Anyone here completed a lease with STEVENS?

Comparing my experience as a lease operator, against company pay, .30 per mile for company, .39 per mile as a lease operator. Apple to apple comparison. This is what I made for 2009, after all truck expenses were paid.

False information above about the lease completion bonus. Yes they take money each week for maintenance expenses, and yes you get what ever is left when you turn in that truck. The lease completion bonus is 1.5 cents per mile that is NOT taken out of your settlements. But you MUST complete the lease.

Is it worth it, for most people no, as they will not work hard enough or understand that it is a business.

 

Its not that people don't understand that it is "a business"....but really its a "business" that you have very little control over. Ever tried getting ahold of dispatch? Sitting at the Meat patch, what about your deadhead....having to fight to get layover pay? Having about a billion senseless charges from your settlements to nickel and dime ya to death?

Usually when someone enters a business venture, they have some control over how their business operates. With the lease at stevens transport you still abide by there rules and regulations and still haul 100% of their loads, as stevens transport can take on more clients to haul for you cannot go and haul a prime or swift load. So basically in a sense it is not your business at all, ur just the driver who pays for the taxes and fuel...etc....as easily said as someone to fit the bill.

Although leasing works well for some than others....the lease is not designed for the success of a solo driver, but to the success of the trainer since this is stevens underlying business. If you train you make money, if your solo....especially how slow freight is....your sucking wind....Trainers get the good loads before a solo gets them. The solo driver gets whatever is left over, don't buy what i say, ask dispatch lol...they are the ones that either make ya or break ya.

Someone who owns a pizza store can advertise and make deals....the lease driver cannot...so who's business is it really? Stevens see's it as a way to get the driver to cover the cost. Known fact....your their money savers...doesn't mean they favor you.

 

I have a very good relationship with dispatch, and I get loads that I can do, that keep me moving and making money. I am NOT sucking wind. the drivers reputation makes or breaks the driver. Get some service failures, and you will not get any good loads. Make stevens look good to their customers, and you get rewarded with loads.

And since you live in florida, and work with that area of dispatch, you have a scewed perception of the total operation.

No this is not a business I have total control over, but If i were to act like you do, I would go broke. So I run as a business, that can control my costs, and can work with the one customer I have, Stevens Transport.

Now just because you can not find a"better" job, living in Florida, that is your problem, and not the fault of Stevens, or any one else.

 

.39 a mile? Is that before you match your own SS? What type of wroker comp do you pay? You have to pay something.

My point is you can make that .39 without doing the lease and someone else paying the taxes.

 

Apple to Apple comparison, all expenses paid, insurance, vacation, all benefits that stevens offers the company driver. And yes I have accounted for the self employment tax in that 39 cents also.

I make 9 cents more per mile than a company driver does, after I pay everything that stevens offers to a company driver.

 

My current trainer who I've been out with now a month is an Alliance driver and swears by it. He's completed several leases and has been paid what he was owed each time and gotten a new truck each time. Currently he's driving a 2010 Pete and I've seen his incomes and expenses. It seems doable if you are willing to run the miles and keep good appearances and relationships with the shippers/receivers so that your manager is willing to give you the runs.
We've run constantly, stopping only when we're waiting for shipper/receiver or weather. He makes decent incomes and so far his expenses are minimal. He is rarely home and likes it that way.

 

What they fail to tell you is how much you actually clear, after payments, fuel, taxes, escrow etc... I now a guy who was a O/O and just quit after doing it for a good many yrs.. He made $190,000 but after payments fuel, etc he cleared 13K for the yr.. Not what I call a decent living...

 

If you can't afford to get a truck on your own credit? Chances are you can't handle your money well enough to do it.

If you fall from grace with the "powers that be" in a lease? You can't take that truck somewhere else. They have too much power.

The deck is stacked against you.

Do you think if this trainer got into this lease he would tell you it wasn't good? He would look like he was duped. Think he could make it without the extra pay he gets to train newbies?

 

Trainers stay busy, it's that way at all the training companies. They have priority.

You going to risk everything you own on Barack O'Bingo's ability to fix the economy? And hoping there isn't a personality conflict with the bosses?Not me.

Let see, step into a business you didn't have a clue about 6 months ago. I will make a $300,000 comittment?

What did PT Barnum say? "There's a sucker born every minute!"

 

Really the truck made $190,000 and he only cleared $13,000 for the year? That comes out to $1.46 a mile for 52 weeks at 2500 miles a week.Take out hometime and it improves the average a little bit. I'm not saying its impossible but I know alot of owner ops who would love to average $1.50 a mile