Have you leased before?

You're asking

In other words you want to make some rules, just for your own personal convenience, and have the staff enforce them? Your sense of entitlement is totally undeserved
We have neither the time, the staff, nor the inclination to baby-sit your thread..
Whatever kinds of answers you get to your questions, even the seemingly non helpful ones, can be a learning experience for you..
If the answers are abusive or insulting or profane we'll step in like we always do.

As far as lease purchase goes, remember one thing. The companies offering L/P aren't doing it out of the goodness of their heart. It's a straight-up business deal and they can generate a better net profit by having you assume all the risk, all the liability, and all the work.
If they could make more money putting a hired driver in the truck they'd do that.
If you're doing an L/P with a company that runs their own company trucks who do you think they'll give the high revenue loads to?

And yes, I tried an L/P. It was a long time ago and it didn't last long when I saw what I was actually making as wages.

Good luck to you.

 

It's not about us being mean to you or criticizing you.... it's about the fact If you honestly have to ask Questions like Will you become successful lease purchasing then your not ready to be your own boss.... NO lease purchase from a carrier was designed to benefit the driver... your getting screwed hard... go read some of the horror stories on this forum about how it never works.... If you can't buy your truck from a dealer or private party then I'm telling you, you won't last 6 months and they will eat you alive with payments...

 

I’ll give you some food for thought.

Every horror story you see here, is only half accurate and truthful. There’s 50% more to the story.

I’ve spent the last 12 months speaking to failed and successful lease operators alike. All the failures have several things in common. As do all the success stories.

The failures:
Thought they could get home every weekend. And they did. Even though it broke them in the end.

Thought they could run coast to coast every week. One out, one back.

Never considered paying taxes. Until it was too late.

Had little or no concept of trucking or actually operating a business.

Leased to a company that dispatched them, at a set rate per mile.

Chased miles, instead of revenue. Wearing their trucks out prematurely. Tires, engine, all things in general.

The successes:

Leased to a company that paid percentage.

Made major sacrifices to their lifestyles.

Knew or learned what it took to operate a business.

Leased to a company that allowed them to choose their own loads.

Understood than an increase of fuel economy of 1 mpg (annually) was equal to $50k+ of earned income before taxes, annually.

Knew the difference between Net and Gross from day one.

And I haven’t even gotten into maintenance differences. I’m just sayin

 

This is interesting, I’ll bite.

I’ve done a lease purchase, after driving with my dad for a while. Never had a company position before that outside working for him at that point. So at that time 1 year experience.

Was I successful? Yeah, I guess you could say that. I got about 18 months away from completion and walked away.

Why did I walk away? To be honest, it was like a light switch turning on. As almost everyone on the board states you’re essentially paying someone’s truck and associated bills for them. I wanted the freedom to take my truck wherever I wanted and doing a l/p 99% of the time that’s not happening.

Where I was it wasn’t impossible to pay off a truck, I know 3 or 4 people who did it. 2 or them multiple times.

So if I walked away why do I feel I was successful with it?

Well, I didn’t lose my ###, I treated it like a business and didn’t blow paychecks. I paid myself what I needed to live on and take care of my family. The rest went to business affairs. Pretty much that simple.

Never got upside down on taxes.
Had realistic expectations of home time to work ratio. 4 -6 weeks out 1 week at home most times.
Watch your fuel spending, just because it runs 70 or more doesn’t mean you have to run it all the time. Watch your idling. Maintenance is huge.

My miles were good, stayed fairly consistent, paychecks were normally pretty consistent. Same old same. Sometimes it’s up sometimes it’s down. It’s like that at times.

You don’t have to run coast to coast to make money. At least I didn’t.

Failures/ why I left. Well, as stated earlier, you realize at the end of the day it’s really not worth doing an l/p, in my opinion. You’re allowing one place to exercise too much control over what you do. You’re buying your truck from there, running their freight etc. I decided if I was gonna pay for someone’s equipment it would be my own and I myself would choose where and when to work it.

Weekly payments are, again in my opinion, a big rip off. You over pay by leaps and bounds. So when it’s over and you pay $1 for the title, the truck has half a million miles or more on a newer DEF/emissions truck that you wayyyy over paid for. In short, if being an o/o is what you’re after, learn, learn, learn, then go buy a truck you want and can afford, choose where YOU want to work it and have more flexibility over your overall finances.

Obviously, this is all my experience, other peoples mileage may vary. Whomever can PM me if they wish but I won’t say what company.

 

Excellent post.

I for one, will never berate someone for doing a good lease, with a good company. Even if they walked away from it. It’s just another tool to utilize toward actual ownership. If that’s the goal.

The truth is, most people see the money. Then lose sight of the goal.

Everyone here tells people, buy your own. Pay cash, have a large down payment. Those same people fail to recognize that 85% of millinials have zero money saved. And are paying off student loans (non trucking) in excess of $20k. That specific group has ZERO expectations of ever owning a house. Much less a truck.

I could use the same logic on those drivers that condemn lease ops, to berate them for renting a home. Which is THE worse decision you could ever make. Zero return on any of your money, ever.

But that’s a topic for another day.

 

This has been an interesting thread so I figured putting my .02 as someone that is in a lease program right now. So here is the skinny on my program.

This is a lease not a L/P you get a new truck every 4 years
Payed 79%
100% FSC
I pay everything for the truck.
They cover maintenance, repairs, tires, and washing on the trailer. The only time I pay is if it was a result of my own negligence.
I am dispatched and run interstate 5 corridor primarily from central Cali. to Seattle, WA. Rarely do I venture out of that lane.
I'm through home a lot and home on weekends for a 34.

I have been doing this program for 10 months and have reached my goal of completing the year without losing my shirt. Now that I have done that it is time for me to reflect and make a decision on staying or going back to being a company driver. I ended the year with a pretax income of just over 63K after all expenses. So if you take that number and stretch it out to a full year then I would have made 75K+ pretax. I worked as a company driver for this outfit for a year before jumping over to the lease side and only made 33K so the jump more then doubled my earnings with the same company.

With all that said I am now faced with a hard decision that can't be just done on the fly. This company offers a 10% increase if you have your own trailer and there are defiantly some areas I can slim down a bit to get my profits up this year into the 90k pretax area maybe higher. On the other hand there is a carrier in the area that pays salary starting at 60K and I have talked to several of their drivers that are more around 75K. This is something to really think about.

So I think if you want to learn about the business side of this industry and what it takes to run a trucking business without being tied to a truck payment if you decide it's not your cup of tea then a good lease would be an option for you.

 

These are really weird numbers to me ,They pay79% plus 100% fsc .You said you pay for everything for the truck .And cleared $75,000 that’s not real bad but working on the company side you would only made $33,000 ?what did they pay you when you were a company Driver like .22 cents a mile?

 

Sorry I made 37k on company side typo. I made 35 cpm while company driver