I posted it somewhere, but forgot where, so here it is again
http://www.landlinemag.com/Archives/...t-to-avoid.htm

 

They can only get away with it because so many truck drivers are stupid... A smart person wouldn't go near something like that. :smokin:

 

Thats a great article. The bottom line for me is that you are at the mercy of the company at all times. Do you really want to take all of the risk and depend on someone else for loads like that? You pay for everything and the company gets the benefits.

 

Truer words have never been spoken.

I have to disagree with this part. I have met a few guys who are making money because they were smart enough to know what they were getting into. You have to team or train in order to make it work. Beyond that, if you can keep the truck upright, keep an ironclad set of books and maintain a continuous dialogue with a bank, it can be a four year path to much bigger and better things.

A fleece has to favor the company because so many fleecelets fail. They fail for all the same reasons most company drivers fail. This job isn't for everyone. An unhappy company driver is going to walk away and do something else. An unhappy fleecelet is going to walk away in financial ruin.

I applaud the judge for taking England's own greed and throwing it back in their face. You're right, England, it is too much.

 

click here to read the article

Happy New Year

 

I disagree. It's not that drivers (we're mostly talking about new drivers here) are stupid. It's that they are naive. Looking at CRE's current pro-forma, you and I know that no one is going to get 3,250 paid miles a week, run those miles 52 weeks in a row to get to 169,000 paid solo miles, and do it for each year of the lease; is it three years? A few years ago CRE was promoting their leases with 186,000 paid solo miles a year; I've got a copy of one of their old ads. CRE argued that 186,000 solo miles was legal and possible. A hopeful newbie might believe that. Experienced drivers know better and they know that if you don't get the miles CRE projects, you won't make what CRE claims you'll make (not that there aren't lots of other problems with CRE's projected income for lease operators).

CRE charges--what?--14 cents per mile. But they don't tell newbies that CRE pays HHG, so a lot of the miles that you pay CRE 14 cents for aren't miles that CRE pays you for. That's another hole in projected income. But newbies don't know about that.

I started driving in 1991. In all my time out here I have never--not once--heard anything good about CRE. I'm not wagging a finger at CRE, I never drove for CRE, I don't care one way or the other about CRE. I simply have not heard one good thing about them. Talking to CRE lease operators, reading CRE's ads, crunching CRE's pro-forma numbers, and following CRE's court cases, I can understand why.