A Question for Trucking Companies

What do you consider a successful lease op program? Now I agree with most of what has been said in here so far about lease programs are scams and companies have it set that you make X each week/year evene though they tell you they are giving you the best load availabe we know that isn't the case. The carriers that lease you a truck and control your frieght are the ones to stay away from. That is to much control they have over you. They spread the wealth around so everyone is basically making the same gross amount each week and if you trun down a load, you might as well just take the day off or two.

If you can lease a truck, which by the way a lot of dealerships do allow you to lease a truck directly from them, then you can lease on to any carrier you want or run the load boards yourself. Leasing is by far the most expensive way to own a truck. This argument that at the end of the 3 or 4 year lease you'll own an old truck and have to deal with the expense of repairs with a truck that old so you shouldn't lease is total stupid. Either way after 3-4 years you are going to have a truck that is 3-4 years old wether it's leased or you went out and did traditional financing. Also most traditional financing options are 4-5 years with some as long as 7 years. In either case traditional financing or leasing you don't own the truck until it's paid off in full and you have the pink slip.

There are carriers I would lease a truck from and take there truck to another company to operate at, which is what I am doing right now. This year is my first year as a lease op and I am having a good successful first year. I had a slow start and a lot of start up expenses this year. Learned some lessons about driving for a carrier that you are leasing a truck from but also learned how to hold that company to there lease agreement which has worked well in my favor. I wish I had moved to the Schneider Choise program earlier then I did but I made a commitment to give an account 6 months to see if they could get it working right, they tried so many things but eventually I had to leave. If I stayed there I would have net profit $24k for the year which would be a failure in my book since I could gross $45-55K as a company driver there. Since I have moved to Schneider, I'll finish this year out net profit at $55-57. Not bad for my first year. I look at my numbers now and know that I'll be able to net profit next year $70-80K. That to me is a successful year and more then I could make as a company driver. The biggest difference though is I have run successful businesses before and that is what this is a business, not a truck driving job or a trucking business. I own and operate a transportation company that happens to only have one truck at the moment and I am the operator of that truck.

That is a major part of why there is such a high failure rate in lease op programs. They don't understand this is a business and you must treat it like one. If you treat it like a truck driving job with a bigger pay check then you'll fail and be a statistic. Learn to run a business, there are many books you can ready or audiobooks you can listen to while you drive about how to operate a successful business.

So all of you that say a lease op program is bad and I need to go crawl back under whatever rock I came out from under need to get a life and understand that you may have failed at a lease program and had you read everything over multiple times, put together a business plan and/or just ran some basic calculations with real world numbers you would have been able to tell if it would be successful for you or not.

 

So do you pick your own loads off the load board?
If so what's the high and low cpm?
I'm still deciding if I want to sign on with them or Miller transporters or quality carriers

 

Yes I do pick my own loads off a load board. I don't work on cpm, I get 65% of the line haul so I'm looking at revenue vs. expenses. Remember, this is a business, not a bigger paycheck.

 

Yeah I know it's 65% but of what highs and lows average