Should A Rookie Driver Become A Lease Operator?

Plan B finds:

I asked a company fleet manager how many trucks Prime has out there and how many company driver's. He estimated about 6500 trucks in all with about 1000 company driver's.

About a month ago, I looked up some industry wide statistics about Company driving vs Owners. As a major carrier, I bet Prime is actually close to the industry ratio. Here's most of that post:

The OOIDA says there are approximately 350,000 owner-operators in the United States.

The American Trucking Association estimated there were 3.5 million employed truck drivers in 2015

Math Department: 3,500,000 ÷ 350,000 = .1         or 10% of the drivers on their own.

Prime was a 100% lease company years ago. They didn't have any company drivers. They've branched off into company drivers in recent years so they might have a lot more lease drivers than company drivers, but I'm not sure.

About 1 yr ago now I had a chance to talk with a prime driver and he was lease. He had been with prime going on 4 years. He explained his lease agreement which is a bit different than what I had experienced. Not all lease programs are created equal. He was in the tanker division. His bottom line was he was making a few dollars more than he did as a company driver, and he said he was going to complete his lease and go back to company because the stress level had been so high it wasn't worth it to him. His opinion the trucks were over priced a bit from his research. For every lease driver you talk to some will like it and others will not. Overall I was successful at it while I did it, but like the prime driver I spoke with the risk was not worth the reward. Everyone is different. All we are doing is sharing our experience in a honest manner.

Brett I just looked up my tax returns from that year I leased. I made 5k more that year. It was spread over 2 years worth of returns so I had to seperate it out, but 5k was the bottom line. Now divide 5k by 12 and you get 416.00 more a month. All the headaches 100 a week is not worth it to me. I was not a trainer, they do make more. because of the training pay. However if a student damages your truck you could loose money on that too, not to mention the extra wear and tear on the truck.

PJ calculates:

Now divide 5k by 12 and you get 416.00 more a month. All the headaches 100 a week is not worth it to me.

This is the strongest argument against owning a truck I've seen. Yes, it's one person's story. But all that mess for $100 extra in a paycheck?

Absolute truth: there are drivers who want to really earn every penny in their pocket. More power to them, and I hope they get the miles they are looking for. But I believe for the average new trucker, ownership is a dangerous path, or road, to go down.

- Yes, this is the only site that offers the truth about leasing and owning

Not just that but this site offers the truth about everything in this industry. Just look at its name: truckingtruth.com

If you look back at my early posts, i made the same argument about my trainer making so much and she didnt have a lease payment, she did the lease purchase. Then I learned the truth with experience.

1) That huge figure you see is BEFORE taxes, OWCP, health insurance and more. The maintainance costs are astronomical. Even with warranteed items, there is downtime, hotels, cab fare, and tows that come out of your pocket. Your weekly revenue while team training can be $8000, but you receive $2200....and still have to pay taxes, insurance, etc. Smart ops will bank weekly money to cover these expenses and any lease payment during home time. but most arent smart and go into the hole, always trying to climb out. Think all repairs are warranteed? guess again. My friend paid out over $9000 because FL claimed he put DEF in the deisel tank. Never got it back. He suspects the truck stop pumps went awry or whoever filled the tanks there did something. Either way, it took him months of no pay to recover.

2) Do you know why all these people go with lease? Because its easy to sign on the line without a credit check and pay $4000 per month rather than buy a truck through a bank for $1200-1500 huge difference. Its like paying $5000 at rent a center for a $500 computer. Then you give it back for a new one.

3) Yes, lease FMs get incentives to keep the trucks profitable, but that also.limits some trucks. Imagine truck A and B parked next to each other. Truck A is in the hole cause he is a jerk with lots of restrictions and turns down loads. Truck B takes every load and already made $5000 this week. However, if EVERY truck on your fleet is not profitable this week, you dont get your bonus. So you get a really high paying load. As the FM who do you give it to? A, the slacker who is in the hole, or B the work horse you can rely on.

Answer: A to increase your own bonus by not allowing a truck to be in the hole. Even if that means the worker has to sit and wait. Is that right or fair? nope.

The "do me this favor and ill hook you up with the next load" is the carrot that is dangled daily. But that great paying load never comes, or get taken from you and the next promise is made.

4) Most lease ops train or team with an SO because they have to, not because they want to. As a new driver, you can't train, so the "back up plan" of training to get out of the hole doesnt work.

5) i repowered a lease op at a FL dealer whose brand new transmission blew. He was already there for two days, paying for hotels and would be there another three days. Still, he bragged to me about leasing....but he had only been solo for a.month...and had been in the hole all month. "But its great potential...you should try it". why? i get breakdown pay and the hotel paid for.

