need advice, lease purchase is leaving me broke

Sorry ! Whish you all the best good luck!

 

I hope the OP gets a ride home. Getting a ride home used to be fairly easy. But with changing attitudes and drive cams in the truck, I suspect it's not easy to get a ride home anymore from a truck stop.

 

Find an owner operator most will help out ! If in atea i would butwould have to sleep up front as dont have but one bunk ! Hardly ever see owner ops with two bunks most have cabinets for storage!

 

This it's a fact, I do the dreaded dollar a mile lease everyone knocks, but I get great discounts on fuel,and my payments are not bad so I routinely see $1500 net and nearly always over a thousand and this week should break my record at nearly $3000 net if I got my last load turned in in time. Me and the wife pretty much live in the truck so we have few expenses outside the truck and its a pretty decent living. The point is, I fuel for the load every time and don't just fill my tanks. I know what it takes for its to survive and I don't blow it. When I know I'm going tho have a short week I plan ahead and I don't ever let my bank account hit zero unless I know for a fact that it's going back over 1k within a couple of days. I don't ever never let a week go where i will be anything over a half a payment in the hole because I can make that up in a week plus some. As of yet I have never turned down a load because if it sucks I know my dm will make out right and usually with a little bonus of some kind like a really great load then a shuttle load for an extra hundred bucks or something like that. The whole lease thing boils down to a few points and those are the ones you HAVE tho do the homework on. First and foremost you need the knowledge and the wisdom tho run a trucking business and be able to juggle finances smartly. Secondly you have to find a program where the numbers will definitely work to make you money. Third you have to contact those drivers doing that program and find out how the company is treating them and how the miles are. And last, ask the drivers if they know our have talked to anyone that has successfully completed their contract and out possible, talk tho them.

 

Not to bash you but if you even have to consider your bank account in this business and a possibility of being zero, then you are either doing something very wrong or that you are with the wrong program and need to get out of it.

A L/P should not consume most of the revenue opposed to a driver's revenue, it should come ahead of it by a few dollars, like maybe the truck costs plus 5%.

Sorry if I sound naive about this, but I know fleet owners who actually started out as L/P owners, they were successful in their use of an L/P to more onto ownership. On the other hand, I scrapped together enough money to buy a truck to start and can't see why many chose the L/P unless they don't take money seriously.

 

It's simple for me really, to scrape together that money, I would be driving company for at least three years making the same amount or less, mostly quite a bit less per week than I bring home right now to buy a truck 2 years our more older and way higher millage than the one I have now and that's not including putting together a maintenance fund to cover the expenses of that older truck. Here I work the same 3 years, make a higher net doing it and come out with a newer truck with maintenance records I know from the time it was bought new and I get the total sum of 2 accounts that have been saved for me back plus a 3rd called the lease completion bonus that the company matches, plus what I saved on my own which the 3 accounts above alone will equal 15k+. Now I have worked the same 3years either way but one I have an older truck that may our may not be a good one and no money to run it, or 2 now I have a truck and a nice sum of cash to get me going or a trade in and down payment on a newer or better truck. I consider option 2 to be the smarter decision. You all can holler save and buy a beater for your first truck till the cows come home and I will still say I have it better. I know my truck and aside from the color, it's a good one and the color is changeable.

 

If you ask a policeman for directions, their reference points are like, "Turn left at the second Dunkin Donuts, then take a right at the Donuts Are Us..."

Ask a teenage girl for directions and their points of reference are shopping malls.

Ask a certain customer of ours for turn by turn directions to an oil rig and it's casinos.

 

frankly, if they are gonna DAC him, and they will, let them come to his house and get the darned truck. he'd need a ride home from where he drops it off, and he's flat broke, what's one more thing added to his DAC?

then all he has to do when searching for a job is just be upfront with his circumstances and let the chips fall where they may at a new employer?

and certainly NEVER sign a lease deal again!

 

My bank account gets that low because I am paying old debts, that ends this week. Here is this week's check and the 2k check.

 

Personally if I were in that situation,.. I would find a safe secure place close to home and leave the truck there. Then call and tell them where they can pick up the truck.

As stated,.. much has to do with the situation. But truck abandonment is not a career ending fatality. A resourceful guy can recover from it.

Hurst