My time with CR England as a lease operator.

Having quit CR England a few months ago, I do know a bit how the lease program works. And no, they don't force you to lease. But they will push you to lease after your 30 days of training with an on the road trainer. If you don't lease they will require longer training. Even being quite shifty about it, like having you come in for their training upgrade program knowing they are going to refuse to upgrade you because of you being 1 day short of having a full 60 days training. An then they will tell you that you have to either go back out with a trainer, which may take a few more weeks before you can get routed back to upgrade, or you could just lease. Dirty....
Now it doesn't matter what the recruiter told you. Everything the recruiter told you is empty promises. This I feel I can guarantee with a certainty.

My first lease was a 6 month demo that I did with a friend. When it was up, he went his way I stayed with CR England for more "experience", by leasing a truck that had 9 months left on the lease. I had plans to purchase it at that point.

I started the second lease solo, but I still had my same DM and had proved that I was reliable, with no late loads, accidents, or problems with customers. During my first lease we were typically giving really tightly scheduled runs or were asked to swap loads that were going to be late. So when I started the new lease I was given plenty of miles but after a month I realized there was no way to make money. I could see that I was gonna average about 900 to 1200 a month before tax. Their lease is just designed that way, it is to cause you the need to have a student or partner, if you want to make better money. But if you listen to a solo lease operator for CR england they will say how they made 1500 last week... Maybe they did but they didn't make anything for the prior 3 weeks and is not going to make anything for the next few either.

So I became a phase 1 trainer at that point, I hated it. But it is the only way to make money with the lease program. Typically as a phase 1 trainer, which isn't possible until you have 6 month experience, my bring home was 1,000 to 2,000 per week before tax, average most weeks 1500.
But as a trainer you have to work with students. Which is the draw back to the money you make when using a student. So as you can imagine you get little sleep. Real little. The quality of students coming from the school is ridiculous. The school does little to teach navigation or finding where you are if you make a wrong turn and maps seem to be an impossibility to some students. But as a phase 1 trainer, it is all to be expected. Some grind bad, some can't back up to save their life, some never can understand the qualcomm or logging, and trip planning is usually well beyond most of their capabilities. I always loved asking where we were? What road are we on? What was that bridge height? How do you get back to the interstate from this truck stop? (Should be simple, but...)

But on to the lease pay.
Basically as stated by CE England for a lease operator it is .90 per mile. But it is actually .76 per mile.
CR england, or rather Horizon the leasing company (Which is basically a sister company of CR England). Taxes you .14 per mile. They call this the "variable mileage fee". They will tell you it is actually .13, since they put .01 into an account for you while you are leasing as a down payment on the purchase of your leased truck, if you want to buy it at the end of your lease. Just to note, when you turn in a lease and are not planning to buy the truck, they will find 3 to 4 thousand dollars worth a repairs and maintenance that needs to be done to the truck to either get it ready to be re-leased or to turn back into the leasing company after the third year of the lease is up. So don't expect to see that .01 cent since they will use that to cover that cost.
But this .14 fee is costly. .14 x 5000 miles = $700.

Then they have equinox, basically they are a book keeping and tax preparation and they will cost $36 a week if I recall correctly. Then you get charged to use a student which is 261.52 per week.
Then there are other things
Around 500.00 per week truck payment
.07 to a maintenance account. Which will be taken to help cover the 3 to 4 thousand for repairs at the end of the lease.
182.00 per week Truck insurance
47.00 per week license and permits.
.015 per mile for fuel tax.
Don't waste fuel, you pay for it. Even as a lease, you can chose your own route. But don't be dumb about it. An idling will really tap into your money.
England has 2 fuel programs. one is a standard rebate, which I used, the other is a fixed cost for fuel 1.25 last time I was on that program.

There are people that say CR England took their last check. If your maintenance account and the .01 from the Variable mileage fee doesn't cover the 3 to 4 thousand when you turn in a lease they will take your last check to cover that cost. It just feels wrong.

Basically it is a business and you have to run it like it is. The student is your employee. If they are a bad employee you notify the TC (training coordinator) and your DM. I never left a trainee anywhere. But I did have to be routed through the burns harbor facility to dump one on the TC's there to deal with.

I never hid anything from the student concerning how to operate the lease. I showed them all my statements went through the math with them showed them pitfalls. Only a couple was even willing to learn it. The rest were unwilling to learn it or unable. I told those not to lease a truck. Stick around in training and become a company driver. Sadly 3 of the worst ones took took on 3 year leases! Not 6 month demo leases but full 3 year leases. None of them last more than 2 months and it was always CR Englands fault. CR Englands fault they got stuck on the toll road in OK with no money. The companies fault they they weren't getting miles, even though they couldn't route or navigate US highways, CR England's fault for charging them for all that fuel they use to idle, CR Englands fault that they got caught by DOT for bad logging or obviously not doing inspections.

I wouldn't recommend CR England to anyone unless they were just desperate for a job. An then only those that I think have the desire/ability to actually learn.
While CR England is a shifty company that works to make money off of its own employees. A great many of the failed employees should never have been hired to begin with.

Just a collection of thoughts I want to though out there.

 

The contracts are all digital. You get shown a section of it at a time on a computer screen, then they have a video of someone attempting to summarize that section into terms that a normal person could understand. Then you either initial or sign that section. This process is done twice. One contract at the Horizon offices (which are located inside the CR england facilities in Salt lake city, UT and Burns Harbor, IN) for the lease of the truck then another set of contracts in the CR England offices. Where you resign from working for CR England and then are contracting yourself out to CR England.
I didn't get a copy until it was all signed. Each contract takes a few hours to complete because you can't skip the videos.
I may have been able to get a copy and look over it beforehand, but I never tried though.