My experience in Prime's lease program so far.

1st Im not doing a lease to buy. I'm in the walk away lease program. I see a lot of negitive comments on leases as well as many people who are likely not going to make money at it.

I started my lease mid November of last year. Meaning Ive been running my truck 2,5 months at the time of this post. I did a very short stint as a company driver then moved to lease as company wasnt working for me.

My earnings to date.

To the truck: $47,3k
Total freight earnings : $36,5k
Money to me : $12,3k

Now what I will say is the $47k number is inflated, because of things like lumper fees, tolls, and so on. What happens is when I have to pay a lumper for instance, Prime advances me to money I pay the lumper then its charged to me in my settlement. Meaning it shows as income but is then charged back.. However you can't just discredit the number either, because it also includes things like my fuel surcharge and detention pay..

I've spent $10.5k for fuel, $1,2k for tolls lumpers were $2,2k but as I mention thats not really charged to me but it's shown for tax reasons. I've also made a bit over $800 In detention pay which is included in my "money to me number".

One other thing, is as a new driver I have made 2 Opps mistakes which cost me $500 deductible each.. 1 was totally my mistake, the other I will argue that I did everything I was trained to do but #### happened anyway.. The reason I being this up, is because that $1k is included in "money to me" so my ture earning is $11.3k but for the sake of showing earning potintal I wanted to show full income had I not had those issues.

One last thing, so far I've had 1 negitive week due to Prime issues where I felt I lost about $2k to my truck that week. I also had 1 week, the week I was sick where I broke even and made $27 but that was on me

Now for the argument is fleasing/leasing good or bad? Yes and no..

My opinion, is a lease at Prime costs way too much, however if you are willing to work hard you can make it work if you know how to run your time. What I will say is I run very hard. I've gone home for 1 day since I had my truck but I did sit for 4 days sick as a dog just out side of Indy a few weeks ago.

I know other drivers who started around the same time I did who are not doing as well as me. What I'll say about that, is most people tend to over value their work ethics. I probably do as well, but make mine work for me.

Now the cost of the lease is my biggest gripe with Prime. Its clearly a business model designed to make them money. IE, the leasing of truck is profitable for them, but if you arent on your game it might not be profitable for you..

Truck = $1041.00/ week 36 months = 156 weeks/ total cost = $162,396.00
APU = $70/ week 36 months = 156 weeks/ total cost =$10,920.00

But wait there's more in my Billy Mays voice..

I won't get into all the little charges but the main two are tire fund and mileage fee. Each is 0.05 cents a mile, meaning on top of your lease payment you pay .10 cents a mile. This is really the deal killer to me to be honest..

If you figure a adverage of 2,5k miles per week thats $125/week each or a total of $250.00 Each week in addition to your lease payment. 2500 miles x 52 weeks equals 130k miles. I went with 120k miles as I figure thats a more rounded number for most drivers.

120,000 x .05 = $6,000.00 x 2 = $12,000 per year for your tire and mileage fee. Over 3 years thats a total of $36,000 added to the cost of your lease. Now to be fair if you complete the full lease you do get some of that money back. I've heard the adverage is around $10-15k.

Now what irritates me about the cost of the lease program is after you turn the truck in, they resell the trucks for $60-90k earning they are making "a lot" of profit by leasing trucks.

Due to the costs of the lease, I'm using my lease as a bridge to buy a truck outside of Prime then most likely put it on their fleet with out having to pay so much. My plan is to buy a $30-50k truck and put it on the fleet. This will allow me to both put more money in my pocket but also make more money..

That's another issue I didn't touch much on, but due to the costs of running a lease truck, home time costs you money. If arent willing or capable of staying out on the road, then I'd stay very far away from a lease.

IMO, a lease is a good way to stack up some money, with not a lot of yours coming out of pocket, but you have to be smart and willing to work hard. Now what I will also say, is judging by my current income level that would put me at around $65k for the year, but I suspect my earnings will go up as we get out of winter. I think $65 is a bit low for what I think I can make, as example my last 2 weeks were over $5k to my truck with $2k each week to me. Meaning some of my earlier weeks were lower.

Anyway, I wanted to give some real numbers from someone doing a lease as I haven't see to many people actually giving out earnings and costs.