Advice - Is This Lease a Good Deal?

Hello all, I am here today for some information I've been driving a company truck for over a year and a half now, and getting my own truck is becoming a small ambition even thought about taking my tax refund this year to throw down a down payment. Anyway on to the advice I have a friend of mine who I consider my mentor he's been trucking for over 30 years he recently got his own truck and is absolutely loving it he's leased on with a great company. The company is good, I checked them out and I like most of everything they offer, they can set me up with a lease purchase, handle my IFTA, baseplate, escrow, and they prepay my fuel so it comes out of my settlements. Before you go on bashing me for looking at a lease purchase let me give you some info on their program, I get paid 88% of the load, (as do the O/O's) $100 a week trailer rental, $0 for a '07 Volvo 780 (I know its a poor choice) with 5.74% financing, I'm sure I'm missing a few things here, but on to my dilemma. I get lonely out on the road (I know one of the expectations of being an otr driver eh?) so I have a rider with me quite a bit they do not offer any rider policy they told me that having any passengers on the truck is against company policy, I can bring someone with me to help me move my stuff out of my current truck into the one I could get from them, but they would need to be off in a week. So can anyone give me some advice, I was all for this place until I heard about the rider policy issue.

 

I guess what I'm asking is this, is this too good of a deal to pass up?

 

My buddy is getting steady $2 a mile freight thats after they have taken their %12 cut he's even seen a few $3 a mile loads but he has only had to get under 1 load that paid something like $1.70 a mile but it was about 700 miles to get him back in the freight lane as for the motor and being legal in Cali, I hate the place anyway grew up there and don't want to go back.

 

Thank you, I looked through the list to see that these guys are on the good side of most of this list, as for the rest I have not inquired about I will be finding a bit more out tomorrow on the grey areas how ever. Once again I thank you and that info is greatly appreciated.