I'm looking at possibly being single again in the near future and will have my 13 year old daughter to take care of. In lieu of my occupation, I am considering doing a lease/purchase, in order to, be able to visit my daughter as often as possible. She will be attending a private boarding school. I'm looking for flexibility. I'll need to net at least $3,000 a month to cover her tuition and my living expenses. My plan is to basically live in the truck until my financial situation straightens out. My credit is shot due to a recent bankrupcty, so finding financing through a dealer will be pretty much unavailable. I've got about 500k miles of clean driving on my DAC, so any experience requirements should not be an issue. Any and all suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
I have a friend who is doing pretty good with Schneider, he bought a truck (lease-to-own) through them and is very happy. He nets about $2700 a week before his $500 truck payment. I think Schneider is the only one worth to do a lease purchase through as the truck is actually yours and your not renting it from some huge outfit. Hes been at it for 2 years now, came with a TK apu. Hes single and doesent work very hard, also hes on their % deal where you book your own loads and run where you want. Kinda like landstar but better money and the loads posted on their boar is to the truck pay.... I think its wortha shot.
As a divorced owner-operator, I was able to visit my son several states away from where I lived. The better situation was to go out-of-service at a terminal. The worse situation was a visit during an eight hour break when I should have been resting. Another problem is transportation and parking during the visit.
Is you daughter in Florida ? That can be a tough place to get freight out of . You might want to consider driving for an expediting fleet owner . You'd pick and choose your loads and operate like an O/O without the financial obligation . The standard accepted availability in expediting is 75% . In other words if you stay out 3 weeks you can take a week off . Wouldn't a full week a month with your daughter be better than an occasional weekend ?
The boarding school she will be attending is in Wisconsin. I have custody, but I'm not going to make her live in the truck with me. I want her to have the best educationa and teenage years I can provide as a truck driver. In the school, the weekends would be the only time I could visit her, other than holidays and vacations.
do you mind if I ask which school? I'm from WI, moved away a few years ago. you could make that much easy as a company driver. be carefull with the lease deals there is way too many people running leases you end up with negative statments more weeks then not
