The Good, The Bad, The Honest Truth of a New Roehl Lease Operator

No, I'm liable either way. Options are limited. Walk away and file bankruptcy or Roehl does a promissory note and I work my way out of it. Things are still in limbo a bit. The shop estimate is $34,000+. Roehl doesn't usually finance the entire cost of an engine. They usually only will do half. After some time, they have decided to do the full amount for me. At this point, Rick Roehl himself has gotten personally involved along with the VP of maint. They think they can get me an engine for 8-9k less thru one of their vendors. So, they are working on getting it set up and putting my truck on a flatbed up to Wisconsin. If that happens, I will get it paid off about a year sooner. Talking with Eric in maint, he said no matter what happens, Roehl is going to help me out and not to worry.

I've been with Roehl 12 years as both company driver and O/O. I have my beefs with them, but I have to say they are stepping up for me. In the long run it does benefit them to help me, but they could have just as easily said "screw that guy". Rick said if I wanted to, I could take a truck and be a company driver while my truck was in the shop. Another alternative is to lease a truck form Penske or something until it's done.

No matter what, it's a really ugly situation for me, but it could be worse. Much worse.

 

No 3 Exhaust lobe on the cam went and damaged the block. With labor at $135 hr, I'm guessing it took 10 hrs, maybe more. After initial diagnosis, they had to drop the oil pan, drain the oil and pull the transmission to get to the cam and inspect the block. I'm just taking a WAG, but what they've done so far looks like a couple thousand, anyway.

Not sure how much it would be to switch to DD. The MBE is basically the same engine and the truck is already set up for MBE. I'm thinking get the extended warranty and keep the truck, at least thru the warranty. Not sure if I trust it beyond that. It had already been rebuilt at about 400k, after a valve came apart and tore thru everything. I obviously had a POS lemon engine. But that's still 4 years I can run under warranty. It has new SAM modules, both cab and chassis, new rubber, new windshield. APU needs another alternator (big surprise lol). Aside from the usual crap that breaks routinely, it shouldn't be too bad on maint thru the warranty. Long enough to pay off the note and build some cash.

 

It will be a remanufactured from Detroit, not a "new" engine. It's an '09.

 

Didn't know they would do a note for the balloon. I was thinking about getting a commercial loan. Might get a better rate thru your bank, than the 15% thru Roehl. Something to kick around anyway.

 

Pilot/J is $.11, Love's $.10, TA/Petro $.055 to be exactly. If you buy 1500 gals in the previous month, Love's drops 4 points on your fuel card. Free meal every other day. Tax free money. I do most fueling at Love's. They usually beat Pilot/J by a penny at the pump, and frankly, I don't trust Pilot anymore after they were screwing everybody on discounts a while back.

 

The new fuel program blows. Under the old system, if you followed the fuel plan, the savings were huge. The new fuel program was a pay cut, in my eyes.

The taxes at the pump are meaningless. You pay taxes on gallons burned, not gallons purchased. If you fuel a lot in a liberal shiothole like Illinois, the fuel is cheap, the taxes are astronomical. You'll usually end up with a refund at the end of the month. Remember, your fuel card costs a buck every time you fuel, so don't fuel too often. If you buy 100 gals, it's costing you .01 per gal. My tanks hold 240 gals, so I never fuel before 350 miles (i.e., never less than 50 gals), and I can usually go 1000 miles without sweating it. I try not to finish a load with more than 700 miles on a tank, so I can pick up another load without refueling. It also gives you more options on your next load. Get an app for your phone called Fuelbook and search the highways in your fueling range (for me, 350-1000 miles), and use the "less IFTA" option. You get the real cost of fuel, listed by cost. You can also search by distance if you are low. I pay less than average for fuel, according to my statements from ATBS, by using this method. I highly recommend the app. It's accurate 95%+ of the time. Prices change sometimes before you get there. If it's more than a couple cents off when you get there, search again. Sometimes you can make it to someplace cheaper.

