Central Refrigerated Lease Question

Hope it's a liberal amount.

 

And I have to wonder, is that a weekly mileage limit? Monthly? Annual?

 

They 'estimate' what your monthly mileage is going to be (using previous months) then take out some weekly... If they over estimated, you get some back... If they underestimated, they take out more... If the month has 5 weeks you get a week with nothing removed. We have been running 4970 miles/week, they take our about $220/week for over mileage... We have about $16K in there now and if we decide to purchase our truck (in about a year), that amount will go towards the purchase of the truck (looking at about $25K) That is the way we are leaning right now. However, if we decide not to purchase or to lease another truck, we don't get that over mileage money... It stays with the truck.

 

Ouch. That stings if you don't purchase. At least you know you will have a down payment large enough.

 

Yes, you can survive as a single lease/op. but you better be very efficient with running the truck and managing your time. Every little thing costs you and if you don't know what you're doing it's easy to end up with negative weeks. Here's a bad and a good example of things that happen... BAD: Last week I got all excited about a $1,700+ settlement. Then I realized they put in a pay voucher a week late and my maintenance acct got used to make up my negative balance the week before... OUCH! So basically I did get $1,700 but half of it was already mine, lol. Ok, not too bad but retarded that it even happened that way. Luckily I horde money like a twice burnt leprechaun. It's all still sitting in savings and at least now it's earning interest. Good: There are the occasional loads with too much time, multiple stops, and they're light to boot. Run as fast as you can and get that whopping $75 for layover, or ease off the accelerator a bit and bump up your fuel economy a mile or two per gallon? Little decisions like that add money to your bottom line. It's a fun game to play and you've got about four weeks a month to practice. You're either good and you make a living or you're not... And you start threads about how Central is unfair and won't show you how to succeed and they expect you to do everything all by yourself...

 

does anyone know what the fuels surcharges are? for central. still doing research and found a few questions also they mention on the website under the lease section one of the benefits is "centrals fuel program"
does anyone have any info on this?
i see all the posts speaking against leasing in the first year and i have run my own business so i know how much of a pain it is. i will run a family "purse" with my son so we will have less in the way of money gripes. we both wish to run like theres no tomorrow. we have no illusions of hometimes. we want to go out and stay out. we expect to work hard, and know ##### will still hit the fan from time to time. we know we will need to take our turn "in the barrel" and have the "may i have another please" attitude. buuut i am still looking at all the info i can before we go jump into a lease deal.
trying to get my 7 posts so i can make a post of my own without bumping thread like this...but thanks for any advice in advance

 

They have a 'new' fuel plan... FSC on ALL miles now, not just loaded, but the calculations to figure it out... I'm not sure of. The old plan right now (paid on loaded miles only) is about 0.44/mile .. New is about 0.22/mile.. With this change though, it also changed your flat rate as well... We could have opted for the new plan when it came out, but we didn't run enough DH to make it worth our while.

 

I don't think anyone does. It's less than half the national average and yet our mileage pay is a little higher. But I'm dealing with a lot of proverbial messing of the fan right now. I'm not gonna get into it until I calm down but I'm starting October about -$10,000!!! Yay. Half maintenance, half BS! (Ok maybe a 3rd bad decisions) still sux.

 

OUCH! Good luck :-/

 

Yep..you won't make much leasing. You make more being a company driver and don't have to buy your own fuel and other expen, so nses. I was a Lease Op with Central in 2010, and as a solo, the best week that I had was about $2000 after expenses, but there were some weeks that I didn't get a paycheck and had to live off the cash advance. I teamed with my trainer for a while because we were friends before I came on with them, and in our best week, we drove 7000 miles. But you have to figure in expenses. At the time, we made $0.88/mile plus the fuel surcharge, which put us at about $1.04/mile at the time. We got about 7 miles/gallon so in the end with fuel, maintenance account, over mileage, as a team, we saw about $2500-$3500 in a good week.