My Experience with CRST Malone Lease Purchase

How much is their stepdeck per week what brand?? They teamed up with Fitzgerald and have some other third party lease options...

 

They have a couple of different types of leases going on. They don't have step decks. Some of the agents do

 

I'm coming up on one year in Van L/P. I stopped taking students and drive solo, now. CRST hates me. I've had major problems with my truck since the get-go: didn't make a paycheck the first three weeks...which is their "grace period" where they don't take out any payments so you can build up a bank. So much for that.

Day three they replaced the entire regen' system. Then electrical problems stemming from that put me down another week-no problem found. Eventually led to another week down while they replaced the entire wiring harness.

Day one: Engine is a hard puller, runs great. Interior was good when I got the truck. Only had one key, which I found out, after parking it at a Wal Mart on day one...only fit the ignition. CRST sent out a locksmith.

Students. The whole idea of L/P is to train students. I found out a couple things my first student: one, I can't sleep when someone else is driving. So I'd sit in the jump seat awake for 3/4 days after we started running team, then pull over and pass out for 10 hours. Get up...do it again.

Since CRST (and most trucking companies) will take anyone, you get, well, anyone. My first student had some sort of learning disability. Sat in the truck yelling at me because he couldn't figure out how to find the trailer number on a BOL. Then it took him 15 minutes to draw up the landing gear. Yes, he'd been shown repeatedly.

Day 4 he was sitting in the jump seat making plans to go to Swift. I kicked his ### out of the truck wherever it was we were. Told him to get Swift to pick him up.

One student offered sex to pass. I pulled into Cedar Rapids and threw her off the truck. "Get your #### off my truck." Direct quote. She stole a $100 pair of sunglasses. ...and her records, which had nothing but good to say about her.

CRST keeps you running. I was making good money when I had a student who wasn't insane/worthless (4 out of 6).

So I went solo. Didn't make over $500 a week until I got a new DM. I had an idiot hit me on the right side after he blew a two-lane Too Fast Too Furious move in his Honda Element (pause for laughter) that put me down nearly three weeks. He hit me from my extreme right hand blind spot...PIT'd himself on my RF tire and I pushed him down the road about 100'. Oh, they continued to charge me my weekly during the three weeks I was not running. I came back over $3800 in the hole. No paycheck for a month catching up.

CRST's idiot Safety guy charged me with a preventable. ...said I should have seen the guy. Also said he didn't need to see photos (I took tons) because he knew what happened...and he actually said this when I asked "How?"

"Because my Father has been driving for 29 years." Not even kidding. My first preventable (any accident) in 7 years of driving which totally wasn't preventable.

Good thing? They paid for everything. Bad thing? Peach Tree Freightliner did the repairs and now I have a huge wobble in my steering from 35-50 MPH. I mean, entire front end shakes. You can see the mirrors moving 4-6" back and forth until the speed gets up over 50. The fix would probably put me down a week, minimum.

What should have been a warning: When I got the truck, I found FOUR permit books stuffed in the cab from the previous people who had tried the L/P thing. I found out today that my truck # is changing because I'm coming up on my 1 year anniversary-where they change the truck # from a 11? to 12?...then they stop paying for a bunch of stuff, I guess, including accidents, which was NOT explained to us in orientation nor did I see anything about that in the contract. But they give you ZERO time to read it before you have to sign everything, so it may be in there somewhere.

Anyways: they also said, in orientation, that you could use load boards. That was complete ######## (or so I thought), because every time I tried, because they made me wait for a day or more for a load, they said, invariably, "Oh, we have a load, so you can't use outside boards."

So I lost probably $4,000 sitting and not running...only to find out, last week, that using a very simple procedure, I could use outside boards no matter what. DMs said "Well, I guess I didn't mention that...."

With the new DM, I've made about $1500 a week take-home, sometimes up to $2,000, when I'm running. On the low side, $750 or so.

I don't run to CA or the Northwest of Northeast/NYC. I try to stay ATL (from where they sent you to NJ) to TX with jaunts up to IL. I'd make more money running to CA and out, but I don't like being that far away from home. I like to come home occasionally. ON that:

They pay you twice a week, which, while you're in orientation, if you don't understand what it means, you think is a good thing.

It's not. It's designed to keep you out constantly. You have to run the second half of the week to make your payment on Tuesday (about $950 a week all-in) and their weekend 'support' sucks. So if you don't have a run that picks up on Friday to deliver Sun/Mon, you will sit. So, you have to run a load Wed/Thurs, then get another Fri. You turn in those runs on Friday by midnight, that covers your Tuesday payments and anything left over you'll get paid on that Tuesday next.

So, then you need to get a run Mon to finish Tuesday. If you don't, it doesn't get paid on that Thursday, but next week's Tuesday.

So, if you want to go home on a weekend, you only get paid what you ran Mon thru Friday, which has to be enough to make your payments on Tue. If not, you go in the hole.

So you can make money. Year one they fix everything that goes wrong. After a year...accidents/damage are YOURS...not sure about maintenance, although in orientation (which was complete BS) they said CRST took care of maintenance/repairs the entire time the lease was on.

Now, when you go to orientation, they give you a list of trucks that are available. They are listed year/make/number of payments to make to buy it.

I picked the lowest payments on a 2013, while everyone else went for the newest. I could have sworn the payments would have gotten me clear after about a year and two/three months. CRST is now telling me the payments won't be over for another year and then there's a $5000 balloon payment at the end.

So, I'll probably go out and lease a truck then sign on to another company.

Would I recommend CRST? Only if you can handle driving team. They will keep you moving. As a trainer, you can make good money, $3-4,000 take-home a week with a good student. If you want to take a student that's good to be your permanent co-driver, you have to pay CRST for their training.

I'd give them a 4 out of 10, maybe a 6 tops. They have given their company drivers a pretty decent pay raise recently...to keep them from jumping ship to Swift, actually. No ####...they had to. They've actually sued Swift over stealing students. I'd say good company to start with. Do your time, go elsewhere. Go solo.

 

I had small issues starting out, but Malone so far has been great. Guess it just depends on which crst company you go with. I'm solo and no issues. I didn't get my truck for a week and they pushed my payment back another week because of it. And everything is up front with the payments so I don't know how you are getting another year on your lease. They give you a payment schedule with exactly the last payment date and what the exact amount of the balloon payment is. I love it so far. Pick my own loads. Don't have to rely on your driver manager.

 

Why did it take another week to get your truck?

 

Didn't have enough trucks. They ended up buying 2 for 2 of the people in my class

 

What kind of trucks did they have to buy?
Nobody went with a third-party leasing

 

They are crst trucks for the most part and nobody I was with did a third party lease. 325 a week around 5000 balloon payment at the end. I got a 2016 freightliner Columbia. Be paid off in little over 2 years. Has small fridge. No apu. But did have an inverter in it. Had 500 thousand miles on it.

 

I am on a dedicated shipper account right now. Round trip miles get paid to deadhead back to the shipper. Should last for a couple of months so i have been told.

 

You don't pick your loads? Or just got this gig and not have to hassle with finding freight..?
How many in orientation? Is your truck an automatic? Heard they were going to those ..