swift and the lease purchase

One thing you aren't addressing...how are your miles right now as a company driver and how is your relationship with your DM? Your DM and his/her connection to planners is a critical part. Also your "connections" and reputation with planners plays a factor. This time of year is generally not a good time to begin a lease...in the early months you need to "bank" a reserve to survive the slow period that is coming...Jan-May...many L/O's have gone belly up due to getting behind in payments and expenses with the lesser miles in the next period. If you are in a decent position with your DM and your miles are good right now...my advice/opinion would be to wait until April/May before you start on a lease.

 

Maybe, if one wanted to be a company driver.

 

By the way my miles and take include averaging over my home time.

 

For me personally, there's more to it than just money:

I can do what I want with the truck

I don't have to clean it out if I go home for three days

I have more flexibility regarding areas I run, routing and scheduling

I am not forced dispatch. I can turn a load down for any reason or no reason at all...and I don't have to wait around forever for another load to be sent. I can use Mac-30 if I want to, but I'm usually preplanned before I drop or unload.

 

Have you considered purchasing a truck from a dealer VS a L/P from Swift? Personally, I never saw the benefit of leasing a truck from the same company that is responsible for finding your loads, keeping you moving, etc.

 

Your maintenance account is for exactly that...any and all maintenance....however they (used to it has been a while) but if I remember right you could only withdraw monies at the beginning of each quarter...it isn't set up as a saving account for personal use, it is specifically for maintenance.

And the lease isn't a walk away lease...you are responsible for all payments until they (or you) can find someone to "take over the lease" if you can't manage it or want out of it.

 

Rerun is right about something he hits on occasionally: get to know the industry or have a basis of some kind in business before jumping into a lease. He suggests no fewer than 5 years in the biz. I won't go quite that far, but I will agree with the idea you need to have a good understanding of transportation. I will go a step further and say: don't lease a brand new truck and have yourself conscripted to a four-year contract right out the gate. Try to finish out someone else's lease with, say, a year or so left on it. That will give you a chance to see whether you like it and will give you an idea what it will take to determine your own success.

There are rumormongers and bandwagon jumpers who will say never lease from the company you are hauling for. Their reasoning is the company will run you until the truck is nearly paid off then screw you out of miles so they can have the truck back. This makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. I've seen trucks that have been turned in. It costs the company far more to recondition these filthy, broke-down pig sties than they could ever recoup in sales receipts. It is in their own best interest as well as yours to keep you moving. It is in your own best interest to save money for either the entire balloon payment or as a substantial down payment to finance it in addition to a good maintenance reserve.

If you find yourself in the position of needing to mentor in order to make the bills, you are doing something wrong. You should be able to make it as a solo. Training new drivers places a huge amount of wear on your equipment and is not a good way to make extra money. It will actually cost you more in the long run. Training is something people should do only because they want to make good drivers to follow them. I see far too many "trainers" who are only in it for short term monetary gain. New people are going to grind gears, bump curbs and make mistakes. As a trainer/mentor, you take on full responsibility for this. It comes out of your bottom line.

But enough of my soap box. Go into it with eyes wide open. Do not allow someone else to run your business. And make sure you have a good CPA with expertise in our industry. Good luck to you.

 

Good luck with that one. LOL. You sign the lease when you pick up your truck, you aren't given the option to have a lawyer look it over before hand, at least not with hubby's lease, maybe it's changed in the meantime, I don't know. Of course you can have your lawyer look it over AFTER you sign that lease.

Good to hear that. What you need to realize is that almost everywhere in that contract they remind you you are at all times an "at will" employee. These are words to remember. However, it does state in the contract that you, as the lease operator, "determine the method, means and manner of providing your service", which means squat. It only applies if you do everything else they tell you to and do it in the manner, method and means of which they want, regardless of the legality of it and what that contract actually says. You will learn fast if you question any load they assign you that you are nothing more than an "employee". Your blind loyalty is a must to retain your lease.

Other than some of these that are listed you should do fine, as long as you are willing to run the miles. They say you can refuse loads, which is true. But you can't really refuse loads because you need them to make enough to cover your truck expenses and make a living. If they're still touting that "partnership" BS about being a business partner with Swift, well.......don't believe it for one minute. You will still at all times only be an employee. They can terminate that lease for any reason and no reason at all (at will employment) and force you, through collections, to pay the remaining lease payments. In our case they stated that hubby was responsible to pay the remaining balance of the truck, not just the remaining lease payments. Fortunately he found a former student of his who wanted to take over the lease.

This "business partnership" is an out and out lie to deceive you into their lease. They entice you with promises that you are your own boss and independent. Don't believe it. The minute you flex those muscles of autonomy, you are toast. You are basically paying for their truck and taking all the overhead off of their shoulders. They get to write off the depreciation on that truck. They get the tax break, you don't. Don't think for one minute that you are making lease payments on that truck to own it someday. However, if you play the game the way they want you to, it is possible to own your truck but only if you don't do anything that brings into question your blind loyalty to the company.

My hubby leased onto Swift and we were very happy with it. He ran the miles and we made a decent living. We weren't rich by many standards, but we lived semi comfortably. He questioned one load and used his "autonomy" as a lease operator to make sure that load was good to go. They didn't like the scrutiny and found a bogus way to terminate his contracts, with less than 6 months of lease payments to go before he bought the truck outright. Think long and hard about this decision. Hubby worked for Swift for approximately ten years.