9 weeks for free with C R E ! don't do it!

I just recently broke my lease with England, it was a three year lease, and not even a lease purchase, it is just a straight lease. You can make a baloon payment on the truck provided it is three years old, it is such a rip-off. However despite what the crooks at horizon tell you, you can break the lease, the contract says 90 day notice. I tried to put in my 90 day notice, and could get no one to verify they recieved it. After two weeks of trying, I finally just brought the truck back to burns harbor, and handed them the keys, all the payments stopped that day. You can get your tax money back if you actually paid into it, I knew I was not going to make money so I did not.

As for why people go to the company, England taught me how to drive, and I had a great phase one trainer, who had been with the company for over 40 years. I did not have the money to pay for trucking school, and England lets you go through school, and pay later, so it worked for me. I did not however realize that there were two phases to the training, and it would take me four months before I could start accumulating experience that other trucking companies would accept, but by leasing I was able to bypass the three month second phase.

All in all I am glad I went to England, they taught me how to drive, and I have a good job that I love as a result. You can break the lease, but make sure you have another job lined up. Your DM will tell you it will look bad if you break the lease, and it might. But most companies will understand you breaking a lease if you are working for free, just explain your situation to the company you are applying to.

 

Also Burns Harbor is like the taj mahal compared to the lodging situation up at SLC where I went to school. In Salt Lake they pack eight guys in a room, with no tv, no microwave, just 4 bunk beds, and lockers. I honestly was more comfortable in jail.

 

Is it true on there lease program that you cant take the truck where u want, only where they direct you to?

 

No that is not true, England does treat it as if it is your truck, probably because with insurance, and payments you are paying close to a thousand dollars a week to them. You dont have to accept a load, and you can go where you want with it. However I am sure that if you turn down loads, or go way out of route, your dm will be less likely to give you alot of miles. Not that it really matters, because unless you have a student you are not going to make money anyway.

 

Atlas, in training they said if you're a lease operator and drive outside of your route, for example if your load is going to Florida and your heading towards Texas and you don't respond after a couple tries, they assume the truck is stolen and call the police.

The only way you can take it to another company is IF they guarantee CR England they will make the truck payment if the driver fails to do it, I was told only SWIFT will guarantee it. So, if you want to go some where else because you're not making money, you turn the truck in and the next un-suspecting sucker comes in.

Anyways, this is from what I've been told, nothing hard on paper.

 

So they route the fleece operators & attempt to force them to go the route england wants? What freakin bunch of crap! Go to Cr england to be a glorified company driver and oh wait a minute, & pay them to be a gloried company driver!

 

there are typically ways around the routing provided by the company computers. Best way would be to call your DM and explain to them why you want to run a different route. They should have the ability to manipulate the routing that is provided to you. It would also be important to note that the routing provided by the company is designed to maximized the profits for the company, and therefore would maximize the profits for the drivers. Well profits might be overstating, you'd avoid the most costs.

 

How's going there route going to maximize englands profits??? Lease(fleece) operators are paying for the fuel so therefore it wouldn't matter how far the lp operator drove because company is not paying for a darn bit of expenses on that truck! The fleece operator gets hosed on that fleece deal. In my opinion if I'm paying all expense whether I'm leasing or it's my truck wholly owned, no company is going to tell me which route to go. I will conduct my business the way I see fit.

 

Do they have company drivers? I'm not sure, I'm not even going to research it. However if they do they'll save on pricing by volume purchase. These savings could also be passed onto a lease purchase driver. I'm not saying you should follow it 100% but it's not a bad idea to look at the route and run your own cost/benefit analysis.

 

Well sometimes what the driver whom is paying for the truck is to determine the most cost effective route. If you have heavy load and customer is not too far off beaten path, the interstate might be better option because very little stop and starting which burns more fuel than traveling at steady speed. That's just one of the things that a good business owner running a truck needs to consider.