You will still have an investment in your equipment, whether you lease it from a carrier or finance it through the bank. The difference is that you will likely pay more to rent the truck from a carrier, work for less money and still not have anything to show for your "investment." When you buy a truck, you will have some equity at some point. And you don't necessarily need to spend $40-50M for a decent truck, depending on the type of truck and trailer. You can find a good used truck for around $20M and trailer for about $8-12M. It takes some legwork to find the good deals. Of course, you can always spend more if that is what you want to do. :wink:

Bump time

I think there are two problems with these threads.. that is the two kinds of people responding them:

People who've never done it (and usually havent done anything else in their lives) who read something once and get off on saying "it cant be done" etc.
O/O's who cant understand that not everyone can fork out 20k and have 10k in the bank and just get their authority and hope it all works out.

L/P is the worst way to buy a truck. By the time youre done with ANY l/p the truck is worn out and youre flat out sick of it. Even a new one.
If you l/p to run dry van your life is going to be hard. You need to be specialised so you can get decent rates. My buddy makes .92 per mile + .21-.25 fsc running dry van.
I average 1.80-$2 a mile (including the FULL fuel sc) running flatbed. One run maybe 800 miles with 100 miles deadhead and everything is paid for. Every mile after that everything over .80 a mile is NET profit.
It's a GREAT way to learn to become an o/o. I faced/face the double challenge of learning flatbed plus learning o/o. I'll tell you it's been dizzying im learning a LOT and fast.

If you just want to lease a truck and go o/o go talk to penske. You'll be driving a good truck. Everything will be repaired on it and if you have a problem theres a penske in every city.

The ones you need to avoid are the companies that hide the details/math, who dont let you dispatch yourself etc. These companies starve the drivers out near the end ive seen it. Theyre scum.
You'll be fine for 2 years then boom suddenly that near dedicated u were on disappears.. except you see their company guys driving it. etcv etc.

I'm going o/o and leasing from crst malone right now. Maint is high and my god im having some bad luck but the company is great, the lease is fine my only problem is murphys law kicking my ass.