I was once leased to Landstar. They pay on 98% of the line haul. If you pull their trailer you will make 67% of 98%, which is about 65% of the line haul rate. If you own your own trailer, you will make 75% of 98%, which come out to just over 73% of the line haul rate. They are supposed to pass on 100% of the fuel surcharge, but I question whether they always do. When I was leased to them, it was before they added a fuel surcharge. If you pull anything but a van, you will need to provide your own trailer or rent one from Landstar. I believe the cost is about $150-165/wk. They do provide 2 Comdata cards to their BCO's. One is for the owner of the truck and is used for settlements. The other card may be given to the driver for fuel. When I was there BCO's were assigned a date which all paperwork needed to be in if you wanted to be paid by a certain date. Settlements were weekly on paperwork received. Landstar is 100% owner operator, but there are some fleet owners who may have drivers working for them, but they work for the owner operator and not Landstar. Landstar will buy your base plates for you, but you will pay for all base plates, permits, etc., They will deduct a flat amount out of your weekly settlements. They charge for everything they do for you. When I was there, we paid $1.75 each time they loaded our Comdata card. They will advance a percentage of the load once you have it on the truck. You will be assigned a "Care Person" for about 60-90 days, as I recall. This person will help you to learn their system. You will not have a dispatcher. Landstar is an agent based system. In other words, you will have a list of agents that you can call for loads. Basically, the agents are brokers who work for Landstar. Actually, they are also independent business people, just like the BCO's. They operate their own businesses. Sometimes agents may call you to haul loads when they know you are going to be in the area. Leasing to Landstar is about as close as you can get to running your own authority without having the paperwork. As far as advancing money for emergency maintenance, I never had to deal with that, but if you are under a load and can't deliver, they may advance you funds to repair the truck, but you should be able to do this yourself. As a BCO you are not an employee of Landstar, but an independent business owner. Landstar writes the checks, not the agents. If there are extras such as detention, it is the agent who is responsible for seeing that it is collected from the shipper, but Landstar writes the check. Landstar won't pay for extras unless they collect from the shipper. I only had a problem with one agent. He still owes me $1,200. Landstar wasn't much help in trying to collect the money. He was one of their largest agents, at the time. He did about $3MM in about 3 months. Landstar will follow the money and their own interests. But, that was only one agent. I didn't get something in writing, so I lost the money. I would never haul anything for that agent again. Most of their agents are reputable, but it is a business and should be conducted as such. Landstar is basically a broker who owns the bank. They are fairly rigid in the way they want things done. For the most part, they won't bother you as long as you get all your paperwork in timely and take care of business. That means that you pick up and deliver when you are supposed to and keep everyone informed if there is a problem.
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