The devil. aka “lease purchase”

That Smart Trucking guy is a total clown. My wife who knows next to nothing about trucking watched him once and said " That guy sounds like an idiot". It's like watching a bad stereotype of truck drivers.

 

I appreciate all of your input, well…. Some of your input
I get what you guys are saying and if I was anywhere close to being able to buy a truck somewhere on my own, I wouldn’t be considering a lease. Before you go saying “well, if you can’t buy a truck because of credit you have no business trying to run a business”, I recently had to file br due to getting the short end in a divorce that had my ex wife do a bunch of dirty stuff in my name.
Having said that, the more I look at this one the more I think it might be decent. I realize the carrier still has the upper hand, but the difference of .55 cpm vs. 70% of linehaul and 100% of fuel surcharge seems to be too big of a difference to not at least look in to. The company pays its o/o’s the same as it’s lease drivers.
You all are the experts and I’m not trying to change your minds; I just have a hard time believing leasing is all bad when I’ve talked to people doing it with the company I’m looking at, and they are successful so far.

 

In what way is Dave of Smart-Trucking a clown?

 

He says things that are patently false. His instructional videos are comical. He plays up an image but passes on a lot of bad information to people who don't know any better.

 

Lease to own deals are sorta like 1099 deals: there's a lot of bad ones out there, but that doesn't mean they're all bad. They're like any other tool - for example, guns - it's easy to use them for evil, but that doesn't mean everyone who uses one is evil.

I bought a tractor on lease to own, and paid for it entirely thru 1099 gigs. Payment was $1375 per month for 42 months after down payment. I set up automatic payments thru my business bank account, so never had to worry about forgetting a payment, just made sure it always had at least a couple payments worth in it. Each and every payment was 5 days early. Easy peasy. Final payment was just this past January. Now I have unencumbered title in hand, free and clear.

As far as income from the gig, don't just look at the percent. Percent of what, is what matters. I got 68% at my first gig and needed everything to go perfect to try to touch a $2k weekly settlement, whereas my current gig only pays 65%, but it's no problem with a dryvan to get back to back weekly settlements up near $4k each. A lot depends on the carrier's reputation and contracts.

 

A lot depends on the bank. When I financed my reefer a couple months ago, my bank offered 6.5% rate, but they wanted both the reefer and my tractor as collateral. Outside finance company offered 9% rate, but only wanted the reefer as collateral.

I went with the 9%, and set my autopayments on pace to pay it off in 12 months, again with every payment 5 days early.

 

I havent done a lease but have heard enough about them to stay away. If you cqn walk away from the lease for any reason so can the company. Also look at what happened to Arrow trucking years ago. Drivers were making their payments on time and several had pai off their lease purchase. The company put their title up as collateral on loans so when arrow shut their doors and left everyone stranded they lost everything even the ones who had paid off their trucks lost the truck cause they didnt have a title and arrow borrowed with their title as collateral

 

Wow. These fleece purchases open a Pandora's box of evil to be sure.

 

Can you provide any documentation of a driver losing a truck they'd made payments on? I became curious and did some research but can't find any. In fact, from what I've read, employee claims were ultimately paid in full, while the State of Oklahoma and the IRS got nothing - meanwhile, despite "scouring the country", liquidators were "unable to locate" hundreds of trucks and trailers come liquidation time, and the CEO got 7 years in prison.

It might also be worth mentioning that neither Arrow Trucking nor it's subsidiary Arrow Truck Leasing have ever had anything to do with the similarly named Arrow Truck Sales.

 

No need to qualify your opinion about something you have no experience with ... No body else does.

The whole leasing is bad is mostly a giant circle jerk. The majority of people claiming it's evil have no experience with it either, just voicing what they hear.

The biggest evil with leasing is that they will give it to any idiot who can breathe, who probably couldn't breathe if they had to think about it. Then when they fail, they cry that the company screwed them over.

Add in trucker's bias that companies are inherently bad, stir in some social media and you get an ongoing trope of the evils of leasing.

Leasing is a tool. If you know what your doing it is a path to a goal.