Leasing at Prime

Nawww... keeping the left door closed and the freight rollin'. That's how you make money. I'm usually present on the Prime 20 thread. So... message from my FM yesterday morning was to the other's on the board... "Read your settlement first before you call me with a question - the QC page is only a summary." So we had a short chat... the new guys were upset over what they were seeing, with no idea of what had actually happened on their settlement, no idea of how much fuel they'd bought, no idea of how many advances against that settlement they had taken, etc. You guys have to run this like a business!!!

 

My settlement isn't anything different than the usual, and available a little later than usual. Lease operator statements are quite a bit different than what I received on the company side. These guys were starting from the QualCom page which for a lease guy is a very sketchy summary with no details. Totals for revenue, reimbursements, deductions and what's left over. If it's not what you're expecting, there's no way you have the info to carry on any kind of discussion about it. Unfortunately, this is typical for many new lease ops. Trying to run a business open-loop, no idea what they're doing financially, and upset when their settlement doesn't look like employment on steroids. Without the statement email one really can't have that conversation, "Gee, what happened?" If one hasn't been paying attention to the outlays for fuel, maintenance and especially advances, the debits can easily exceed the revenue...

A emotionally charged screaming match with ones FM is certainly not the way to resolve it!

 

You can do more than that. Ask your FM what the revenue on each trip would be, and track all of your expenses. You can run a "shadow" business on your company trips, and get a handle on how it works. There's a great fuel mileage tracking program at myguages.com that's free; you can use that to watch that side - frequently the numbers off of the trucks ECM are not totally accurate.

 

No. Prime uses 10-speed manual transmissions. A well trained driver can always out-perform an automatic since we can anticipate changes in the road that an automatic cannot begin to fathom.