The Good, The Bad, The Honest Truth of a New Roehl Lease Operator

Correct. Accounting service handles that from what I understand.

 

If you are in a true lease then you can deduct the payments from your gross as well as your per diem. I have found that as a single truck operation it's not a lot different other than I have to pay self employment tax. 2014 is going to be a bit more sticky since I have just over 2 months of lease payments, $12,000 in buyout payments. Legally I would think they should have already transferred the title since the truck is actually mine and they simply have a lien on it as security. I'm not going to press the issue.

 

Here I am within sight of having the title on the truck and no truck payments and they are going to have to tear into the engine. Winter has killed my truck. I suddenly noticed I was losing coolant when I had to really torque the truck such as up a mountain under a heavy load. We either have a cracked head or blown head gasket. Add to that 5 dead batteries, the Davco filter globe is cracked at the top, a broken hood latch, and the SAM fuse box cover has broken and fallen off. I still have 2 fan belts that need to be replaced and something is causing the main serpentine belt to slip. In short I am looking at around 5 grand in repairs, (we think.) We know the engine work will be 18 hours of labor plus parts. It looks like these last 19 weeks are going to be painful.

 

That sucks man. Hope you have your maintenance account built up. I'm going to build mine up fast while my truck is still new and hope I don't have to touch it for anything, other than PM's for a long time. I sign my papers Monday.

 

I have been spending about $10,000 a year on working on the truck. I have all of $1000.00 in maintenance. I have a bit in personal savings as well, but not nearly enough. We are looking at 3 options. First is a promissory note for the repairs, second is suck it up and deal with negative settlements until the repairs are paid off and third is to try to get a loan from a finance company. The key is to somehow get through the next 19 weeks. At that point I will have an additional $2000.00 a month in income and that will go a long way to building a maintenance account. I was hoping to get lucky with this MBE engine and I didn't.

 

Preacher, you mind me asking how many miles are on your truck?

 

I have 625 thousand on the truck. These type of issues shouldn't happen for at least another 200,000, but I guess Mercedes still doesn't know how to build an engine that lasts. Frankly when it is time for an inframe I may spend the extra money to put a Detroit reman in the truck instead.

 

150K on mine, another 350K of warranty on my Detroit. Hopefully nothing big comes up in the next few years.

 

Sorry to hear that Preacher. I just got back on the road today with my new engine. The old one went 400k, needed to be rebuilt, then died altogether at 605k. Get that SAM cover replaced ASAP. Water is your enemy and a new SAM is $1500.

 

Good News, sort of. It turns out the engine wasn't the problem, but some intake line, they weren't real clear over the phone. Looks like total bill will be around $2500 which includes a new cover on the SAM fuse box, new Davco fuel filter globe, new belts, new hood latch, 5 new batteries, coolant leak fixed and exhaust clamp nut fixed (we hope.) I'm not surprised the engine wasn't the problem since the only thing that told me I had an issue was that under load I was loosing coolant. I had no engine codes, no white smoke, no engine miss, no temperature fluctuations beyond the normal, no bubbles in the oil, in short the only thing that told me I had an issue was that I would loose coolant when the engine really had to work.

Since the bill after they apply my maintenance fund to the bill will be less than $2000 they will handle it as an advance and I will have to drive until I've paid it back. I went through this a little over a year ago when I had to have the oil pan replaced. It's hard, but if you stay out you usually see money by the second or third week.