Been Debating Trying Lease Op With Western Express.

Eugene when you talk to these L.O/O.O's ask to see their Tax Returns! lol bet that NEVER happens

Do you read everything on here I write whenever someone brings up the Fleece program?

That's all I'm going to write.

On top of what the others have said, if you are responsible for paying your own taxes, you will have to stash away 1/3rd of your gross pay to be safe. Then minus your health and disability insurance payments. Plus all the headaches and paperwork of running a small business. From what I’ve seen on this site, company drivers do better then that without the added stress

Do you read everything on here I write whenever someone brings up the Fleece program?

That's all I'm going to write.

I lied!

Here's a question you can ask yourself:

Of all the successful, experienced drivers here on the Trucking Truth site, any of them leasing a truck?

Exactly. I’ve read just about everything everyone has said about leasing or O/O on this site, and none of it squares up with what I’m hearing lol. Which is precisely why I asked for clarification, because there’s got to be a hidden catch they’re not telling me.

At the end of the day, all of the other arguments aside, it seems like a hell of a lot of extra work and aggravation for a marginal return on investment, at best. I’d rather just run my miles and not have to deal with the headache, PLUS get matching 401k.

Eugene... At Prime the lease Op settlements have interesting numbers...

One line says "revenue & expense cashflow"

Which is actually their profit. It is divided by cpm for the week, total for the week, also for year to date and lease to date.

Many lease ops do not know that line is there yet it is the important one. The pay settlement in my video is from a friend with 6 years driving at the time. He team trains and takes very little home time.... Like in 8 months he only took 34s and never went home. In this truck he took 18 days of hone time the whole year.

In the end..... Including the highest paying freight rate year, he averaged 64cpm. Guess what I average as a company team trainer? 64cpm. Plus I have workmens comp health life dental etc. I am about to post pay stubs of a new prime company driver that including home time....is averaging $1350 per week. If you take the home time weeks out of the equation cause he doesnt expect to make money on those weeks. It bumps up to almost $1500 gross per week. Guess how much solo lease ops admit to? $1500 per week.

Next time one tells you they make six figures.. Ask them to show you their profit line. The MOST i ever saw was 73cpm profit but he only went home for a 34 every 3 to 4 months. Sounds great!

Lease Op Settlements

Thank you all for you're information! I really do greatly appreciate it. Do you guy's think it is ever worth becoming a owner op? Like buying you're own truck outright and working with brokers? Just curious of what y'all think.

Thank you all for you're information! I really do greatly appreciate it. Do you guy's think it is ever worth becoming a owner op? Like buying you're own truck outright and working with brokers? Just curious of what y'all think.

If you like to live on the edge by being a risk taker with lots of extra stress and extra work, I highly recommend it.

Hi Harvest,

I will come here and take the side of o/o's, at least slightly. The majority of o/o's buy a used truck that's slightly out of the factory warranty for around $60k. They do not go out and buy a brand new truck. The reason being that your going to get killed on depreciation. Your going to spend $150k on something and in 5 years it's going to be worth $60k. You just lost $90k or around $18k a year on your equipment. Is it worth it?, i guess it depends on who you ask. When i trained and the students told me they were in it for the money, i'd say there's about a 10% chance they'll last for a month. If they say they're not for the money but they love the freedom then maybe they may last in the industry.

Eugene,

The catch is that being an o/o is that you will have to do about 5 full time jobs to run your truck. You'll be negotiating for loads, you'll be dispatching, you'll be driving, you'll be accounts payable, you'll have to handle all the back office. All these jobs are full time paid jobs at companies. And you'll just get burnt out after a while. There's just so much someone can take. Sure you can pay people to do them, but they'll take a cut. Take enough cuts, and you might as well drive for company.

Rainey,

Congrats on your success on the broadcasting. There's two things i would say to you. First, the end goal (imo) is to have a paid off equipment. Looking at someone's numbers while they're in the middle of paying it off is kind of flawed. You should be looking at people that are operating at a time past their lease, not year one or two when they're struggling with payments. Also, the reason why people don't give you their numbers is because they don't want others knowing what their doing that's making them successful. I don't tell people the lanes i run or where the freight is that i know of. Running the numbers this year i ran for $1.55 a mile empty and loaded. If you made it through the covid shutdown you did very well this year in trucking.

Rainey,

Congrats on your success on the broadcasting. There's two things i would say to you. First, the end goal (imo) is to have a paid off equipment. Looking at someone's numbers while they're in the middle of paying it off is kind of flawed. You should be looking at people that are operating at a time past their lease, not year one or two when they're struggling with payments. Also, the reason why people don't give you their numbers is because they don't want others knowing what their doing that's making them successful. I don't tell people the lanes i run or where the freight is that i know of. Running the numbers this year i ran for $1.55 a mile empty and loaded. If you made it through the covid shutdown you did very well this year in trucking.

At Prime we have "lease" which is rental and "lease purchase". A lot of the lease people don't want a truck that will age so their goal is specifically to rent a new truck every few years. Also the lease purxhase requires a $14,000 down payment which dissuades newer drivers from a lease purchase. The numbers I used were of a conventional lease that is never paid off. When that particular driver wanted to buy his truck...he was basically told he would have to go through the used truck sales at Pedigree and pay $70,000 for a truck he already paid $155,000 to rent over 3 years. Not to mention they wanted it at an 8 year load at 29%.

Its not about trying to horde the good freight or anything. Even as a company driver I know to go for coca cola loads in FL and apples in WA for $2 per mile. Seriously.. It is that many of these people have no idea how much they are making. They send me their settlements cause they don't know how to read them. Even with prime forcing them to take classes before they lease.

And thanks!