How many people who have posted in this thread have leased from KLLM within the past 90 days?
Kllm lease purchase
Discussion in 'KLLM' started by anon6655, May 29, 2014.
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Leasing is a path to owning a truck, but turning in your lease before the truck is paid off is NOT a waste. With KLLM, new drivers with no experience start out at .32 cents per mile. If you lease, you can easily give yourself a pay raise. The reason people fail in their lease is because they go home too often, drive too fast, don't take the shortest route, or they idle too much. That is just the short list of reasons.
I have been leasing for 14 months and I make money. I made money when I drove 70mph, but I now make a lot more money now that I drive 62. Every single one of the repairs I have made have been covered by money I have in my maintenance account. I recently paid $1500 for two new Michelin XZA3+ drive tires and still had plenty of money in my maintenance account. I also had an issue about two weeks later with a cracked air hose. I had to be towed to a Freightliner and the repair cost just short of $1500 when towing and hotel were included. I then had an air leak that the shop looked at that cost another $400, even though it was not really fixed. I still have money in my maintenance account.
The bottom line is that YOU determine whether or not you will succeed as a lease operator. Yes, there are really, really bad lease programs out there. KLLM's lease program is not one of them.
For the record, I am NOT a KLLM fanboy. If you read my posts over the past 6 months you will see that I have had issues with the planners and DM's. I am still with KLLM because I figured out how to deal with them and keep making money.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should add that I was rear-ended by a semi two weeks ago. I am not working right now because my truck is in the body shop. KLLM has offered to defer every single one of my lease payments while the truck is in the shop. To make that perfectly clear, they have offered to put the missed payments on the end of my lease, meaning that I won't have a huge negative balance to make up when I return. I am still debating whether or not I want to return to trucking, but that has nothing to do with KLLM.EggoTrucker, Mrcam216, BigJon310 and 5 others Thank this. -
anyone & I mean ANYONE who lease purchases a truck from ANY company is foolish. if u think ur gonna make more as an o/o ur nuts. u get paid $1.?? a mile that's with the fsc & u have to take out payment, fuel, maintenance, driver pay (if u can afford to pay urself after all other deductions) etc out of it & what have u got left? NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! come on use ur head u will not make more money as an o/o or lease purchase being paid peanuts. just my 2 cents
Dinomite Thanks this. -
Pusherman, have you ever leased?
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I have said this before, but I will say it again. If you can get a company to hire you as an employee, pay you .44 cents a mile or more, and then give you more than 2500 miles a week, you would be crazy to lease a truck. If you are a new driver who currently makes around .32 cents a mile and you have any business sense at all, then leasing is a viable option.
It's pretty obvious from many of the posts on this forum that the reason drivers don't succeed leasing has nothing at all to do with the company they lease from.spectacle13, 27butterfly, TraeDa6'5 and 2 others Thank this. -
BoutMyMoney86 and DenaliDad Thank this.
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I have nothing better to do, so I'm going to tell a story. I would prefer to be driving and making money, but due to another driver's carelessness, here I am in front of a keyboard.
About a month ago I was coming off of home time. I was in Central Florida. At the start of the day, I sent a message to my DM stating that I was available. I also told him that I was looking for a load to Lancaster, TX so I could pick up my student. My student had to go home to attend a funeral. So, while he was doing that I went home. He was ready to start training again, so it was time to go get him.
Around 4:30 pm I received a load assignment. It was to pick up at Atlantic Trading in Ft. Lauderdale. There was no appointment time for the pickup, but the delivery time was 0500 two days later near Atlanta. Just looking at the load assignment, and what time it already was, I knew that I would not be able to pick up the load that day; it would have to be picked up the next morning. I also knew that I could not possibly make the delivery appointment since it was more than a day's drive from the shipper to the receiver. I asked my DM what time I should be there and he said he would ask the planner. He said the planner said, "Be there at 0500 and they will load you right away." I knew right away that there were going to be problems with this load. The way his response was worded was a dead giveaway that they were just guessing at a time. Additionally, the directions I received on the Qualcomm said this was a Chiquita load. Chiquita equals bananas. I looked at Google Earth and saw that the building was a cold storage place for Gorton's. Gorton's equals fish, not bananas. I really, really did not want to take this load, but I thought the planner might want me to go pick this up and then swap it for a load going west once I got into Georgia. Even though I knew there was a high likelihood of problems, I still took the load.
I arrived around 0700 and backed up to a dock. I did not open my doors or anything, I just wanted to get out of the way. I went inside and gave them my pickup number and they looked at me like I was crazy. I gave them every possible number I had and nothing matched. When I told them I was going to Publix they confirmed that I was in the wrong place because they only deliver to Walmart. I sent a message to my DM explaining the situation and he responded right away. He said he messaged the planner and CSR and they were trying to solve the issue. Three hours later, the issue was still not resolved. I called every number I had on my QC load assignment and no one had any idea of where I was supposed to make my pickup. I even called the Publix DC in Georgia to see if they could tell me where the load was coming from, but the numbers I had did not match anything in their system. Eventually, I had to leave where I was because other trucks were starting to arrive. I drove to a rest area on the turnpike and sent another message.
This time I told them that I was leaving. I told them that I was going to deadhead to Lancaster because it was ridiculous that they could not resolve this issue. That message got Tim C involved and he personally contacted the planner. The planner stated that he sent me the correct load, but the wrong shipper information. The correct shipper was actually only about 2 miles away, but since I had never picked up bananas in Ft. Lauderdale I did not know this. The whole issue took 4 1/2 hours to resolve. It only took 5 minutes for the planner to fix it, but it took 4 1/2 hours to get someone to actually get the planner off his behind to fix the issue. To make all of this worse, Chiquita is a high priority account. There's no reason it should have taken this long to get the right information. I picked up the load and made the delivery the day after.
This happens often. Mistakes happen all the time. Drivers make mistakes, and planners make mistakes. I understand this. My point is that KLLM is far from perfect, and so is EVERY other trucking company in the world. There is no perfect trucking company. If you want to succeed, as an employee or a lease operator, you have to understand this and that for every good day there will be bad ones. The first 6 months after the FFE/KLLM merger were extraordinarily frustrating, but it did get better. I read many of the posts in other threads. The company names and poster's names might change, but the stories are always the same.spectacle13 and Third3y3guy Thank this. -
Got my new truck today, I'm taking a shot at it. I'm a gambler and worst comes to worst I can turn in my lease and go back to making $800 a week lol. I have business sense. I've only been home four times in the past year so home time isn't a big deal. Thanks for the input, let's see how this goes.
T_TRUCKERâ¢, EggoTrucker, 1catfish and 1 other person Thank this. -
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