Running With Schneider!

The way I understand the maintance accounts is that the older the truck the more per week then they do for the newer ones.. With that being said we talked to a young kid that got an older t2000 with 800k on it and set it up on a year lease.. his payments and maintance fund was just around 100/week less than ours for the new truck.. just fyi

Also with a new one there is the warranty.. my personal opionon b/c the first time I was on the board aprox 2 years ago I went the used truck route had it just over 2 months and had to put a new motor in it.. took almost 6 weeks for them to do it on the used trucks you don't know if they were serviced correctly or maintianed at all for that matter.. at least on the new ones you know that they are getting proper serviced and kept up with.. just my 2 cents

I love my new cascadia and I'm not a freightliner fan.. always been a KW guy.. but love mine and the fuel mileage I'm getting.. mine has been in the shop this week for a change out on the def system something the dealer said they were suprised that it wasnt' on recall.. but I'm still not complaining it's covered by warranty and it happened with me close to home.. so I was lucky yes I lost a weeks pay but I made pretty good the 4 weeks before it went down.. I'll be back up and running god willing tomorrow and will be making the dough again.. just another word of advice DO NOT take your truck to Freightliner of San Antonio they SUCK they have been why mine has been down a week.. b/c they can't get their head out of their ##### at all

 

yeah those loads are on our board thanks for heads up too

 

Thanks for the information txdirtroad. Do you know if the maintenance account has a cap? What I'm curious about is if I could fill it up at the start and see if I could get the payments down a fair bit.

 

No cap from what I understand b/c they have told us we could build our's up and use the money in there to help us with the residual at the end of the lease if we want to just finance the truck out after our lease is over so I would think there's no cap.. also you can set up a seperate account like a security account and put money into it for help have to talk to SFI about it though just know that you have that option too

 

I have been with the choice board over 4 years now. I brought my truck with me from the outside when I first signed on. After nearly 3 years on the program my truck was nearing a million miles and beginning to cost some serious money in repairs. I began looking at SFI's inventory as well as outside the company inventory. I quickly realized the payments for a new truck are very high and if you plan on keeping it you will have to deal with a high ballon payment at the end with SFI. SO I began watching SFI's inventory for a solid used truck. Now keep in mind SFI purchases the trucks with a 500,000 miles drive train warranty. Everything I was looking at was no older than 3 years old an less than 400,000 miles. I looked at several Prostars with Cummins ISX's and they wanted around 80-90K for them. I stayed patient and waited and finally found the Cascadia I now own.

It was a 2009 put into service in may of 2010. It was leased to a driver that walked away after 2 year. The truck had 280k on it along with a tripac APU. It had a DD15 with a 13 speed and the price was very similar to what I was finding outside of SFI. In fact I found the same model and year at the Frieghtliner dealer across from the Dallas OC and they wanted 10K more without a APU and 300K.

I was very diligent in my dealings with SFI. Thier insurance is very high I save over $175 a month by using a outside insurance company. I also called them out on thier maintenance escrow and they finally admitted it was NOT mandatory. I can keep the money in my bank and choose when and where to fix my truck. ( This takes financial discipline)

The truck still had over 220K warranty on the engine , transmission and axles. I got the VIN and had frieghtliner run it before I bought the truck to see the repair history, I also had SFI run a ECM report and give it to me. I DID MY HOMEWORK.

Buying new is really not necessary because of all the lease failures and low mileage trucks with warranty that SFI has. Of course they tried everything to get me to buy a new truck and some if it sounded like rehearsed scare tactics about breakdowns and MPGs. I run less than 2000 miles a week am home every weekend and a couple nights weekly and manage to net $1300-1800 a week after all expenses including a $406 a week truck payment. Hard to do that with a $1000 plus plus plus payment a week. I normally don't even go more than 250 miles from my house anymore, location is crucial for me to do this, This type of running won't work everywhere but it does here in Texas.

 

i have a question for the ic vets, is this time of year bad in the northeast?? when i started 2 months ago i was making a killing running the northeast but now its seems to dried up, idk if its just the freight or there's a million ic driver beating me to the punch?

 

Man I'm seriously considering getting a truck and moving into the choice fleet. Currently a company driver now, but have had trucks in the past. Not sure if I want to check into SFI or not though.

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You need to check every source avaliable to you and then make the best decision. I spent several months looking for a replacement truck and I ended up buying one from SFI because it met all my criteria and was cheaper than the local FL dealer. Be patient the right truck will present itself.