Fiduciary responsibility

no

 

No sir.

If you ask most looking at lease op and owner op why they want to go that route, the interested party will say…

-I can pick the freight/ freight lane
-I run when I want to run
-go home when I want to

Lease Driver picked up a great paying load in CarlislePA on a Friday going to Ft SaskatchewanAB, receives 25/7. Driver goes home to Chicago a few days, delivers Sunday evening 9 days later.

Driver waits a couple days looking at loads, grabs a load of lumber Wednesday for $.80/mile going to GreenvilleSC to “help pay for fuel.” Stops by Chicago for 2 days to see Mamacita. Lease is $1000/week.

See the problem?

 

If it’s a walk away lease purchase then the company has no motivation for you to succeed. They can simply start the process over with the next person once you fail and quit.

It’s up to you to pick what you want to do and where you want to run so that you make sure you’re profitable.

 

It's in/out of the contract. The difference between being a child and an adult often revolves around who protects you from your actions? You are your fiduciary. Do research, it's easier now than ever before, and read the contract. Make changes to that contract or sign another carrier's contract. If you Join OOIDA ($45/year) they will review the contract for you. There are a YouTube channels where an Owner-Op or Lease-Op walks you through how to think and make choices as an o-o or l-o. Jeffrey Like (Big Rig Radio Network, Truckers Education Network, etc) and Steady Trucker are valuable for learning how to make trucking decisions. Kevin Rutherford has a series of classes plus books and videos to learn how to run a successful trucking business. Nobody will worry about your outcome as much as you should worry about it. Just having a desire to succeed is not enough. Success is a skill and you can learn it. Many in trucking want someone else to be a trucking parent and protect them from the trucking world AND make them successful. Success is what you do, start with learning how to be successful in trucking and then go do it. At first you will be "painting by numbers" and soon you will paint your own masterpiece.

 

If you buy food in a restaurant should that restaurant have a responsibility to make you healthy? Make choices like the outcome is important. Look before you leap.

 

It's a conflict of interest for these companies to have employees and contractors working the same freight under the same rules. It would be different if you could take your truck somewhere else to work, but a lot of these programs won't let you. This is one reason why politicians are looking into lease purchases, and laws like AB5 are getting introduced.

This has nothing to do with lazy drivers failing to make it work. You can be the hardest working person in the world, but it means nothing if the company has ultimate control in your success. It would be like buying a McDonald's restaurant from corporate, and having them stop supporting you, then taking it back after you inevitably fail and selling it to the next sucker. It would be different if you could get support elsewhere, but the contract prevents you from putting Whoppers on the menu.

Unfortunately, we live in a world where things like "let the buyer beware" exist. Instead of discouraging bad actors, the blame is placed on the people being exploited. So should there be a responsibility for them to help their people succeed? I think so. But legally, there currently is not.

 

If the trucking company wanted to put your needs as high as their needs they wouldn't be a trucking company. Their job is to make as much money as possible for their owners, which often means keeping their expenses as low as possible. They are not offering you a lease because it is supposed to work for you, but because it works for them. They have their fiduciary responsibility to their owners/stockholders.

 

The older I get the more I learn how little I really know, and today was no different, the first time I've ever heard the word "Fiduciary" had to look it up in the dictionary. This is what I came with "An individual in whom another has placed the utmost trust and confidence to manage and protect property or money. The relationship wherein one person has an obligation to act for another's benefit." A fiduciary relationship encompasses the idea of faith and confidence and is generally established only when the confidence given by one person is actually accepted by the other person. Mere respect for another individual's judgment or general trust in his or her character is ordinarily insufficient for the creation of a fiduciary relationship.
Bottom line is it comes down to whatever legal arrangement the two parties come up with and agree too. which is why it always pays to read the fine print or get another expert to do it for you before you sign on the dotted line.

 

So, it sounds like you signed a lease that wasn't very agreeable. If a leaseholder can't make the payments, the lessor can just take the truck back and sell it to the next jamoke willing to sign on the dotted line. This is why I say (and so does anybody who knows even the slightest thing about business) that leasing a truck is a setup for failure. And yet guys keep falling for this scam day after day.....

So, your premise is that, I guess if they give you lots of freight, THEY will also make money? Well, hate to break the news to you, but THEY will make money regardless. In fact, a guy just starting out on a cruddy lease agreement is probably a LOT more ambitious than the guy who's been at it long enough to finally realize that he's being used. Or, to put it another way, these companies thrive on the business model of sticking it to their drivers, then spitting them out, and replacing them with another chump.