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ScottieFL · Joined: 08 Feb 2006 Posts: 112

Yep, I'm almost there, finally. Finished with my Prime trainer this week and I'll Upgrade test out next week.

Unfortunately, I have to drive on Prime's slave company wages for 8,000 more miles until I can lease. (Prime pays 30 cpm, but 8 cpm is Per Diem!)

Despite the negative comments most folks here have about Prime, you can make good money on their lease, if you know how to manage your yourself.

However, Gainey Transportation just pre-approved me for a lease last week, too. I could start leasing right away with them, instead of waiting another 3 weeks with Prime. Gainey's lease program is about $1,000 per month less than Prime's, but they pay by the mile (90 cpm), while Prime pays by the load (that usually averages about $1.04 a mile).

I could also buy a 1999 or later truck and become an owner-operator with Gainey instead of leasing. That option is not available with Prime. But if I buy my own truck, I'd be making a

Gainey says it's solo drivers average about 2700-3000 miles a week. Prime's solo drivers average about the same.

After riding with Prime for several months now, I know they have plenty of freight - I don't know that about Gainey.

I've also heard that Gainey is owned by the same folks that own Covenant. I don't like Covenant.

Prime is ranked 38 in Transport Topics Top 100. Gainey is ranked 61. My gut tells me I'd make more money with Prime than Gainey.

One thing's for sure - I'm not gonna be a company driver. Leasing is more profitable.

What say you?

GMAN · Joined: 13 Feb 2005 Posts: 9284 Location: Tennessee

ScottieFL wrote:
Prime is ranked 38 in Transport Topics Top 100. Gainey is ranked 61. My gut tells me I'd make more money with Prime than Gainey.

One thing's for sure - I'm not gonna be a company driver. Leasing is more profitable.

What say you?

I say you will go broke. You seem to have your mind made up, so I am not sure why you are asking for our opinions, at this point. I don't know what you have against Covenant, especially if you have never worked for them. If your gut is telling you that you will make money leasing a truck from Prime, I would say to go get something to eat and watch some TV. Your gut must be confused because it is hungry. :P As much as we have discussed this, I am amazed at how many gullible people will still sign on to these "fleece purchase" programs. Just because one company is ranked higher than another company, doesn't necessarily mean that the higher ranked one is the better of the two. It only means that they are larger. Companies such as Prime make a fortune off of leasing trucks to new drivers who haven't a clue as to what it takes to make money as an owner operator. I am sorry to sound so harsh, but you are about to make a huge mistake. There are so many inexperienced drivers who think that they are going to get rich doing one of these "fleece purchase" programs, but we never seem to have anyone who wants to show the actual numbers. Prime and other training carriers prey on those with limited or no experience, poor credit and limited financial resources. Those of us who have sacrificed to either pay cash or save a good down payment, know what it REALLY takes to own and operate a truck successfully. One thing you should understand is that you will never own the truck you are buying for them. You are making their truck payments for them plus a hefty profit. You make the payments and they keep ownership. A sweet deal if you are the carrier. You can buy a new truck on your own for about $2,000 (+-) per month with a good down payment. If you really want to be an owner operator, save your money until you can afford to buy a truck on your own. When you lease a truck from a carrier you are a lease operator and not an owner operator. You don't own anything. It is like the difference between renting a house and buying it. When you rent a house you are essentially paying for the house someone else owns. Go ahead and do the deal. Come back in a year and tell us how great you are doing. :?

marcel27208 · Joined: 19 Aug 2006 Posts: 782

OMG all prime drivers are lease operators????? they have no company drivers? from what i understand you drive company for 30 days then you have to lease???

duck · Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 3:00 pm Post subject:

While I am not an active driver (stopped driving 6 or 7 years ago) I been round truckers all my life. Never ceases to amaze me that a guy who would never lease a ford truck thinks nothing of leasing a Freighliner. (ain't saying that's you but it is common to see)

BUY YOUR OWN TRUCK. Payments are about the same and you OWN the thing. You wanna paint it pink with pictures of ducks and buffalo wearing raincoats - go ahead. Do that to a lease and see what happens. Wanna switch companies tomorrow - good luck on a company supplies lease -- sometimes it's easier to get rid of AOL :wink: Say you do have bad credit - fix it up (there are services for this) and then BUY a truck. Leasing isn't gonna help your credit near as much as buying.

