My Prime student-to-lease experience

I am not a fan of leasing, but I went to their website and can't find a $3,500 a week truck. What did you lease exactly? Inventory | Success Leasing, INC.
I worked there as company and they always took care of any equipment issues I had, replaced batteries, tires, and pm'ed it, all I had to do was ask.
As company I never took a load I could not deliver on time, and lease folks don;t have to have an excuse to say no, so you should not have taken it, I would not have. I am not there anymore, they gave me a start.

 

Life is full of lessons. Good lessons. Bad lessons. There isn’t a soul on this planet that hasn’t made their fair share of mistakes. Learn from this fiasco OP. Do better tomorrow than you did yesterday.

 

Anyone got a link to the current costs.......

 

$2500 a week sure, but $3500 a week?

 

The way I look at it is you’re basically buying the truck FOR the company.
You’ll pay for it, they’ll make sure you fail and the truck goes to another sucker who will pay for it and fail. So on and so on until the truck is paid off, company sells the truck, pockets the cash, buys a new one and repeats the cycle.

If I wanted to be an owner op, I’d save up for a down payment as a driver and then buy from a dealer.

 

You do. You paid enough to buy the truck by the end of the lease, but it's not yours. You can pay them another 20-30k to buy it after that. If not, they turn around and sell it for 60k....

 

Never mind I found it.....



So $1000 a week and .10 cents a mile if you run more thN 3,000 miles a week..... .05 if your under 3k a week

 

Well, you jumped into a leasee without even being a driver with experience, No reason to stop longer than 10 hours when under load, if its going to make you late, first thing about trucking, the load on time is the single most important thing, and to be done with having accidents.

As far as there alarms I have gone after and recovered several PRIME trucks with attached trailers and never had an alert/alarm go off it meant you were putting the truck into a unsafe situation unless the sensors were faulty.

It is normal to have to limit your self to 10 hour breaks your not on vacation, also normal for a OTR company to require that you notify them in advance for time off, they are preplaning you loads maybe several in advance.

So from your original post what I read is a Noob that did not know what to expect. I have know several drivers to complete the PRIME lease, none of them stayed after the tractor was there, one got his own authority.

The point of the lease is to get you into a truck of your own, not for you to be a glorified company driver.

Learn and move on, Good Luck and at your experience level most of us here would have advised against a lease to anyone for now.

 

I started at Prime 10 months ago on the company side, did 6 months company then signed up for the lease. I am on the flatbed side but we take the same classes as reefer drivers before signing up.
The fixed costs and variable costs are not $3500/week. Mine run about $1250, even on 3000+ mile weeks with a smattering of tolls mixed in its hard to break $2500 in expenses. I'm in a 2019 freightliner governed at 65mph same truck they assigned me as a company driver.
If you stay out less than 4-5 weeks at a time DO NOT LEASE. The fixed costs will eat you alive, if you think you're going to be out 3 then take 1 at home be a company guy.
I net, after 22% set in a personal forget about it account about $1800/week. I could start training now but I want a year in first, then I hope to double that.
A few things I want to add, I've seen the way reefer drivers get treated like children here and it seems a little more grown up on the flatbed side. Home time can suck on the company side because your FM might try and screw you around especially if there isn't much freight in your area. The lease side does give you the ability to just say #### it and drive home, atleast on the flatbed side. No notice needed to do so but remember the only difference in price of that truck while you're at home is fuel costs.

 

That’s one reason I’ve always been opposed to that “force ‘em to lease right out of training” garbage the mega training companies like prime, CRST & trans am use now.