jormagund

I made a poor first impression on my neighbor by chuckling when he complained about having to leave his Hummer out in the rain and snow once I started occupying the garage.

Yep my trainer is an O/O and he's a trainer because that's what he needs to do to make enough money to meet his needs. He's been all over the management structures of trucking companies and according to him a solo driver cannot have more than maybe a $1200 monthly payment on his own truck for the O/O rout to be viable for him. With me though because I just own my trailer with a small lot fee, bills and car payments my monthly expenses are much lower than those of someone who has a mortgage wife kids and minivan to support. I could therefore afford a truck without killing myself with how much I would have to work it.

He says actually that he was running the truck every day waiting for a load, but when He was about to start heading down it would turn over but not start. It would run on the ether but he thinks ice may have gotten into the fuel lines of the fuel pump might be broken.

also owner ops don't get health insurance which blows chunks bigtime.

It seems to me that you could save your money as a company driver and in four years you could purchase the exact same 4 year 500k truck that you would have on your hands if you had been a lease operator, without incurring the financial risk. I did have one insight though that might almost be a good reason to buy a particular kind of truck from swift. At least at one point, the two trucks offered by swift were the KW T2000 and W900L. I noticed that a 4 year old 500k T2000 sells on average for 45k where the the W900L us usually about 60k. You'll burn more fuel in the less aerodynamic W900 but not 15k more I don't think. So at the end of your lease you would have the opp to buy a 60k truck for the 40k end of lease buyout price. Which is not bad. But I have a feeling they're not offering the W900L anymore. I've seen postings in bulletin boards that now they have the T2000 and the Freighliner Columbia. I also heard that the company bought a bunch of th FL Classic XL which is a fine truck but I'ts still going to depreciate down to 45k or so in the four years of lease. The columbia might be a cheaper truck to buy than the t2000 but I don't know about that.

So it seems to me that if you want to buy a new truck going for a W900L or a pete 379 can be a good idea if you can get favorable financing, as these trucks hold their value. I'm disposed to think it's mostly becauise of the bling, the harley mentality where it's just that some people Must Have a certain style of machine.

On the other hand my first choice of a truck to buy used would be a FL classic XL as it has the chrome and squarenose conventional look, but it has that huge FL dome of space overhead and it's much cheaper to buy used than an equivalent KW or pete. Only thing about it is that a lot of companies don't want their drivers arriving with tractors more than 7 years old, as for example with swift, wich is typical. I've wondered if you had older tractor that you'd dropped a new engine into, whether they would consider it new enough. Beastus maximus suggested that it would be about 14k to rebuild an existing engine. I know a new engine, at least of pre2007 emissions vintage, is ususally about 15k, but I shall have to find out how much it would be to insert said engine into an older truck. But to own my own truck in this manner would be ideal from a certain stanpoint, as I wouldn't fear to lose it if business got slow or I got sick or hurt or something, it would still be there when I was able to work again. It would have more mechanical electrical things needing attention than a new lease truck, but hen there's no free lunch.

Usually with things like this I think and think and think until I come up with a plan but end up doing something rather different from the plan