Double Yellow's Company Driver to Independent Thread

Healthy ? You better define that ahead of time. Rollin defines healthy as 300%.

 

I’m leasing at Prime, and I agree with everything you said except the last part. I’ll sidestep the comment about my level of intelligence and go for the inaccurate statement that I would make more as a company driver. Most of the time, I net $1500 plus. I just took a week off and didn’t have to turn in my truck and go get a new one coming out of home time. That’s a huge plus. Leasing gets a lot of criticism in the independent driver community, but it has its place. I would definitely make more money owning my own truck, which is why I’m buying a truck next month. Maybe people who lease for three or four years, complete the lease, rinse and repeat in the name of all these financial “benefits“ they are promised deserve the criticism so generously dished out, but for many of us, leasing is a low risk way to find out if we are cut out to be business owners, and it is a step in the path to bigger and better things. One spot in the continuum rather than the destination in and of itself.

 

It’s also a smart business move for him because it limits his risk. He owns a truck, it performs financially whether the driver wants to work or not. I really think he probably wants to wind up looking a lot more like Landstar than just another mega training company.

 

I doubt that he wants to be more like Landstar. Landstar has very few trailer assets, and theoretically no truck assets. Prime is all about the assets. Can a Prime driver even pull their own trailer? Prime has too good a deal going as long as they can hold off the court cases... Prime Lawsuit Will Go To Supreme Court - TruckersReport.com

 

I was referring to the fact that they are an all independent contractor company. Seems like Rob wants more and more of his drivers to go that way. They’ll lease to you straight out of training!!

Interesting read on the lawsuit. There are two sides to every story. I’d like to hear the other side, but generally speaking it seems underhanded to contractually limit someone’s ability to sue you. When are “they” going to stop taking all the reward and transferring all the risk to “us”? When “we” stop letting “them”. It’s interesting that I just read through the section of this thread that discussed bad credit. After all…big corporations couldn’t walk all over the “little guy“ if he wasn’t so desperate.

 

I didn't see anywhere in the article that the lessee had a gun to his head while signing the agreement. Nor does it necessarily say he was harmed by having to use the arbitration he agreed to.

There's actually a simple solution to problems like this: Don't sign before you read and understand.

As this case gets heard, the only party who will be enriched are the attorneys arguing the case. The original issue ("I want to be an employee now that I got a huge tax bill I didn't save for" or "I got injured on the job and can't afford the medical care") will remain. This driver will continue to be broke and unemployed by his own doing. Prime may or may not change anything, since thousands of other contractors can read and understand. Plenty more where this one came from.

 

In short I read this in the beginning and have my authority and paid tractor and trailer. Now I am leaning on retiring and wondering if you or anyone could oblige one on how to dismantle one's authority outside of the logically obvious... sell tractor and trailer first then cancel insurance then all services or can one sell the whole operation to someone?

 

There is a market for established carrier numbers with good safety ratings. Some brokers/shippers will not work with new DOT numbers.