Yeah, that's more than I pay for my 379 Peterbilt that I bought new. WAY more. Nothing like setting yourself up for failure right from the start. But hey - the OP knows more than the rest of us. After all, the guy who is gonna rent him a job started out with 2 trucks, and now has 27. And he's growing. And judging by the stars in the OP's eyes, now I know why.

If he has 27 people renting his trucks at the rate mentioned, he is making a very good living by simply renting trucks. Perhaps I need to start renting trucks. I would probably make more renting them than running them.:thumbsup:

If what Fuzeme says is true for a US Xpress lease payment of $620 a week, it sure sounds like a great way to pay a driver half of minimum wage at best. I believe P.T. Barnum is a bit behind the times now when he said "There's a sucker born every minute."

"He will not put a driver in this program who is not willing to use good business practices. He told us this is a business, and you have to run it like a business." You'll have to give me a moment as I'm still laughing. Ah, much better. Why not, CR England has been doing it for years and is still around with drivers lacking common sense, let alone business sense?

I respect GMAN for his knowledge, and hope the advice he offers is listened to in your case. The description given of the planned lease would make me run the other way.

You guys are getting two different situations mixed up, ok, US Express is leasing new to near new Pete's for around 620-667. You have to go through a 90 day period using a rental truck. If you stick it out for a year, you get a bonus, but no truck, if you want to continue leasing the truck, you can.

I am not in US Express leasing program, nor am I going to be in their program, I am not in any lease program. The truck I drive is owned by an owner who is leased on to a small carrier, that is growing, we got several new accounts last week, reefer loads. This carrier is 100% owner operator, no company drivers. Because the carrier is growing and profitable, and the miles are really good, and have been even in this recession, and with other companies closing their doors, this enables the owner of my truck to grow hence the reason he is adding more trucks.

I do want to say one thing, the info I have received from the many contributors on this board has caused me to walk away from the US Express program, after all who wouldn't want to drive around a new shiny Iron Horse. But if you are taken to the cleaners in the process, what's the point? I am seriously thinking about the program offered by my company, I talked with the owner of the carrier we are leased to and he thinks it is a good program for new owner Ops. Trucks aren't new, most have about 400,000 miles on them, just starting to get broke in.

"I talked with the owner of the carrier we are leased to and he thinks it is a good program for new owner Ops." I can't argue with that as I'm 100% positive he thinks it is a good idea.

Do you have a rough idea what your expenses will be (by that I mean cpm), and what you'll be paid under this lease?

Posters are making these assumptions because the only information you've given regarding truck payments is from the US Xpress program. Because those are the specifics you've asked about, everybody assumes that this other deal is similar in structure. If it wasn't, why bother asking about USX. Now, if you want to give information about what your truck payments and rates would be with your current carrier, I'll bet people would stop referencing the USX numbers.

You know........... and I hope this isn't taken the wrong way, but the short amount of time I've been in this business, sometimes I think you can make more money off of truck drivers than driving a truck.

Only the ignorant ones:)

Yeah, that's what I meant, perhaps I didn't phrase it quite right.

At one time I gave serious consideration to buying trucks and leasing them to drivers. If I did I would want to try to come up with a program that would be fair to the driver and myself. I pretty much came to the conclusion that if you make it fair for the driver that you will lose money. If you set it up like these big carriers do you could make a lot of money off of these drivers who want to rent a truck. I do think that many of them make more off the leases than the freight they haul.