Debating being a lease operator

I have to chime in on many of the post for and against L/P.
Most programs will not have you start your payment from the first week. Look for this. They will give you a couple weeks. Insurance will start but other expenses are delayed.
Most will provide at least a half tank of fuel. And that should be enough to get you to a load and fuel will be purchased for revenue miles.
You are not your own boss. This is not YOUR truck and you have very little control. You have to go in with the mindset that you are trying to make the best of a bad situation. You will be given an opportunity. You are going to pay for this opportunity (truck price will be inflated, higher insurance, not getting paid the best mileage rate, interest rate will be ridiculous ....). But with a positive attitude, being respectful to the people in the company and being honest about what you can and can't do - you can make it (assuming you pick the correct company).

 

One other option is to do a lease with 0 buyout at the end from an outfit similar to Lone Mountain Truck Leasing. You are not tied to the carrier, and you start out with little down and just make your lease payments until paid off. Not sure of all the particulars, but it does take the carrier out of the equation. That alone would make life a little easier. At least you could move to another carrier if things not working out.

 

my vote is for lone mountain but I may be a bit biased as that's where I got my truck from. they are more concerned with a good work history and they like to know you have a company to lease it too.. they DONT like people with their own authority.
I put $3500 down and paid $1050 for 32 mo. they've been great to work with. I was recently screwed by my company so I switched companies so I went another 3 weeks before I got any checks on top of the grand my old company is jerking me around on. I got a month behind on my payments. they've worked with me the whole way not assaulted me like many places would have and i'm working my tail off to get it caught up. It was going to be current as of friday and now I just got stuck buying tires because of this stupid blitz so check back with me next week to see if I still say they are great people. lol

 

Ok are you talking l/p or just straight lease? I lease a truck through penske,i do not now or ever will own the truck. (not a fleece- purchase) and they do all the maintainance, and lease to a company and i'm considered a o/o. But without the added high cost of repairs for anything , which i know has put many a o/o out of business. And per contract if i break down ,they have 4 hours to fix my truck or bring me another to keep me going.,then i get mine back when its fixed...and the best thing about it is . It is a 100% tax write off because its a business lease. So i get to write everything off, and i do make very good money after everything comes out... And can prove it ...

 

Why don't you look at being a stick hauler?... there have to be a lot of opportunities where you live.

No one ever accused those guys of running expensive trucks, either so putting on an older unit should not be a problem.

 

While fuel economy is important my 379 has never averaged close to 7 mpg and I've done well, even though with 7 mpgs id do better but im cool with netting $2,700 a week.

 

Does Penske do a credit check TNPRIDE? I'm thinking the same deal but with a straight truck. Problem is do you lease truck from Penske then sign on with someone or sign on with someone and then lease?

 

I was interested in checking something like this out, too. Love the idea of minimizing maintenance expense, and face it, with any used truck, it's a gamble. I've got two - one was actually a repo and have had very little problems with it; the other one I paid a lot more for and have been paying more and more since on maintenance. Does your lease payment compare to a purchase payment - more? Less? I realize the tax benefit, too....

 

I would keep debating!!!

 

I rented a truck from Penske in a hurry up got to have it situation a few weeks ago. Sleeper truck was $800 something and daycab $700 something a week plus 17 cents for every mile driven. They were going to give me a daycab but a sleeper truck came in and they let me have it for daycab weekly rate I also negotiated the cents per mile charge down to 13 cents. I kept the truck 3 days and by the time I topped it off with fuel before turning it back in it cost me almost $1,000 for 3 days I put 700 miles on it and $500 of fuel to fill it back up. IMO this is waaaaaay overpriced and there's no way I'd do a rental on a long term situation. You can surely shop around with Paclease, Ryder, Idealease, etc but they're not going to be all that much different in price. Now a fleet renting many trucks might get a deal that works out as well or better than buying trucks but for a single truck operator you can forget it, like everyone else they are going to make BIG bucks off of you. And I would also like to add this Penske 2009 Prostar was one of the worst fleet maintained units I've ever driven. Had a Cummins that couldn't pull a greasy string out of a hog's ### hauling a 5,000 lbs load, empty, or bobtailing. It was governed at 66mph I didn;t idle it more than an hour and it got a whopping 5.2 mpg. And before someone says I don;t know how to drive a Cummins I've put probably 500 or 600K miles on ISX's including one choked off with a DPF like this unit. It had some of the worst recaps I've ever seen in my life on the drives. Knotted up and bald on the front axle, "new" and bouncing around starting to knot up on the rear axle. Had loose exhaust clamps and all sorts of obvious stuff from walking around outside. I never raised the hood on it.