Leasing from Swift - Advantages and Disadvantages. CURRENT L/O'S ONLY PLEASE

Honestly I think u should get more driving exp behind u before u jump into a lease...

 

Go into a terminal and ask for an IEL lease agreement read up on it and decide for yourself. Leasing is so situational you should not trust what anyone else is saying. It's not about them it's about you. Good Luck!
Also I do not recommend entering a lease agreement until spring time. Winter is not a good time to jump into it.

 

First ... below is good advice. Freight is about to fall off the cliff come January, not a good time to be struggling to make a lease payment.

Now ... first you need to look at few questions ... what is you business plan?
How many miles have you run since you started with Swift?
What's your exact average for the weeks you run?
Average for all weeks?
How much cash do you currently have on hand to put into the business?
What are your personal financial obligations?
Do you know how to do your own taxes?
Do you have any kind of business background?
What's your family situation like?

 

Lately I have been noticing a shift in attitude from the support side (driver managers, planners) from one of being considerate business partners to being forceful and demanding.
Most recently I have had them shoot me a load offer over the qualcomm 14 times even after I turned it down. I mean it is borderline harassment in my book. The other day I sent messages about a problem with a pickup, logged sleeper and went to bed for a few hours as I was not feeling well. When I woke up there were 17 messages and 4 voicemails, my wife called worried sick because Swift had called her as well. Now, they know GD good and well when we are in the sleeper as we have electronic logs. As I was reading through the messages, one of which was Load Voided which was very sweet as I no longer had to worry about that disaster, a new message came through asking why I hadn't called or answered back about an emergency repower they needed desperately for me to run and get 84 miles out when I only had 2:13 left on my clock when I went to bed. Oh and message said "Get Going!" as if I had no choice to turn it down or anything. OK I am an independent contractor, I will get going when I choose, I am no company driver who will be forced to do anything I don't want to do.

What I am getting at is they seem to be starting to pull out some nasty tricks to coerce drivers to keep moving when they still have hours available. My opinion they are overstepping their boundary and harassing drivers with the qualcomm. I will be calling tomorrow and laying down some boundary rules for my DM.

OK as far as the numbers, like this week we are in the high $1.30's for truck pay.

Your lease truck will cost you about $100 bucks a day give or take a few bucks just to park it. One might beat that by a few bucks by putting the down payment and bond up front at signing. Once you start running, factor in your miles per gallon because you will be purchasing the fuel.

Take and add up all your bills back home, food etc and you will have a basis for how many miles you need to run every day or week to cover everything.

You said 2600 miles multiply that by $1.39 factor in 7 miles per gallon, multiply time $4 bucks a gallon deduct about $700 bucks for truck payment give or take and you can come up with a rough estimate of your pretax paycheck for that week. Recommended to hold back 10% for maintenance and 22% for taxes.

I would definitely recommend going to an outside source for your truck though. I think with about $10k down payment Arrow truck sales might be able to get you into about a $35k beater truck just til you can save up some more and upgrade.

 

if u do what he said u should end up with about a 2184 check BEFORE MAINT OR WITHHOLDING... thjats based on a 2600 miles week. And saying u run a 7mpg.. faster u run worse mpg u get.. heavy u are worse mpg. Uh load isnt even meaning weights should be close on front and back so a 40k load should have 20k n 20k on each... better mpg. Also tires if u need tires all new ones are 3k easly off the back. Not counting any other maint/oil and stuff....