Ok..a few thoughts on this (nothing personal...) Oh yuk. The junkliner won't be worth anything when your done with it. Disposable fleet trucks is all they are and designed to toss a guy into the next lease over and over and over again...its a never ending circle. One of the biggest and I mean BIGGEST mistakes a guy does is lease from the company he runs for. You give them way too much control. You say there is no forced-dispatch but watch what happens when you start refusing a few loads... A better idea? Look at a place like Lone Mountain truck leasing/sales. Then find someone to hire on with and go from there. Yea they require a decent downpayment but if you don't have that and don't have a solid maintenance fund - you really should be staying a company driver..... UNTIL YOU HAVE THE MONEY.... ..just things to think about. I am glad your taking time to review and think about this. You have all the time in the world - no need to make a snap decision here.. PS. A real O/O (not Leased/Operator) needs a decent and substantial maintenance fund. $20k is the typical target. That allows a guy to weather out any major repairs. When my maintenace fund gets down to $20k, I consider myself broke. Yea, it's that serious to have....
Ok, so I havent had a chance to get back on here for a few days but hopefully I can clear some stuff up for you. You had said that you are a company driver for CRST so that means you would be pulling van. I am on the Malone side of CRST which is flatbed and purely o/o and lease. I dont know how much is differnt on the lease between van and flatbed but I know the trucks are older here, 2006-up. Your first question maint. covers bumper to bumper for the first two years(@ .12cpm), then your last year your maint. actully goes up to .14cpm if I remember right but some of that is actully yours now. but maint. only covers pm type issues for the most part, major mechanical issues your on your own My fixed expenses are about $850 a week plus fuel. That leaves me around $2500/ wk in my cost with about $3500-4500+ in gross revenue, that leaves a paycheck of $1000-2000+/ wk it can and does vary depending on the revenue of the freight you haul. As for your credit it doesnt matter, atleast on the flatbed side you sign a walkaway lease for 3 years and start trucking. And you DO get percentage, 75% of linehaul, 100% of everything else. so if you had a load paying $1000 line haul, $500 Fuel, and $50 to tarp you would get $1300 to haul that load and saying the load was 650 miles you could get up to about $500 for fuel, (loaded miles/5.5mpg * avg cost fuel) then $50 extra if you want it. so that load you would make $800. As for what you bring home now, you can do better. if your not bringing home $650-750 on a bad week, there is a problem, either the way you run or the way your dispatched, or just the wrong company for you. every driver on the road in my opinion should be atleast getting close to $1000/ wk.
Atleast at Malone they send the trucks through the lease program once for the most part, unless someone tries and fails after a month and someone has to go get the truck, they used to keep the trucks in the system for 3 years and that was it, if someone leased the truck for 2 years 11 months you could get the truck make payment for a month then pay $5000 balloon and congrats, you got a truck( with about 800,000 miles or more) as for dispatch you have a dispatcher or fleet manager or whatever you want to call him/ her that gets your hours/ miles for the previous day and they put you on the load that YOU FIND AND WANT, then they give you fuel money and thats it. It is truely no forced dispatch because if you dont want the load, you dont call the agent. As for the $ amount to keep in maint. good point, if you have to pay repairs then you should definetly have a nice nest egg to fall on for repairs, and alot of people think they can get away with maybe $5000 or so, but in reality that would cover very little. The more you can put in a maint. acct the better. but a good thing here is you have 2 years to build up some money before you have ANY possible Maint cost to you on a lease.
I have a buddy that pulled for them for a while and loved Maverick, he only left because he wanted to run his own truck and bought from a dealership, but Maverick wont let you lease a truck to them if you dont buy there's, atleast at the time, I dont know if that has changed, but overall I have no problem recomending Maverick if you want good pay, home weekends, and good equipment. I just dont want an automatic truck!!!
3 Year Lease purchase, $5000 balloon payment. $522/ week is ALL fixed expenses. $185/ wk lease payment $185/ wk trailer rental which includes all maint for the trailer then about $150/wk for tags, insur. permits etc my truck is a 06 century, 36 month lease, $5000 balloon that they will finance for you if you need to and I am not 100% but am fairly sure there is no penalty if you pay the truck off early, just when you do, your 2 year bumper to bumper stops. so no, not $2088/ month for the just the truck, about $740/ month just for the truck.
My wife and I are looking at Malone. We are currently running over at CRST Van Expedited. We hate that we are forced to rely on a dispatcher to find us freight. I've researched as much as I can on Malone and for the most part when someone says something bad about Malone it's because they want a dispatcher to find their loads. We are not like that. We want to see what loads are availabe and what they pay. Figure out for ourselves where to run and when. The next biggest complaint is "cheap freight," but noone ever specifies what is cheap and what isn't, they just throw the term around loosly. Trust me, you haven't seen cheap until you've ran team van freight. Average at Van Ex to the truck is $1.35/mi on loaded miles only- that includes the fuel surcharge. But with our crappy dispatcher we are averaging closer to $1.25/loaded miles because all he ever gives us is cheap. Even out of $2.00/mi to the truck freight areas like Chicago and Ohio he has tried to give us loads paying $1.10-1.70, like I said before, fuel surcharge included. Anyway, we're making a switch here soon. Most likely to Malone but we haven't stopped looking at other companies. The thing that worries me most with Malone is that I hear in the beginning the agents don't want to give the new guys loads. It would be nice to find out if there is any truth in that and how long it takes to prove yourself to an agent at Malone.
I lease a truck from Malone, my weekly fixed costs are $625 a week. That $1350 your quoting is just for the truck payment at Lone Mountain. My monthly truck payment is $740 with a two year bumper to bumper warranty.
As far as agents not giving "new" guys loads that isn't true at all I have never run into that. I will say some agents have there own trucks and tend to give them the better loads and load them first, with that being said I still make great money here.