With a lease - the same as renting a house. You pay someone else's payment plus profit and have nothing. With interest rates fairly low now - I would buy, get an older one if you have to. Many times extended warranties are avail if that's a concern.

Good luck - just remember lease = not yours but paying like it is.

ColdFrostyMug · Joined: 07 Jul 2006 Posts: 703 Location: New England

There's a lease-purchase operator born every minute! :D

Ian Williams · Joined: 22 Aug 2005 Posts: 693 Location: Northern NV

Dude! You're going to go broke. Drive company for a while and make all the rookie mistakes on their dime, not yours.

mudflap276 · Joined: 02 Feb 2006 Posts: 377 Location: China Spring, TX

if you need a ride, and dont have the money for a bus ticket, i will give you a ride but you have to help strap and tarp and eat granola bars. :lol: just last week, i saw a prime truck that seemed to have misplaced its lease/purchase driver and dang near everything was taken out of it and both doors open. of course this was in east st louis at the pilot. not the best part of town. :shock:

yoopr · Joined: 01 Dec 2004 Posts: 12866

Leasing is more profitable

You just got out of Truck driving school and have driven a few weeks and You know all this?

PhuzzyGnu · Joined: 15 Jul 2005 Posts: 286 Location: Planet Houston

ScottieFL wrote:

One thing's for sure - I'm not gonna be a company driver. Leasing is more profitable.

What say you?

I say you're about to get a painful education.

I'll make really good money this year as a company driver. I'm considering the company's owner-operator program, but I am in no position to do it right now. Maybe in three years when I am completely debt free, when I have a solid history and track record with the company, and when I have that much more experience I might try it.

-p.

Longsnowsm · Joined: 29 Dec 2005 Posts: 531

ScottieFL,

Man, I am really sorry to hear you talking about the lease. You really should be popping into the O/O section and asking about what it costs to run a truck. The actual business expenses. Line by line and roughly what it is going to cost you per mile to run that truck.

Then add those costs to the truck lease payments and figure out what you the driver are going to actually make. You will make more money driving as the company driver than you will get to keep out of your lease. That much I can promise you. I have run the numbers 14 ways from Wednesday and the numbers don't add up... Well they can add up to you the driver keeping about 10-18 cpm while the rest goes back into the truck. I don't know about you, but I am not working for that kind of money just so I can say I leased a truck. If you choose to go down the road not knowing what the costs are that are about to bite you and then have the truck broken down and no funds to take care of those business expenses... Then your headed for bankruptcy.

What others are trying to tell you is unless you have taken into account the insurance, tags, fuel taxes, truck maintenance and a long list of real expenses that conveniently get overlooked in the breakout that the companies pimping the lease then your in for big trouble. Stay a company driver for Prime since your already with them. Get your 1 year on the road and then look for better opportunities. I have talked with nobody that has completed a Prime lease and made out... This should tell you something.

If you choose to go the lease route let us know. The lessons you learn on this one will demonstrate to everyone exactly what everyone is warning you about. If nothing else someone else may be able to avoid the house of pain your about to get into.

If your interested in learning some of the information that Prime isn't going to talk about, you should be downloading some of the spreadsheet calculators on the OOIDA web site and then asking some of our resident OO's about some of the expense items that you will need to plug into the spreadsheet. This will help you get to some CPM calculations and a closer picture of the real bottom line. Factor in percentages of trips your going to be doing MT or deadheading for bounce between loads, and some of the other gotchas and "surprise" your lucky to be eating Ramen once a day. If you will take the time to do this you will be SHOCKED! That is no exaggeration. BOL

Longsnowsm

dollarshort · Joined: 16 Feb 2006 Posts: 507 Location: South Central PA

You said you have to run a little longer at slave wages and then you will get to lease a truck. Better get used to the slave wages man. I was a lease operator with Prime so I know what I am talking about. If you need a reality check I would be glad to give it to you. It has nothing to do with knowing how to operate efficiently when you are only making .05 cpm after expenses if you are lucky.
Do the math. .05 cpm @ 3,000 mi. = $150.00, then don't forget to take out taxes and insurance. So if you can live off of less than a hundred bucks a week go for it. Otherwise sign on somewhere as a company driver with bennies and all the other good stuff. You will make 75%-90% more than you will at Prime without all the headaches.

