THE ADVENTURES CONTINUE - DFO gets a truck and hops on Schneider's IC Choice Program

Guess its time to get off my *** and leave Charlotte. Off to VA, then back to NC, maybe swing by the house for the night, then back up to Carlisle by the wee morning hours of Saturday.

 

Keeping up with emissions restrictions forced them to do so... unfortunately. The same can be said for our beloved N14 Cummins and the 3406 CAT... times changed and unfortunately the engines had to as well.

Haven't made it to the 1 year mark yet, getting there though! I'm at about 7 months in now. I'm still happy with it. Don't have trouble making money. Still got my same truck and plan to keep it once the lease is over. Not exactly sure how the lease will be rewritten after the 1 year mark is up if I decide to re-lease through SNI. Not exactly sure on the truck payment, though I believe I can (and will if I can) drop the managed maintenance account through SNI which will be $880 less/month that I'm paying to SNI.

I still owe $54,000 at the end of the lease, truck was valued at $80,000 when I first got it. So, I'd imagine the lease would be re-written to include the lower value of the truck which should result in a lower payment.

I think the biggest piece of advice that I can give you is stay away from the lease if you have big payments to make besides the truck (house, debt, etc). IMO having some considerable savings set aside for major breakdowns or when unexpected downtime forces you to stop, to cover your expenses AND THE TRUCK PAYMENT as well.

I've never had a problem making my payment because of this. People get into trouble when they get behind on their payments to SFI because it even if you set up a payment plan, it still stacks up faster and faster and it becomes harder and harder to get out of the hole.

If I have a slow week I have no problem breaking even. If I want to go home for 5+ days I call my SFI rep and make my payment from my bank account. If I want to run, no problem making the payments and bringing home a paycheck. Its all what you make of it and what you want to get out of it. I've been pretty happy overall. It will be VERY nice to be away from a lease agreement in the future, however, if I can secure financing through a bank, etc. Much lower payments, nobody can tell me I can't uhhh "permanently fix" my trucks EGR system, etc.

 

Stayed up through the morning and was just about to lay down and get some sleep, but my mind decided it wasn't ready to settle down so I grabbed my laptop and pulled up the load board.

There were a whole bunch of new loads that just got listed so I took a look and poked around with some different options which would let me finish off the week the strongest after my day of sitting to get the Qualcomm fixed.

Ended up grabbing a relay load out of Carlisle headed down to VA, then I'll head down to NC and grab another load headed right back up to Carlisle again... lol.

So far this is what is left of the week: Load in VA, deliver in NC, load in NC, deliver in PA, load in PA, deliver in VA, load in NC, deliver in PA. Up and down up and down.

I called to ask about the relay load to get some details on the times and fingers crossed the driver will get it to the OC as it appears and not take an extra 2 days to move it the 70 miles from the original shipper to Carlisle. We'll see...