Expunged Record and Finding Employement

Don’t lease a truck. Whatever you do. Do not lease a truck. No matter how much anyone shows you they are making or whatever. Do not lease a truck.

 

Why do you suggest against leasing a truck? I met a driver who leased his own truck and said it practically pays for itself.

 

Just a note of interest. If you get a ticket dismissed it's off you driving record but not your criminal record. You have to file for expungement.

 

That's correct. But OP said his convictions had been expunged, so I took him at his word.

 

HOWEVER they are still in the system, they don't get removed and if the company uses some of the less common internet search companies - it will show up.

 

Leasing is a fancy word for "renting." When you lease a truck, you also must pay all expenses related to that truck, such as fuel, insurance, truck payment, repairs, salary for you, the driver. The truck might pay for itself, but it probably won't pay for you.

 

Dont believe us? Try it and come back and let us know how you made out.

 

It practically pays for itself and absolutely nothing else whatsoever. If you go home for a week the company you leased on to will still be taking 1000-1500+. I know people who took 4 days off and would spend the next 3 weeks catching up, collect one decent check and then they are back home because they just spent a month on the road running 3000+ miles to make 800 dollars net BEFORE TAXES. You can make that as a company driver at Prime. A lot more. Some of the best lease operators make an average of 55-60k. Sounds great until you realize that the 55-60k included sometimes a month or more of bills going unpaid, starving literally, and destroying their health worrying how to survive. Or you could be a company driver and know for a fact that the company will utilize their own drivers and equipment first, that the loads will be lighter, have tighter delivery windows and that they’ll make sure you have a check at the end of the week. If you go home for 3-4 days as a company driver you bring home 700 bucks. Do that with a lease and you’ll possibly break even if EVERYTHING works in your favor. This is trucking. Nothing ever works in your favor.

If you cant save 5k plus a month of expenses and go out and get a truck, do yourself a favor and do not lease one. MHC Kenworth will lease you a truck for 5k down and about 1200 a month with 350-400k miles and a warranty. It’s not brand new and doesn’t have stickers all over it, but it will make you money. If a guy is paying 1200 and another guy is paying 4000, running the same miles at the same rate of pay, who do you think looks cooler... the guy with the new shiny truck or the guy with the fat wallet full of cash?

You’ll be hard pressed from day one to lease a truck at prime. Your trainer will be leasing, almost everyone will be leasing... they’ll have the newer equipment, they’ll have it customized... they’ll be talking about how they make 150k a year.

Now subtract 52k in truck payments, 70k in fuel, 5k in fuel taxes, permits, and other random ####. Subtract 300 or so a week in tolls that Prime makes the lease operator pay... subtract the cost of those stickers.

How much did you make?

Now take 25% out for taxes. Can you live on that? Ok. Boom... 10,000 dpf replacement. How about now?

You don’t even know how to drive forward yet, let alone how to back up without hitting anything. If that’s the case you don’t know where freight is best for a particular fleet, where not to go if you don’t want to waste your time, etc...

Are you flatbed? How do you like the idea of driving in New York City at 7am on Monday? Cuz that’s where the high paying load is. It’s not in flat ### Kansas.

What about reefer... Florida sounds nice in the winter. What kinda rates you think you get out of there in January? Not good.

Unless you know the very basic things, you don’t need to be worried about things that are general knowledge for those who are running a business. Learn the industry. Get your paper up and build business credit. Then you can go buy a brand new truck spec’d how you want it for what guys are paying monthly on a used truck. And you’ll make a killing doing it. But there’s levels to this ####.

 

And I would add... I wish I had waited to see every state before I got a truck. Once I got one, I had to start rejecting loads to places I had never been but really wanted to go, because I knew I wouldn’t get a decent load out of there, the fuel and taxes were too high, and there’s a good chance I’d be stuck there starving that week and working from a deficit for the next month.

You can make a lot of money as a company driver, with benefits and retirement. Start there and see if this is even for you.