marcel27208 · Joined: 19 Aug 2006 Posts: 782

$150??? im sure all of those lease purchase drivers running around in prime trucks are making more than that??

duck · Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 7:01 pm Post subject:

Dunno if they are making more but for the life of me I can not think of a situation where a lease is ever a good idea. By lease I mean several year not 2 weeks while yours is getting fixed.

You simply DO NOT OWN THE TRUCK and thus aren't really an O/O.

Now if you were able to lease a nice new truck for 300 a week -- ok then you come out a head but if someone finds that lemme know - I'll take ten :roll:

dollarshort · Joined: 16 Feb 2006 Posts: 507 Location: South Central PA

The only ones that even have a chance at making any money at Prime are the teams. Whether you are a single driver or team, the truck payment is the same. So if you can't run 7,000 mi per week on a consistent basis you will not make any more than a company driver at best. You can't run those kinds of miles as a single can you? And even the teams that are running those kinds of miles per week will never own the truck no matter what they might think. Do can run the numbers any way you like and it still never comes out good. So unless you are independently wealthy and just would like to donate some of your time to Mr. Low go right ahead. Better yet if you would like to work for slave wages I have a truck for you to drive also. Come and work for me....You can pay for all the fuel, maintenance, taxes, insurance, workers comp, repairs, etc. and I will just set back and count the money for you. Of course I will give you your cut after skimming off the tarp charges, fuel surcharges, etc. Also, I would only charge you double what the origional cost of the truck was instead of 3 times the cost as Prime does. Sounds like a good deal to me. Call me.

Longsnowsm · Joined: 29 Dec 2005 Posts: 531

Like Gman alluded to... If your a lease operator you are:

1. Paying the full truck payment for the carrier
2. You pay your own taxes, benefits, social security etc, and again the company does not have that overhead
3. When the lease is done(if you get that far, big if) the truck is paid for so the carrier owns it outright and not a penny came out of their pocket and you the fleecee has nothing to show for it.

The other highlights that come to mind.
4. The escrow maintenance and other fees that are extracted are not enough to cover the items that come up, so the driver gets stuck covering those expenses
5. The truck warranty does not cover all the possible issues and does not cover the wear and tear items, and the driver will have to have the fund this out of his own pocket
6. The driver is under intense pressure to run hard and potentially illegally to get the miles to make that high lease payment
7. Miles are inconsistent seasonally, and the truck payment has to be made regardless of the time of year or the number of miles you are or are not getting(go back to the holiday time frame last year and listen to drivers all over complain about sitting without a load or not getting any miles) and how do you make that payment if your suddenly lucky to squeak out 2000 miles this month?

There is an interesting and quite long thread on another forum that details exactly, and I do mean EXACTLY what ScottieFL is trying to do. This driver knew the pitfalls and swore he wouldn't fall for the lease. He gets to school and with a trainer and you see each post as the driver breaks down in his thinking. He ends up in the lease(lured by the promise of big bucks and printouts from his trainer lease operator he was in training with), he makes it about 10-11 mths(defending the lease tooth and nail) and then finally comes back to admit that what everyone said was right and that he was wrong. It was a very informative thread, and I hope that ScottieFL does not have to experience this first hand, but if he does I hope we can start a Prime Lease Experience thread and follow this to it's bitter end... And of course make it a sticky so that everyone can see. The math doesn't work.

We are not trying to rain on anyones parade. By all means if any of these company leases were a good deal you would see a lot of drivers all over them. Many folks would be singing their praises, so where is this chorus? So far such an animal(lease that is profitable for both the company and the lease operator) does not exist that I am aware of... Everyone is offering these leases these days because it is very very profitable for the carriers(they basically get out of any financial liablity at all and it is all pure profit). There is no downside for the carrier... You the driver are doing all the heavy lifting, and this practice should be illegal PERIOD!

Longsnowsm

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