Husband/Wife Lease program

Seems no one knows a thing when it comes to Teams...
I have been trying to get info for years and I guess, the teams are just so busy that they cant relate to other drivers how their company treats them and all that jazz....LOL

 

Company teams are pretty straight forward... Miles are important. CPM is straightforward plus fuel bonus.... Raises are automatic with the milage chart.

Lease isnt so much about milage, but revenue to the truck... You have your fixed costs and the money is all about getting good rates and Keeping variable costs down.

 

Oh, team bonus as a company team driver is great... But it is oh so tricky... They calculate the team bonus as miles delivered between Fridays.

Key word is delivered.

It would make everythig so simple if everything was calculated between Tuesday cutoff. Everyone knows the fuel bonus (company) is calculated from the QC at or near midnight on Fri. Miles are loads completed and scanned between Tuesdays at 1600... However, team bonuses are calculated from miles above 3500 on loads completed between Fridays.

 

Right, the basics of a team operation are pretty straight forward, I ran team myself a few years back. I am have been looking into it for my wife and I, for some time now. What I was referring to up top was that not many Teams, (husband and wife), comment on this forrum. I have talked to a dozen or so husban/wife teams and have always got positive comments. I have tried to get those couples on here to talk more about it. My wife is at home, not on the road, so I feel it would be great if TR staff could set up a Teams only forrum..

 

I've talked to quite a few husband/wife Prime lease teams over the last few months and they all said they were doing well.

Here's a few of the highlights with regard to a lease team from my discussions with them...

Unlike an unrelated team, all the money is really going to the same place... so what the deal is for who gets paid exactly how much is kind of meaningless, unless you have a slick accountant that can figure a tax advantage for doing it a certain way... I never got THAT deep into details, but it's something you might want to check on.

Only added cost that a team lease will incur is that you will usually end up getting charged for "excess miles"... but with the amount of revenue you'll likely be generating at that point, you wont care... when I was with my trainer we did 7500 miles one week... he laughed all the way to the bank with his settlement for that week... even after paying me the extra over & above my weekly base and the excess mileage charges.

Since I actually have my copy of the lease deal outline in front of me.... for reefer division.... excess miles charges kick in at 2900 miles...

2900-3400 = 5c/mi
3401-4100 = 3c/mi
4101 & up = 1c/mi

So, for example, the excess mileage my trainer got charged for that 7500 mile week was a grand total of a little over $80 ($25 + $21 + $34)... when the bottom line of your settlement for that week is over 4 grand, that's not too hard to swallow. (a husband/wife team would have made over $5K combined that week)

If you lease a new (or relatively new) truck (and why wouldn't you - the new DD15 gets much better fuel mileage) you'll likely run out of warrenty miles before you run out of weeks on the lease... don't panic... the lease completion bonus is still paid as though you carried the lease full term on weeks.

Now, if you want to compare what you might get for miles as a company team... well, I happened to keep track of the weekly miles I rolled up during my training period running team with a trainer... (I'll leave out any weeks that included the trainer taking some home time... these are just weeks with both of us on the truck for 7 days)

5346
3955
3943
6045
5229
2879
7559
5126
3827
6545

For an average of 5045/wk.

As always... your mileage may vary

 

Thank you very much Dix, that is exactly the kind of info I have been looking for. I hope some actualy team drivers chime in and fill in some more info, regarding this subject.

 

Darn... based on the title, I thought this thread was going to be about trading in the spousal unit on a new one when the old one is mile'd out.

 

Excess mileage isn't charged on a per-week basis. It's charged as an average of all weeks. For example, say you're 55 weeks into your lease, and averaging 2899 miles a week, up to that point you have no excess mileage charges, now say in week 56 that average gets pushed up to 2920 miles a week, you're now charged excess mileage for 56 weeks at 20 miles a week all at once, or in this case $56 (56weeks X 20miles over average = 1120, 1120 X .05 = $56). Every week after that the average is recalculated, and charges assessed. If your average miles drops, you will get some of the charges you've already paid back, and if the average drops below 2900, you will have received back everything you had paid into excess mileage to that point. Also, if on a 3 year lease, you receive back 100% of excess mileage charges at the end of the lease if the lease is completed.

 

Just make sure it's a "walk-away" lease in case you get a lemon!