If you can afford to work for $6.00 a week go to Prime, Inc.

I guess you are new here. There are literally thousands of post's warning people about the dangers of leasing a truck from........insert any company name, from people that have gone through the con job known as leasing, and others that see it for what it is...a ripoff.

 

There's only one way that your settlement will appear to have that sort of problem... if you're revenues are low enough to trigger the short-term effects of the minimum guarantee. It's meant to keep one whole during a bad economy, but it can kick in if your revenue falls below that $1.02 minimum. Here's what happens... the computer takes your gross revenue figure, and divides it by dispatched miles. If it falls below the floor, it kicks money into the settlement, and if I recall correctly charges you interest on that. But, when you go positive, it snatches it back... but you're not paying that interest any longer. That certainly sounds like what you were seeing, and I really don't think it helps that they do that.

I've never been hit by it, so I'm not quite sure what the effect would be up in the debits/credits section, but the computation is on every statement. I've checked the revenue calculations on some of my loads at random, and it's always been correct. The linehaul total is multiplied by 72%, and that's what I receive. The long term effect is that when you hit any multiple of 100,000 miles, the system looks at your revenue for that period, and kicks in an appropriate amount to bring you up to $102,000 and that's yours, but I should go look at the contract again to be sure.

 

None of that really matters because he said every load he hauled paid more than 1.02

 

Well then he goes on to say he never got more than $1.02 because they took away anything more than that. Explain that one - because I've certainly never run across that unless you go tangled up with the minimum guaranty.

 

I started my trucking career way back in 1997 and I vividly remember waiting on the dock to get loaded a Coke shipment in Dallas.
Low and behold, standing next to me was a Prime driver. He had leased on with them so I thought I would quiz him about his truck which was a Freightliner
I asked him about his truck and what was he paying monthly for his lease.
He proudly told me his WEEKLY payment was $900 !!! Holy cow, I nearly fell off the dock! That's 4 Grand near as #### it and he thought it was a good deal
Even then, I had heard about the horror stories about Prime. The owner of the company must have been making out like a bandit and to make it
even sweeter for him, he reputably owned the truck dealership in Springfield MO, that supplied the trucks.
The biggest red flag about Prime was the fact that they gave the O/O a "rebate" when the lease program had been completed. To me, that was a con, in other words it was a refund of an overcharge on the truck payment, IMHO, in the first place.
I guess the allure of no credit check, no cash down, was enough of a carrot for the drivers to get suckered into that deal.
Quite frankly as any O/O will tell you, to say there are better opportunities out there, is the understatement of the decade!!
BTW I'm now an O/O I couldn't resist the temptation and my truck payment, per month is the princely sum of $987 over 48 mths @ less than 7% interest PA
for a 2006 Pete 387, in excellent condition with very low miles. I very much doubt I could have done a better job of finding the right deal.
But I had to jump through a few hoops to get that. It can take time and a bit of patience to get the sweet deal we all yearn.