6) After paying $1000 per week for 36 weeks, you paid $360,000 to borrow a truck only to give it back. You also pay 10cpm for mileage...so if you team at 5,000 miles a week, you pay $500 per week in addition to the $1000 truck payment. then when you return it, they charge you for every dent, ding, and drill hole. Put in a satellite and XBox? each screw hole will cost you $70. Add all of that up and you paid almost a HALF a MILLION dollars for a truck you return. yeah...sounds great.

7) NO rookie should do it. You will hit things, get stuck in the mud or snow and could even roll the truck. As a lease op that is all on you. sure you have insurance and pay a couple thousand for deductibles, but IF they claim negligence, the entire bill is your responsibility. Last year a lease op rolles the truck on Mayfair on his first load. he will never drive again, plus owes the payment and insirance for the truck as well as the PSD loan and food advance. At best that is about $10,000.

8) i make a little under what lease ops do, but i have health, dental, life, disabilty, vision and a 401k.

9) Lease ops dont go home very often. they cant afford to. as a company driver, i dont feel pressured to run in bad weather, when im tired or to not take a day off. lease ops have that constant pressure to pay that truxk, so no fun time.

theres a thread i broke it down, i will have to find it.

7) NO rookie should do it. You will hit things, get stuck in the mud or snow and could even roll the truck. As a lease op that is all on you. sure you have insurance and pay a couple thousand for deductibles, but IF they claim negligence, the entire bill is your responsibility. Last year a lease op rolles the truck on Mayfair on his first load. he will never drive again, plus owes the payment and insirance for the truck as well as the PSD loan and food advance. At best that is about $10,000.

Dang Kearsey you make a lot of good points and you're scaring me to death... I just signed a lease with Wilson/Prime because after all the training and work I put in, I only made about $700 a week the first couple of weeks on my own. My first week as a LO was decent, second week I didn't make a dime but it was a learning experience I guess, and third week I'm gonna bring home around $5000 if I did the math right.

Is that good money? Yes. Is it worth it in the long run? I don't know yet...

I just signed a lease with Wilson/Prime because after all the training and work I put in, I only made about $700 a week the first couple of weeks on my own. My first week as a LO was decent, second week I didn't make a dime but it was a learning experience I guess, and third week I'm gonna bring home around $5000 if I did the math right.

Is that good money? Yes. Is it worth it in the long run? I don't know yet...

Hey Tim, I know you have been in here long enough to know we don't recommend doing what you did. You are a rookie. It doesn't matter how much hard work you put in while training. You are still a rookie. Changing to become a lease operator after just a few disappointing paychecks makes no sense. All rookies get a few disappointing paychecks. Besides, The reason those paychecks were not so great shows that you don't quite have a grip on how to make this work yet. That is what they should have made you realize.

You have now started a business in which you have zero experience. Does that sound like a good idea? I'd say no.

The smartest thing you said was "Is it worth it in the long run? I don't know yet..." You will have to figure it out now. You have already jumped in with both feet. I have decades of experience running businesses where I had real skills and experience. Even then it was tough. I am considered by many to be a talented truck operator. I would never lease a truck from my employer. It has got so many reasons that make it a bad business model.

I really wish you would have asked us for some advice on this. I don't think you would have found much encouragement. Maybe that is why you didn't ask. You may have already known what we would say. I wish the best for you, but I don't think you realize how deep you stepped into it yet.

I will tell you this... Every new lease operator I have talked with thinks they are doing great at first. It doesn't take long for reality to hit home. Remember, you are not getting paychecks anymore. You are getting revenues. Those are two different things. There is no way you are getting a five thousand dollar paycheck. So... don't fool yourself into thinking that was your paycheck for last week.

I really wish you would have asked us for some advice on this. I don't think you would have found much encouragement. Maybe that is why you didn't ask. You may have already known what we would say. I wish the best for you, but I don't think you realize how deep you stepped into it yet.

Wow real encouraging... I'll tell you this. I can live off of $7 or 800 a week. If that's all I make trucking then forget it and I'm walking away. If lease doesn't work out I'm quitting.

Tim, did you really think you were going to be making big money as a rookie driver? Where did you get that idea? We want to help you get to the point where you can make bank, but you have certainly got to learn how to walk before you can run. Time with a trainer doesn't do that. Even if you had thirty or forty thousand miles with them, which is what I think you did. Nobody jumps into this making 100 grand a year. Most of us start out around fifty thousand our first year. Some make a better start than others. We hone our skills and our ability to turn out the big miles as we develop ourselves into competent professionals.

You can certainly do that. You can even do it as a lease operator, but if you think that just changing your category from an employee to a contractor works like a magic wand to turn on the great income, you are really missing something. Like I said, I want the best for you, but from what I have seen here in this brief exchange, I fear you will be one of the many who pursued this career with unrealistic expectations. I hope I am wrong, and I hope you will bring us your questions as you face the challenges that all rookies face. We are here to help. It is what we do.