Lease purchase

After my husband dealing with his lease purchase agreement and almost going broke it is my opinion that there is no company out there that a driver can make money in it. They are all structured to benefit the company. They get the profits and the driver has the expenses. Stay away from LPA's where you are tied to that company and depend on them for miles. Turbo Trucker has posted many times on this subject along with many other knowledgeable members. I hope you research this forum for those topics and read the many horror stories. Good luck.

 

Not even a debate,don't do it,unless you are sigle with no bills,that is the only way you can have a chance of paying the truck off or even finishing the lease out. If you don't finish you won't have credit to ever buy another the right way. Go to reightliner and do the select truck thing,find a contract first,then get down payment from 1000 up.get the newest one you can agfford with a good warranty left on drivetrain and go for it.you may have to work 7 days a week to be a so called oo,on the other hand,get a payinmg company job and work 5 to 5.5 days and make the same with time off doing other chores than babysitting your new nightmare or baby. Think what you really want to sacrifice before trying to own your own. THere are very few success stories out there.

 

I have to agree with buck and half for the most part.

The ones who are making it are out there working not busy bragging about it. So you do not see the successful stories as much as the failures.

 

Buck N half is right - if your single and no bills - you can probably do it. My hubby tried it, we were a sinking ship real fast, the company didn't care they got their money every week, we got a check for $3.86 once. Be careful, very careful, no matter how many miles you get that week, they will get the truck payment, fuel, taxes, and whatever else they can attach to your "Lease" bill.

 

Let me correct my statement, So you do not see the successful stories as much as the failures. This is in your everyday O/O, not the L/P drivers. True most L/P do fail but there are some who does make it and you do not hear about.

 

I have to disagree with you there......show me the "success" stories. M husband is a hard worker and a good driver never turning down a load he can deliver legally. If you consistently get 500 mile runs that deliver in 3 days you tell me how you can get the required amount of miles to cover your expenses and still bring home a good pay check and I mean a net pay of at least $700.00. No Lease Purchase Program will give a driver a good living. If you are single and don't have bills and can live on small or non existent pay checks then I say more power to you.

 

Check and see if that lease agreement GUARANTEES you a certain amount of miles per week, or a minimum flat rate paid if said miles are not given. That might help you make money in a lease plan. But, you will never see that.

It is true many lease operators and O/Os do not have any idea of what the actual cost per mile is to operate their truck. The future cost of tires, repairs, both major and minor, taxes, vacation and sick days, holidays, long breakdowns, and times of the year when no freight is moving, all have to be totaled up, added with fixed cost, and divided into the total realistic estimated mileage for the year to get a real cost per mile.

Many people will have money to put in the bank after a paycheck, but when tires, engine repairs, insurance payments, and tags all hit at once, then they find out they wern't making what they thought they were.

A dispatcher I once had used to ask my why I wouldn't run a paticular load that another driver took all the time. I told him that load paid 13 cents per mile less that my break even cost, not counting my driver pay.

He went on to tell me how that driver said he was making money every week. I said for him to wait until the things I described above happened to that driver.

I was in the office one day when the driver in question called in and quit. He had engine problems, needed tires, and it was the last week before he had to buy a new base plate (license tag). He had no money, about to lose everything, and was parking his truck. (I guess the repo man got it)

That is one of the few times a dispatcher has looked me straight in the eyes and said "it happened just like you said it would"

You have to know your expenses.

Now back to the lease. The problem is that most companies won't play by the rules. You will be charged back for things you never heard of, or have money deducted for expenses that should not be, such as payroll fees, fuel tax filing fees, cargo insurance for their load on their trailer, and so on.

The really good one is the excess mileage fee. You have to run yourself to death to pay for the truck. If you run like you need to, both you and the company are making money from all the extra loads you are hauling.

But, on the other hand, if you go over a set amount of miles per quarter, month, or however they calculate it, you will be charged an extra fee per mile. Since running hard will result in a high mileage truck, you are charged this per-mile fee to offset the lower amount of trade-in THEY will get when THEY trade or sell the truck YOU just paid for.

You need the extra miles to make any money, but if you get them, then they take money away from you. They make money either way, you don't.

Another thing to consider, you are getting your freight from the people that you got the truck from. They totally control what you make.

It would seem that it would be in their best interest to keep you running and making lease payments, but this is not always true. If you are getting near the end of your lease, and they have a lot of new suckers, I mean future lessors, waiting for trucks, your miles will suddenly drop until you can still make the lease payment, but nothing will be left over for you. You will soon have to quit.

Why do this? So they can now take your USED truck and lease it to someone else on another long term lease.

By keeping the miles down to just above break even for you, they can keep you in the truck for most of your lease term, re-lease the same truck to another driver, and still have a fairly low mile truck because of the low miles each lessor suddenly found themselves getting near the end of their lease.

Then they will sue you for the remainder of the broken lease and for your school tuition (if you went through their school), while the next driver is paying lease payments on the truck you are still paying off, but just not driving anymore.

It could be possible to have three or more people making payments on the same truck at the same time.

The company makes more money leasing the truck than they make hauling the freight.

They can't lose, but you sure can.