Team Lease at Prime? Yay or Nay?

How well do you really know the person you are considering teaming with? Well enough that you would trust him with your life? What happens if a year into the deal your teammate has a change of heart and wants out of the industry? Are you stuck with the lease? Will you be forced to take on a new partner? Will you be able to pay your bills if you have to go solo? I wish you the best with whatever you chose, but, as many others have suggested, you should run solo as a company driver for a few years before you jump into the deep water.

 

barely any experience and you want to lease AND team right away?
how about making it through your first winter first....

Prime is a pretty good place but I wouldn't want to be paying for a truck and still have a dispatcher telling me what to do but that's just me.

Finding averages is near impossible...
depends on the time of year, weather, areas you run, how hard you run, time off etc etc etc.

 

You have that all wrong wipper... dispatchers don't "tell us what to do." The fleet managers work for us.

 

only ship that can't float is a partnership

 

That's not what they told me when I applied and spoke to them on the phone.

I specially remember asking "if I get sent a load going into an ice storm can I reject it because it'll be unproductive" I was told.. "you need to cover the load and do your best, if the load gets sent to you you're the best for it"

 

Someone was blowing smoke up yer you know what. Company drivers can't refuse a load... lease drivers can.

 

yeah I kinda figure that now but I was talking about leasing with them.
There was a time I compared Prime to Schneider....

The lack of freedom and choice of what I would and could do (at least the way they made it out to be) is why I picked Schneider instead.
I wanted to get an idea what generally the rates there I would get getting and if I could have a say in what I do.. Prime didn't offer me anything to give confidence. Nor could I get any clue on the types of rates there.. I tried to get it out of them but with no success.
Schneider sent me screenshots of the load board.
I understand rates depend and change a lot.. I get that but I needed to see something man and they didn't offer any insight.

Not saying Prime is bad.. I'd take %%%% over garbage per mile pay any day.

 

Team? NEVER, lease? NEVER NEVER NEVER!!

 

It's never YOUR truck until it's payed off in full. Prime can terminate your employment or lease for any reason at any time. You aren't in control either. I'll say this if you don't have a lot of money saved up for when you breakdown to pay off your truck note, and hotel fees you will fail.

 

I'd say go for it bud! Prime pays percentage not cpm! So lets say your team drove 6000 miles for the week at 1.50 cpm average thats $9000 revenue gross to truck. After total deductions fuel,truck payment,insurance etc takes out between 36-40 % so now you're at $5400 net i would pay my codriver 35% if it were me (because the truck is in my name and he can breach the contract at anytime) leaving you with $3510.