The odds are in favor of the house

Those weeks of team driving pays that company training off with the grants they get. Why would they train you on their dime? They hate to pay you period. The companies are great jus great..

 

And that profit companies make. They can use to lower freight rates to their customers. All at your expense for 1.20 mi.

 

If he was making that much money as company driver he would have posted by now just to shut you up. I don't want you to shut up don't get me wrong. But I know that 1800 is a lie. Truckers can make money just not as company drivers.


Edit: I just realized this thread was old

 

As someone who's about to go lease at Prime, I agree with this. I've been talking to every experienced driver I come across about leasing, and nearly every O/O I've talked to spouts the same thing about how every single lease is a con job and basically tells me I'd be better off investing my life savings in slots at an Indian casino. I get that in the long run owning is definitely better and more profitable, but I'm absolutely not interested in going straight from company driving where I get paid to follow orders and forget about the business side of things to taking out a $100k+ loan on a rig. Even if leasing is not as profitable, I see it as a worthwhile investment in the short term so I can limit the financial risk I'm taking as I'm learning to run a business. Also, I totally agree with you that statistics about failed leases are often skewed. I'm sure there are plenty of cases where people have done everything right and still gotten screwed, but most of the time when I see someone failing it's because they lack either the diligence or the wisdom to succeed in running a business. I saw one fellow Prime driver go under not too long ago, and as he was quitting his job, all he would tell anyone is not to lease. He kept on telling people that dispatch wouldn't give him good loads and that he hadn't made money in months. He conveniently left out the fact that he was constantly taking days off and refusing loads, and based on that, it's no secret his dispatcher gave the good paying loads to other drivers that actually worked their butts off.

 

Sorry, but you already have the fundamental seed of failure planted. You don't start a business and then learn to run it. You better #### well know before you start.

 

Good luck to you. But the only answer you'll get on this forum is how you will fail. Just research outside this forum and you'll see how easy it is to succeed

 

We're just going off of past results.
None of them ever succeed,they just disappear
From the forum when they go belly up.
To embarrassed to admit they got screwed.

 

It's akin to sharecropping.

But then again working spot market on your own isn't easy either. It has its own challenges if you want to make more than a company driver.

A used truck will probably cost as much as a new one with repairs and down time.

 

Actually, a lot on here have succeeded. I completed a lease with Swift, then completed a purchase on a used company truck. Paid it off and ran 2 years with no payment. Traded it in last fall for a new truck that I speced and ordered from the dealer.

Leasing is a business decision. Low risk, low reward. Owning out right and running spot market or getting your own customers is high risk, high reward.

You can succeed or fail at either. The key is knowing what you're doing, know how to manage your operation and be properly capitalized when you start.

Companies allow you to lease without knowing these fundamentals. Then drivers fail, instead of looking in the mirror they blame the company.

 

Just like mystic said, not all of us have failed. Some of us "share croppers" have done very very well.