20-30% down?!

You answered your own question. If most drivers are living paycheck to paycheck, that means they do not make much money. If they do not make much money, they are more likely to have problems re-paying the loan, and the finance company will have problems getting their payments on time. Good, easy truck loans are hard to get, unless you have excellent credit, and a lot of experience.
And a credit score of 500 is terrible. Most lenders consider that as way too low. Even 600 to 650 is marginal.
Keep looking, try to get your credit score cleaned up,save some more money, be willing to settle for a lesser truck, it is possible.

 

Buy here pay here places are cheaper to start with

 

I see lots of them asking $2000-$4000 down. Not the best trucks, but u get what u pay for.

 

With great credit and years of history both trucking, and buying and paying (ON TIME!) for trucks, you can easily get 0% down. But that is probably 1% of O/O and even a relatively small percentage of small/medium fleets.

If it is your very first loan, expect to pay at least 10-20% down, depending on your credit and what kind of truck you are getting (the more expensive, ironically, the more likely you'll need more down). Expect 10%-25% interest at a minimum on a retail purchase (loan), while lease implicit rates would likely be slightly (but not much) smaller.

That said, you pay that loan off on time (and its reported on your credit score, lots of bhph programs do not report and therefore most traditional financing companies won't count this as previous equipment finance), you'll end up seeing better and better terms coming your way. I had an o/o team, on their 3rd truck after 7 years who paid less than 5% down, and got a 9% interest rate on a brand new truck, but its because they had proven themselves trustworthy with the financing company and had their credit scores in order. That's unfortunately not a common thing I see.

 

Lone Mountain Truck Leasing