Wow, what a week I had! I recently went to work for SUNCO in Lakeland as a driver for an owner operator that had a lease truck with Sunco. Long story short, we have all heard about these company lease deals where you lease the tractor from them , blah, blah, blah, run for peanuts, and make no money. Well this guy fell for it hook line and sinker. He hired me last week and I ran a load of juice form Tropicana in Bradenton Fl to Cincinnati , not bad right? Wrong! The unload appointment was for Sunday at 2:30 pm, I left Tropicana on Thursday afternoon! Holly crap, 3 and 1/2 days to do 987 miles?
Oh well, I took my time thinking I would enjoy the ride, which I did. Get there on time (of coarse since I had 3 days to get there) go to back in and they say leave the unit running, well of coarse it breaks down and gets clogged filters so I have to unload right now, temp in box 41 was set for 32 so offloaded we get. Whew, close one so dispatch wants me to wait to get fixed on Monday, I say no way I am picking up a frozen load monday morning at 10:30 am in Indianapolis, I aint waiten, you fix right now, cheap bastards did not want to spend money for a service call on a sunday! So I notice some dropped Sunco trailers at this facility and swapped out for a better trailer and called it in, after I was on my way, they said np problem.
Get to Indy Monday morning for my drop and hook at Americold and guess what? Load was not ready and it was scheduled for a live load at 11:30. So I back in and wait till 4 pm that afternoon for the completion of my load. Eats up most of my clock so now I can only drive another 5 hours for the day, but wait it gets better, may appointment time to deliver back in Florida is for Wednesday evening at 1 am ! I was like really? Another 3 days to do a day and a half run? WTF! I think Sunco is raking this OO over the coals. I get back, make delivery, go home and find out the OO turns in the truck lease and walks away! Now the OO does not pay me either! Tells me he had to get an alternator for his truck and used his escrow money for it, Lied to my face, if you used your escrow money then what does that have to do with paying me?
He tells me he has a load going to Texas this week and he can pay me at the end of the week! What BS on his part! Now I have no money, cost me 125 dollars to be out for 7 days, and then I get burned to boot! If he does not pay me I am filing a claim against SUNCO and maybe they will pay me. Moral of this story, dont work for OO's that are broke! Dont work for SUNCO, they are a rip off can job that lures these guys in with cheap lease deals. Then they take the truck back and lease it to some other dumb ass fool. They pay 67% of load or .92 cents per mile and .75 empty with a fuel surcharge (not much) and if not on dedicated runs, the OO is responsible for refer fuel! I cant believe these dumb ass OO's think it will somehow work out for them at less than a dollar a mile!
If you get involved in a lease scam, and trust me they are all the same, then you need to get your head examined! If your not making 2 bucks per mile plus fuel surcharge then you will go out of business! Its that simple, your operating costs are at least 70 cents (minimum) per mile, so if you are getting 92 cents, duh do the math, you are losing money! Just thought I would pass along my story so no one else falls for it and stay the heck away from companies like SUNCO!:fire:issedoff::cry: