I'm going to buy a used Schneider Truck

i'm in the process of buying a CA legal truck and Schneider seems to have a decent deal. Looking at a 2011 Freightliner Cascadia (white, not orange) with 470k for $28,800.

Anyone have experiences with these trucks ?

I need a truck with DEF fluid instead of DPF only truck because there DEF ones have a little less issues. My current company trucks, MAC, Volvo, and Pete 387 dont impress me much. I would prefer a Kenworth T680 but it costs double.

 

I'm updating my used truck buying experience so that many new and potiential buyers will avoid the many pitfalls I'm going through right now.

I went ahead and bought a used Schneider truck. Here are my reasonings behind this approach. I wanted a used truck driven by an experience driver who took care of the truck. Preferably, an owner operator. With schneider, most of the non orange trucks are either owner operators, or dedicated account for company drivers. I chose a white freightliner midroof truck because it wasn't a training truck. It may have been an owner operator truck or in a dedicated account which are usually given to more experience drivers. With other dealers such as Select Trucks, Arrow Trucks or and big dealership, they all purchased their trucks from the big fleet like Swift, US Express, JBHunt , etc. There are very little clues to tell you if the truck was driven by newbies or it was a training trucks since all their trucks look alike. I was a trainer once and after training 2 very new drivers, my transmission got mess up.

So after looking through many trucks online, I decided to drive 400 miles to Carlisle to physically check out the trucks that looked great on paper. I settle on a 2011 Cascadia midroof with DEF. The truck's interior is in excellent shape with all shelves, knobs, switches, lights, etc working. Still have the new freightliner smell which was surprising since this is a 2011 truck and is currently atleast 6 years old. Exterior wise, its got a few small scratched but over all, it clean out really good. 9 out 10 stars for cosmetic on both interior and exterior.

Best of all, the truck came with 2 brand new GoodYear steer tires, 8 new retread drive tires. This in itself is a $3000+ savings.

The bad things about buying a Schneider is that you cannot take the truck outside of their lot to DOT, Inspect or Dyno. Nor can you drive the truck. You can start the truck and go thru the gears but can't drive it.

 

Continuation on buying a used Schneider truck.

The first process in buying a Schneider truck is to call the toll free number on their website. Schneidertrucks.com.

When calling, you have two options in financing the truck. If you plan to lease on to Schneider, they direct you to Schneider Finance. I wanted to keep my options open so I opted for being refer to a third party lender. In my case, Schneider referred me to Wheaton Financial out of southern California. I got a call from them the same day I spoke to schneider and they gave me my approval within 2 days after applying. During this time, I also applied for a truck with LoanMountain, Select Trucks and GoCapital.

LoanMountain decline me because they said that my work history needed to be more stable. I'd had 4 jobs within 12 months and they wanted to see me have atleast 6-12 month at my current job. I was surprised LoanMountain declined me because all 3 of my credit score directly from Experian, Transunion, and Equafax were in the low 700's. No late payments or any bad marks in the last 7 years. Before I cleaned up my score a year ago, LoanMountain approved me to get a new or used truck eventhough i had bad marks in my credit report and were in the low 600's on all three credit bureaus. At the time, I had my authority and was running with it for a year and a half.

Select Truck never called me back so I assume its a no go and didnt bother them. I did see that they ran my credit using DaimlerChrysler Finance. I guess they wanted someone with really perfect credit. I'm surprised they denied me too because I have no bad marks in credit report besides a 2 credit cards with high balance. That shouldn't be a problem since it was still less than half of my available credit. I also had financed and paid off a $45k truck with Arrow Truck Sales so i do have commercial credit. Anyways, its their loss. If I can't get finance through Diamler, I guess most truck wannabe owner opetator will be wasting their time with them.

GoCapital was really fast in responding and gave me an offer within 24 hours. The will finance any trucks from any private sellers or dealers. The problem is that they wanted a lot for their loan. My Example loan of 34K truck with $5k down would come out to 36 monthly payment of $1750 monthly. This would be setup as a lease purchase where the title would be in their name and after the last payment, they promise to sign over the vehicle title to the buyer with no baloon payment. The monthly rate of $1750 does include sales tax already so no additional tax. Note to all future buyers that most of the lease purchase advertise prices does not include sales tax so if your state does not exempt commercial vehicle, you will need to pay sales tax on your lease amount. Anyway, GoCapital was a no go for me because they were too expensive.

I decided to take the offer from Wheaton Financial whom Schneider referred me to. On the same initial quote of a $34k truck with 5k down, it would come out to 48 payments of aprox $950 a month. This would be a traditional finance with the title in my name and they will be leinholder.

 

Based on the maintenence records i was given my their shop, it seems that they oil change every 30k miles just like all the big carriers.

SchneiderTruck sells directly to the public. If a truck sits at their yard for more than 6-8 months, they will be heavily discounted. My truck was listed at $43k and i got it at a discount for $28,800. I'm an owner operator with this one truck. Schneider have the same identicle truck like mine for $43k in Charlotte and wouldn't budge on the price. Charlotte, NC would of been a lot closet to me but they wanted $12k more for the same truck so I drove 400 miles to save $12,000.

 

More on Financing.....

Many of the finance companies will hide the fees and other fees until the very last step where you have already commited.

Let me explain more.. years ago, i had spotty credit and applied with Mission Financial for a truck loan. The guy wanted $495 processing fee upfront before telling me more. He guarantee that I will be approve if i paid the fees. I did paid the fees and his loan terms were terribly high. (Being kind here). I forgot the exact numbers but it came out to higher than 75% interest anually along with a few thousands in additional upfront fees. Cannot payoff early until after 2 years. Terms was 4 years. So I said no and lost my initial $495. At that time, I was able to finally got a $45k truck with Arrow Truck Sales at 16% interest because i put $10k down and put another $40k paidoff truck as collateral.

Ok, back to the Schneider Truck buying experience. I mentioned the details above because with their initial terms for the loan, Wheaton Financial wanted $995 for the loan origination processing fee. This automatically brings out lots of red flags because I don't want to pay the non refundable fee if i didnt like the truck when i finally have a chance to inspect it. They told me that paying the fee would move forward with the loan. Atleast they gave me hard numbers to work with and in the offer letter was the exact terms with only one contigent. This loan would be in contigent that I provide a copy of my Driver License and have a Utility Bill in my name and address. I told them to hold on while I inspect the truck.

When I finally got to Carlisle and inspected their trucks on a Saturday, I had 3 trucks on my list. The following Monday, I called The sales lady I've been dealing with to proceed forward with the truck at the top of my list. It was still available so I told her to contact the rep at Wheaton Financial since I was preapproved there. Note that up until this point, I have not paid the non refundable loan fee of $995 because on the initial loan approval letter, it had a different truck with different pricing. If I had paid the loan fees and wanted a different truck, they may offer me a totally different loan terms for a different truck and I would stand to lose my non refundable fees. Wheaton Financial is very smart about the loan fees because they will only accept payment in ACH directly from my bank account with a signed statement from me allowing them to take a one time payment of $995. No credit and debit cards accepted because they don't want me to claim fraud or dispute the charges later.

So I resubmited the truck I wanted to Wheaton Financial because on the initial loan application, I had selected a generic truck with a ball park of $35k. Note that for every Schneider Truck you are interested, you have to resubmit a loam request because the lender want exact info on the specific truck. So don't annoy them by submitting many trucks just to see which ones have better financing terms. My initial loan was for a 35k truck but I settled on a truck that was for $28,800. Although the loan amount differs from the initial offer, the interest was almost the same.

New offer on my truck 2011 Cascadia 470k miles of $28,800 sale price. Loan fees $995, with $3,000 down and 42 monthly payments of $920. I was told I can put the $3,000 downpayment on my credit card but must pay the $995 loan fee via ACH from my checking account.

 

Wow, i've spent the last few hours writting all these posts about my used Schneider Truck experience. I didn't expect to take this long and write so much.

