[dollarshort]

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]

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

[duck]

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]

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]

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

[ScottieFL]

I appreciate you all trying to warn me off Prime's lease. I know most folks that post on most boards don't like Prime. I respectfully disagree.

So far, I like Prime. That might change next year or next month. I want to make money and if I don't make it with Prime, I'll go somewhere else.

I briefly drove as as company driver (with CFI) before I came to Prime. Driving as a company driver doesn't seem to pay as good to me.

And though I had a bad experience with a CFI finisher, I'm not gonna bash CFI. It's a good company and they paid me about $2,000 net for the month I was there, learning how to drive. I am grateful to CFI for truly teaching me how to drive a semi and paying me well while I learned.

In the 5 months that I've been on my Prime trainer's truck, I've looked at lease statements and QualComm load prices and fuel surcharges. His weekly take home (that's NET, not GROSS, including all food and all his expenses) was usually $1,600 or more a week. And that doesn't include tax deductions he's gonna get next year. As a solo lease operator, I intend to clear $1,000 a week.

And since Prime and Gainey both have walk-away, no-money down leases, I'm not risking anything but my time trying it out on my own.

As far as buying my own truck, I have the money to do that. But Freighliner Select and most new truck sales companies won't finance me until I get two years of experience. And I while I can get my own authority, I can't get cargo insurance until I get two years of experience, too. I plan to buy my own truck in 1.5 years and become a full owner-operator.

Owning a truck for me is not a good economic option right now. I wish it was, but it's not. But if you think driving a Prime lease is stupid, driving as a Prime company driver is doubly stupid - 22 cpm plus 8 cpm Per Diem is just dumb. If I didn't have to do it, I wouldn't.

What I'd really like to know at this point is more info about Gainey. I'll make a separate post, minus Prime, to get it, if need be.

[dollarshort]

It's obvious that you already have your mind made up. There are different avenues for you to pursue but you have to keep an open mind. I wish you luck. I you decide to go for it with Prime keep posting here and let us all know how great it is. :roll:

[knightwolf71477]

I can not believe that you are honestly willing to do this. If you want to be a O/O then get your time on the road under you belt and then go buy a truck out right. That is the only way to go. These "walk away" leases never and I say again NEVER are walk away. They will find things that you did wrong with the truck or your loads and then you will never will get your final settlement.


But if you chose to do this then you go ahead, and I hope it all goes the way you think it will. But as it has been said in the thread before, the only people that this benefit is the company. I make good money as a company driver and I have none of the headaches of being a O/O. Now that being said, if I had the opp. to be a O/O again would I do it? Yes and that is the goal that myself and my wife are working towards right now.


But when it happens the truck and trailer will be paid for when I drive off with it. I have to buy the trailer because I am a car hauler and companies do not really supply those kind of trailers. Also we will have money in our accounts to cover at least 6 months of bills at the house, and almost a year of operating cost for the truck.


I think GMAN will agree that would be the way to go with this, but he may also have a better idea on it. If he does it would benefit you and me both if we pay attention. It would also be good to pay attention to other O/O that have been at this for a while.


This is just my 2 cents worth and you can take it or leave it.

[ScottieFL]

Thanks for the advice. I'll take all I can get!

And it's not that I have my mind made up. I'm open to anything that will make me the most money. I've come full circle, actually.

At first, I thought driving company was the way to go. Then I saw how little CFI company drivers made compared to good Prime lease drivers. I changed my mind.

Then, I saw how much more you can make as an Owner-Operator compared to Prime's lease (or any lease, probably) drivers. Owner-Operator is definitely the way to go.

So, I starting phoning new truck dealers and they said I needed two years experience before they'd sell to me. I can buy an older truck (Gainey will let me owner-operate with a 1999 or later truck), but then I'd probably get swamped with repairs that I'd be paying plus downtime - both costly.

And Gainey has to inspect that old 1999 truck. If I bought it and they rejected it in their inspection, I'd be in trouble.

Plus, the real way to make money as an Owner-Operator is with your own authority. Since I can't get cargo insurance until I get at least 2 years of experience, I'd be a fool to spend the thousands to get my own authority if I can't use that authority for 1.5 more years.

And yep, I know that I'll never own the truck I'm leasing. And I know that I'll get nothing back if I walk away early. So what? If I can make more money than driving company, that's a fair trade-off for me. And if I don't make more, then I can walk away.

Plus, Prime (and other companies) have programs where you can buy your truck through them instead of leasing it. I might just buy the truck, via weekly payments. The downside to that is that you don't get the lease-end bonuses and you don't get to walk-away - you are buying, not leasing.

The worst-case scenario is that I'll make the same as a company driver does. If that happens, then I'll walk away and get a company job (somewhere else than Prime, their company pay sucks), where I have less liability. If that happens, you can bet I'll let you know.

Thanks again and I hope I can get some info about Gainey before making my final decision. I expect that Gainey is a good company, but I've read good and bad about them, too.

[Longsnowsm]

ScottieFL,

I wish you the best. Frankly I am not certain from what I have read that you have done a real cash flow analysis of these lease deals. Have you looked to make sure that all your escrows and bills for anything that comes up is covered? Are you going to get saddled with big bills later on that you should have been saving the vast majority of your checks for these expenses?

Here is the lease calculater from OOIDA:
http://www.ooida.com/trucking_tools/lease_purchase.htm

Look at the lease printouts and then start plugging in the info into the spreadsheet. For the items that you see on the spreadsheet that are not included on the Prime/Gainey/<substitute> breakout of costs come back here and ask the OO forum for input on ways to calculate those costs. Then decide if your going to be keeping more than your making as a company driver at Prime or anywhere else for that matter.

If you haven't done this yet then your completely blind and don't have the information needed to make any decision like this. I wager your not going to make more as a lease operator than you are as a company driver... I also wager you haven't done this little exercise yet either! Anybody here want to take that wager????

So tell us have you done this cash flow exercise yet and plugged the numbers into the spreadsheet? Did you get the "other" numbers that are not covered on the breakout/printout from Prime?

I plugged in numbers from JB Hunts lease, Primes lease, CR Englands lease and anyplace where I could get a lease operator to give me the numbers. The numbers are never complete. They never work because the escrow for the cost items does not cover everything and your going to eat the difference. You don't know your running a deficit until it reaches up and bites you in the arse. You say you cannot make it on .30 cpm, well how are you going to do it on .10-.18 cpm(if your lucky) once you have saved the money needed for the expenses? Banking on the tax man to save the lease operator is like spending money you don't have for stuff just because it is on sale. It makes no sense to have taxes be the basis for the drivers survival. That is what we are talking about is the very survival of the driver.

Realistically as a newbie company driver your going to get to keep between $600-800 week. It appears that you have seen the dollar signs after seeing the cash flow mirage of a lease operator and your expectations of this industry have been skewed.

I wish you the best, and I hope this somehow works out for you no matter where you land. Keep us posted how this turns out for you. BOL

Longsnowsm