or die with on-time service at Prime, and if you can't deliver the service required by the most challenging loads that are the real gold mines here, your gross revenue will suffer.

Don't believe me about the 1 in 5 success rate? Ask Fred in leasing. Is leasing some "lost voodoo art?" Considering the numbers of people who can't make something "so simple any trainee can make a million bucks leasing" work, it must be. And the numbers of independent owner ops who depend on factoring to get to their next tank of fuel... that's the financial crack cocaine of having your own authority... that must be voodoo as well. Let me correct you about something... work is what company drivers, i.e., employees, do- and there is nothing wrong with that. What we do is run a business (80% of all new businesses fail in the first year across all industries and business activities... SBA figures.) If you play at leasing as if it's some kind of job on steroids, you will fail.

BTW... I don't lease. I am an owner-operator. That's what success is called at Prime.