To continue the suspense, I'm posting from a crappy Motel room because the truck I just purchase from Schneider is in the shop due to Emission related check engine light. This is my second shop in the 5 days I've owned the truck with the same error codes SPN 4364 /01 and /18. Something about Nox sensor out of range or too low. Ok, going to continue on my buying experience.

On Monday, After i selected the exact truck, I called the sales lady at Schneider Truck ask her to proceed forward with the purchase if she would promise to fix two things on the truck. I wanted it in writing. First, I need the speed limiter and anti-idle turned off. Second, need new or working batteries installed because current batteries are dead. I idled the truck for over an hour and batteries were still dead. Sales lady promised me on the phone that the two problems will be fix upon payment and pickup of truck. I talked to finance company to make sure to communicate to Schneider Trucks and have them make the repairs.

Upto this point, I haven't paid the loan origination fees of $995 and the finance company was asking about it in order to proceed. After they they gave me the second loan offer letter with my final choice, I decided to take the plunge and authorize them to take the $995 loan fee out of my checking account via ACH. I don't begruge the loan officer their fees, I'm just very wairy of scams and don't want to be taken again. The Only reason why I went through with paying the $995 fees was because Schneider Trucks referred me to them. I figured that Wheaton Financial don't want to screw Schneider's customers and lose the working relationship. Just because a company has a website and a phone number doesn't mean they are legit and most scammers have them. Once an ACH is taken from your account, it would be very hard to get your money back

Enough Rants, Onward. ....

With Schneider Trucks, only your Finance Company can reserve a truck, and have 5 business days to pay for the truck once reserved. So on Monday, I paid my fees, and truck was reserved. Tuesday i was directed to the real lender in Wisconsin who would fund my truck. Had to FedEx papers with Notarize to WI. Wednesday, paid my $3k down payment via credit card to lender in WI. Thursday, Schneider Trucks received payment and truck can be schedule to be pickup. On Friday, Lender received original Title from Schneider and will fedex to my local DMV in NC so I can go meetup with it to get my IRP plate.

Things proceed very fast once fees are paid. Up to this point, the promise repairs was never documented so I was very nervious and doubted. Once Schneider Trucks got their money from the lender, the sales lady called me on Thursday to schedule a pickup. I wanted to pickup the truck on Saturday. She said that the shop in Carlisle, PA will make my requested repairs and should be ready to go when I get there on SAT.

 

Final thoughts on financing..very important to read on ....

So Wheaton Financial is a loan broker and not the actual lender. As a customer, I have to pay them to go forward and meetup with the supposed lender. Once I paid the $995 loan origination fee to the loan broker, i get the actual terms from the supposed real lender. From the funding lender, they finally disclosed the other fees.

Out of my $3,000 downpayment to the lender, $500 is for a GPS that was installed prior to me picking up the truck. $500 or so is some kind of deposit and another $500 is more processing fees. Only $1500 will go towards my $28,800 purchase. So in my grand total of $4,000 downpayment, only $1500 was applied towards the purchase price. And $2,500 was in fees. I refer to my lender as the supposed lender because even they are not listed as lien holder on my title. A small unheard of bank is the lein holder on my title. Darn, how many middle man are there.

So in my calculation to find my actual interest rates, if i included all the fees and interests based on the numbers provided, I'm paying around 25% anually. If I remove the fees and calculated the principal balance of $27,300, with 42 payments of around $920, interest would be around 21%

Final thoughts on Financing. ...

So my credit scores is in the low 700's with no late payments or collections in last 7 years. Credit is decent yet I'm lucky to get a 21% interest loan with $2500 in closing fees. Some might say i'm dumb to accept it. I'll say, I'm lucky to get this deal. Trucking is very high risk. This will be my truck #8 in 12 years. Truck maintenence is one of the biggest killer of owner operator's financial goals. I'm currently a member of a credit union that have 6-10 branches, and do most of my banking with Bank of America. Neither banks will loan money on commercial vehicles. So those of you who keep telling folks to go to a credit union for commercial loans needs other suggestion since most banks now lable trucking as very high risks.

Because there are many middle man in the finance arena,fees and interest would be high. Hey, at least I'm creating jobs for many people out of my purchase. This is what it means to put american to work. Someone has to pay.