Leasing at Prime

Gotta love it when the company guys start lecturing us! Yup, you can call yourself a one truck corperation... in the past (emphasis) that's been an expensive way to get health coverage, but it's a brave new world, so who knows? I'll be poking around the Colorado health exchange until Prime gets a handle on it.

 

Called HR yesterday, and they have a recorded spiel on where Prime is going. Currently, they are working on partnering with a firm that will provide an insurance brokering service. This service will match ICs up with coverage that meets their needs... so we're going to need to obtain individual policies. None of this is set in stone yet, and the entire system isn't set up yet. At this time Prime will continue to cover us under the group policy until the end of the year.

...more to come.

 

It's there to keep you whole in a bad economy, nothing more. I've never really seen it kick in much except during '08 and '09. Bkkphotog's instructor might need it though!

BTW... it's only the linehaul revenue that is averaged against the guarantee... it doesn't include fuel surcharge and accessorial payments.

Depends on what's on the other end of the "cheap freight," and the definition of that depends as well. There is one truckin' pundit who is fond of saying that the ultimate in cheap freight is the deadhead. He's right. If you know your numbers then you know what the minimum you can run for without taking a bath. I won't go below that unless there's a #### good reason, and making Prime happy ain't one of them. A good example is freight going into Florida... coming out you're doing well with over $1.20 per mile for OJ. I'm real grumpy if the travel agent comes back with less than that... my bottom line number in my operation for covering costs is $1.24 per mile.

You have to control your expenses, including blowin' it all on junk.

Now you say "before fuel cost," and I'm not sure what you mean. The last page of a load assignment details the compensation. There are a number of different payment accounts... "LINE" is the linehaul revenue that the guarantee is measured against, but the "EST TOTAL SETTLEMENT" number reflects the total revenue for the load. You have to take those numbers and divide them by the "MTY" and "LD" miles listed on the first page of the assignment to get the actual rate.

Company and lease ops need to stretch the fuel as much as possible on deadhead. Just because you have a light trailer doesn't mean you can run 65mph down the highway.

It's 95-cpm on old contracts (like mine) for every 100,000 miles, or $1.02 per mile on new contracts. Remember it's only against the linehaul portion of the revenue, and it's a long-term average meant to keep the lease operator whole in a bad economy.

Whoever posted that doesn't know squat about how our dispatch system works. It's first-come, first-loaded in the local area. All trucks in a regional area are looked at in this, with special consideration given to loads that are high value, hazmat or require teams. Other than that, everyone is on an equal footing. You get the best load available at the moment you get to the top of the queue... and can accept it or reject it. If you reject it, you go to the bottom of the queue... that keeps someone from sitting at the top, cherry-picking the loads.

Silent Eagle has sat in the sales load planning area, and can attest that they are just too busy to be looking at who is making "too much money" when the loads are parceled out. The FMs have some say in who gets what, since they know us and our capabilities better than the load planners do. That being said, it does no good for an FM to steer the best freight to or away from an individual. Their compensation is a base plus commission that is computed against the success or failure of their entire board. The FMs are "fined" for late loads, tickets, etc... so they are motivated to get everyone doing their best. Because the largest portion of their compensation is the commission... it behooves them to make sure all drivers on their board are successful.

Now some will say that the "juiciest" loads are given to company drivers, so that the company gets the best cut of the revenue. I haven't seen that happen, although I'm sure it could. I ran a shadow business when I was on the company side, and my results in that compared to my loads on the lease side showed that the company-side loads were lower revenue. While some carriers are out to screw their lease-ops, I don't believe that happens here. When I believe that is happening, I'll be a gone mofo in a hurry.

You sound like you're considering jumping into a lease after training... don't. It's not as easy as it looks, and what you're really doing is starting a business. Read this thread from post no. 1 forward to get an idea of why I think that starting into a lease right after training is a really bad idea.

 

Then there is this... the company side is where you should gain some experience and make your mistakes. There is a high percentage of folks who decide that they can't stand trucking in the first year or two - it's a lot easier to walk away when all it takes is running into the terminal, and saying I quit. It's also quite easy to decide you can't do without it... one Qualcom message, and you're in next week's lease orientation group.