Trip lease

I am a new carrier who owns three tractors. I do not want employees. If a lease was written up clearly where I lease my tractors to drivers who choose to lease my equipment and are not forced to will this be legal. I would update my mcs150 to show my trucks as trip leased. These drivers already are leased on to other carriers and using their tractors would create headaches for them. They are hhg drivers and this time of year is slow for them. This gives me the opportunity to add multiple drivers onto my fleet without the worry of keeping all of them busy at the same time. They all would have to pass the same driver requirements necessary by the fmcsa. I know trip lease involves o/o leasing their own tractors buy I never heard the other way around where they lease the carriers tractors voluntarily? Of course the deductions of leasing the equipment would be stated in the trip lease agreement.

 

I guess my main question is can a carrier trip lease their own tractor to a O/O who is fully compliant to fmcsa standards. An owner operator by definition owns or leases a tractor to the carrier . So if they lease a carriers tractor back to the carrier by paying whatever amount is determined in the agreed trip lease then would this would be all legal?

 

I also want to be careful how I I fill out my mcs150. If I show all of my trucks as leased then I will have to have lease agreements with drivers I don't have yet. By having trip lease agreements there is not the pressure to have full time o/o leasing the trucks. Which I will do once I have found the right contacts. I have o/o ready to come on board with their own trucks. By leasing my trucks out on lease trips drivers can essentially test out the job without quiting the ones they have now. If they like the job they can choose to be an o/o exclusively if they choose.

 

Thanks ridgeline I have every intention of leasing the tractors to the drivers as would be clearly defined in the contract for every job done. I would clearly define start and finish times under the trip lease. Actually the trip lease would be for the load and the driver you cant really have one without the other. So no I can't trip lease, how so?

 

Lease is defined as started and ended at a specific time where as rent doesn't necessarily have a specific end date. It can even be argued they are the same thing.