The odds are in favor of the house

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.

 

Im an owner op . i pull loads off the boards. I can tell you i had a prime disp. Call me to pull a load out of TN. I asked them with all the Prime drivers you have why is load on the board.
I was shocked at their reply. They basically said if the load is critical rather that be delivery time or the load value itself they look to see what prime drivers they have in the area . Now if the driver is new or has habit not making deliveries load goes on the boards day before pu date. If they cant get rid of it then they put it on 1 of their drivers. So i said basically if you got 3 drivers at tstop looking for a load you dont trust them you broker load out. Yep thats what we do that why we post the loads 24hr in advance.

 

Some companies like mine allow their lease drivers to work loads boards as well under certain conditions where as most wont. So thats an incentive as well

 

Yep, at Swift we had an outside broker we could run spot loads from. Unfortunately Knight killed that program and that was it for me. Moved my operation to a company where basically I just use their authority and find my own loads.

 

I disagree......you're only reading what you want to read. There's plenty of success stories; I happen to be one of them

 

Yea okay. I know 500 failures to your one
Success story.
Every company I worked for is littered with
Ex-owner/ops and leased drivers who went flat broke
And vowed to never do it again.

 

well, honestly, ask yourself this. Of those 500 failures, how many were people who had no business whatsoever leasing a truck? How many leased for all the wrong reasons? How many failed because they were failures in life to begin with.
I'm not saying every lease is good, however, I can tell you that if you lease from Schneider and have a good work ethic and are reasonably intelligent, you will win. Schneider will back you if you're trying. If you're a slacker who can't balance a checkbook, you will likely fail in any endeavor. It's called life.

 

Now see you lumped owner ops and lease drivers in there together ... It's not the companies being evil or greedy. It's the fact that most fools haven't got a clue what a business is , much less how to properly go about starting and running one.

100%of the people who try to solo an airplane without knowing how will crash. Doesn't mean airplanes can't be flown.