 

I'm very glad to hear Roehl is helping you. It helps that you have 12 years with the company. Would they do the same for a one year driver? Given their anti driver decisions these past few years it's refreshing to hear a positive report.

Leases are scary propositions. The lease company has zero incentive to let the driver complete the contract and own the truck. The lease company has tremendous incentive to find a way to get rid of the driver, reclaim the truck, keep all the investment and do it all over again to the next guy. There are plenty of horror stories out there from drivers who got booted in the final six months of a lease and lost everything. In this case Roehl would be getting back a truck with a virtually new engine.

This case will be one to watch in the coming years. Hopefully you can complete the lease and own the truck. This will be a good test for Roehl. You are about to find out if they have any integrity left when it comes to drivers. Hopefully there is still a spark in there somewhere. Stay in touch with updates on how it's going.

My advice is to always go through a bank to get a truck. Things are much more cut and dried and as long as you keep up the payments the bank is not going to try to find a way to boot you and take back the truck. If you can exit the lease early by paying it off somehow then that would seem to be the wise thing to do.

When I was with Roehl lease drivers told me they were under forced dispatch until the lease is complete. Is that still so? If you're under forced dispatch you are not an owner/operator. Two critical things have to exist to be called a true owner/operator;

1) If you are fired or quit the company do you have to leave the truck behind? (Do you lose your investment?)

2) Are you under forced dispatch?

If either answer is yes, you are not an o/o. The IRS may treat you as such for tax purposes but you're a glorified company driver in reality. There are other critical determining questions but those are two huge concerns.

The truth is many drivers jump into a lease to have the "status" of being an o/o without considering all the fine print. There are some guys you can't have a conversation with, without that coming up ("Us owner/operators love the Green Bay Packers" etc.) They inject the o/o into everything as though that somehow gives them standing. Lease companies are preying on drivers like that.

I hope this works out for you.

 

Wow. a HUGE kudos for the Roehl's to step up and help you out. Make no mistake, most companies would tell you you're SOL. I'm impressed.

 

What is the incentive? All of your lease payments go towards the purchase of the truck. At the end of the lease a current value of the truck is determined, then you pay that for your final payment. If you bail on the lease or they kick you out, which makes no sense, they get a truck they don't want anyway since they turn their trucks at around 500K. How would it be a new engine?

You could do this sure, but if you decide you don't like it anymore you're stuck with a truck you have to sell. Also you'll need a large down payment, and near perfect credit or you won't qualify.

No forced dispatch, no governor, no forced routing, no idle control, go home when you want and as often as you want. Just keep in mind the bills keep coming in, and this is where most fail. And if you leave the lease you get all of your escrows returned minus what is costs to return the truck to the state it was in when you began the lease. You're basically "renting" the truck, but all of your rent goes towards the purchase price. I've been considering leasing and have done a TON of research, including basically interviewing 4 other lease drivers. All had positive reports, and claimed they are making much more than they did as company drivers. If you can be disciplined enough to run a business and watch your expenses, you can be successful.

 

I don't know if they would do it for a one year driver. I was told Roehl will usually only go half the cost of replacing an engine. I'm sure it helped that I have been there 12 years and I'm within a year of the end of the lease and want to complete it with the truck in my hands. I was told they didn't want to do it if I wasn't going to keep the truck. Which makes sense if you think about it. This truck wouldn't be suitable to lease again, so they would still have to put in an engine and sell it. Even with a new engine, it's only worth around 40k. Combine the new engine with what they originally paid for it, that's a big investment for a truck that doesn't produce all the revenue it should have. It might even be better for them to scrap the truck altogether.

I don't know that I buy the proposition that they want to force drivers out at the end of the lease. After 3 years, the truck has lost most of it's market value. They can't get anywhere near the lease payments out of it by leasing it again. They get stuck owning high mileage truck that's out of warranty and has minimal market value. Not to mention a pissed off guy posting how he was ripped off on every major trucking forum on the internet. That's a really stupid business model, IMHO.