GunMetal345's Tanker Lease Experience

Warning: This is an informative thread about my lease experience. My goal is to make as much money as possible doing the least amount of work. I will tell you what I'm going to do to make that happen and why I choose to do it that way. At the end of the day you have to make your own decisions and hopefully this thread will help you with that. If you are responsible, dedicated and disciplined then a lease my be for you. If you want some one else to take care of the details for you go company. Do what's right for you, please.

Welcome Everybody!

I've been assigned a truck. It's a light weight Cascadia about 4 months old. I'm the only one that wanted it so they just assigned it to me.

Tomorrow I have to do my inspection so I can get ready to sign my paper work and grab my things from driver lineup. I will be ordering a fridge and a box to put chains in. The best way to describe it is a day cab with no back window and a bed. I plan to keep it until the end of the lease because it gets the best fuel mileage. I don't know how I will feel about it six months from now though but for now the plan is to finish out the lease.

Business Goals:

1. Drive safe and legal.
2. Pick up and deliver on time every time.
3. Drive at 53-55 mph. (~1100 rpms)
4. Less than 1% idle percentage.
5. Stay out 6 to 8 weeks at a time.

That's about it on how I plan to maximize my earnings and minimize my expenses. I took the light weight because I believe I can get 9 mpg out of it and that is a low estimate. Being able to fill in on the Decatur dedicated is also part of my plan. They pay a premium to haul those heavy loads and you can only do it in a light weight truck. I will take every dispatch unless it's unsafe or illegal for me to do so and in that case I will try and work out what I can do with that assignment. I plan to give the best customer service reasonably possible. That's clean, kind and helpful. I want every customer to be happy to see me and willing to invite me back.

Financial Plans:

1. Build an operating fund of at least $5000.
2. Pay off all consumer debts in my household. (Wife's and mine)
3. Continue to build the operating fund to $50000.
4. Invest access funds.
5. Build credit for myself and my LLC.

My operating fund is low now so that is my first priority because I need to make sure I stay in business. I'm paying off the debt because I will finally have the means to pay it off. I'm in my 30's now and I've have good credit but I want excellent credit. The $50k is so I can finance other trucks at Prime and not go broke if something goes wrong with one of them. That's what I want in the savings account before I get that second truck. I plan on working for 10 years as a driver and I'll see from there. At that 10 year mark I will have it set up to where I can live off my investments if I want to.

I'm not buying this truck but I will be purchasing the next truck at the end of this lease. Probably with cash if things go the way I plan. That will be my insurance to make sure I never have to go through another training program in trucking again.

That's it guys and gals. That's the plan and I'll be posting the execution on at least a weekly basis. I drive to make money and plan to make a killing by being efficient. I really believe that truck can get 10 mpg and will be striving for that number every week. I keep the tanks topped off because I believe it saves time and I'm looking at fuel purchases with a long term view as in fuel purchased throughout the month or over a year. I will be using Macro 27 because it saves time and money. I actually do pretrips and post trips because I'm paranoid and business minded. I like to get things fixed as they need repair and the operating fund is what makes it possible for me to do that.

I'm really excited because I feel I can do better than everyone else I've seen here in Tanker Division.

Until next time be mature and responsible,

GunMetal345 out!

P.S. I'm not giving out my name or truck number because this is the interwebs. If you apply at Prime give them GunMetal345. My handle is in the system here. My truck is blue and it's a lightweight. That's all you get. Thank you for reading my thread!

 

All set to go guys. No box because there is no place to mount it. Had to lose my passenger seat to get a fridge. Chains will have to wait and will probably be under the bunk where my stuff should be, lol. Waiting in the hotel for my first dispatch.

Thank you for all the support!