Prime's lease deal. The math gets done.

a: the truck payments + taxes etc + .49 a mile were mentioned above as lease terms.
b: good
c: WHAT??? I ran a penske truck for 2 years otr. You go into any truck stop you'll likely see a penske. You go into any nontiny penske agency you'll see a row of them. Their old trucks are usually freighliners. The newer ones are prostars though im sure they still do some freightshakers. I averaged 7mpg and got comments more than once about how the truck hauled butt. 7mpg is a fuel guzzler?

 

LOL hmmm I never took the time to read any of this thread, and I know I'm quoting a post from over 4 years ago, but come on, drivers who are netting in excess of $1,200 a week, I make almost that much as a company driver, every single week, and I don't even own or lease anything, and I pull a dry van.
Doesn't Prime pull reefers? Don't those loads pay more?

If I would EVER consider driving one of their governed-at-60mph trucks, I would do so as a company driver and NOT a lease driver, and I'd expect a SALARY of $1,400 a week, and home every other weekend. Anything less for reefer work is crap.

In my opinion, what Prime is doing is taking advantage of a bunch of poor slops, tell them they can lease a truck, make them feel all special, that they can be like an O/O, and then rape them in the rear, then when they fail, put another poor slop in the truck. The failure rate on these lease programs is through the roof.

Sure this may be legal, sure this may or may not be good business practice, but bottom line is it is IMMORAL. If I were ever the owner of a company, I'd never take advantage of my employees' ignorance of trucking industry market economics.

I know there are exceptions to everything, and I'm sure there are some successful lease drivers, there are those who know what they're doing, and make it work for them, but for the vast majority, it doesn't work.

Why doesn't Prime just keep ownership of the trucks, have everyone be company driver, and still pay them $1,200 a week? Maybe they wouldn't have such high turnover rate. They don't care about doing good business, and that is what is wrong with this company.

Capitalism / Free Market requires that people self govern and be moral.

/End rant

Oh - and one more thing - I don't believe this is even a real bona-fide lease. If you leased a truck from Ryder, or Penske, they don't care whose loads you take. But if you lease from Prime, you HAVE to take their loads, that's your ONLY option.

This whole thing reminds me of The Grapes of Wrath. Where the family was working at the peach farm. It's sharecropping, and it's exploitation.

 

Boywander a lot fail for the same reason a lot of o/o's fail. They have no clue about business and think if you do X the world owes you Y. they think theres some guarantee or some way things are supposed to be done.

Another thing most of these guys dont lease for the money. They lease hoping to own the truck because they cant control their spending enough to save for a downpayment on one (and clear up their credit). MOST truck drivers dont make anywhere near a grand a week even before taxes. Id bet money the AVERAGE leasee has at MOST a year experience and is just coming off a newbie contract. They have zero experience in business. Theres an ex o/o who posted here about how "youre all suckers and it cant be done hahaha"... his qualification for that was that his wife who makes 100k bought him a truck and trailer and he still managed to fail massively at running his business.

I agree t otally with you about it being immoral. But then thats the climate you righties love so much.. one that rewards immorality.
Lastly.. capitalism and free markets are diametrically opposing forces. I see you quoted ayn rand so you probablly know nothing about economics but if you study a little you'll figure out why.

 

Whoa....there was no need to take rude shots at me like that at the end of your post.

First of call, Capitalism is a form of free-market economics. There are other forms of free-market economics. And if I supposedly love to reward immorality, then why do I stand against these scams, but you don't? Maybe you should study Ayn Rand's theories in detail and figure out what it's really all about.

Second of all, Prime lease operators do not get the truck. It's not a lease/purchase. There is no purchase plan, they just rent.

Anyways, you saw my Ayn Rand quote and decided to take a cheap shot at me, and the first two paragraphs were just for show. And your cheap shots were contradictory, at that. So let's keep to the topic of lease deals and not intentionally try to rile up another user.

 

I completed a l/p deal last year. It was only for two years and cost me 42,000. I succeeded because I busted my rear and stayed on the road weeks at a time. It was not easy in the least. I dont suggest too do it. Now the only good thing too come of it is I now have sufficient credit history to finance a truck on my own, which I just did and I pick up my new truck Friday. I learned a lot in the last two yeats, even though I had experience beforehand. Im finally making good money, pulling good freight and Im on the good side of things now, but I do not recommend l/p too anyone it is effectively indentured servitude....inde

 

Prime does have a purchase plan. It's $11,000 down, with the remainder over 3 years and no balloon payment at the end (although you can have them structure it with up to a $25,000 balloon if you want lower payments during the lease). I know more than a few people at Prime who have done one of these leases and now own their trucks.

 

49cpm is what one person mentioned that they make per mile net before taxes. Nothing more. It's not a contractual item - you keep what you don't spend.

7 mpg is piss poor. Maybe not to a company driver who could care less, but to a lease operator who knows even the slightest bit about business that is the kind of fuel economy that sucks the money right out of your pocket.

It's been my observation that they are indeed moral, and care about doing a good business. Since there's no down on a straight lease at Prime, they don't make turning trucks over a source of revenue for them. It's win-win in the sense that their costs for moving freight are lowered, and an individual that has even the slightest clue about what they're doing can make quit a bit more than a company driver. I certainly do.

The system is set up that you and your Fleet Manager are partners... if he isn't selecting the most profitable loads available for ALL trucks on his board, he's screwing himself as well. So how is that "sharecropping?" BTW the per-mile rates work out to be generally at or above the spot market - purely my observation.

 

I'm looking to lease and I want to be able to choose my loads, is this possible ???

 

Spoken like a true cheerleader or an over zealous proctologist !!!

 

7mpg is hardly piss poor.