06/06/2024
This article is different for me, but lease-purchase abuse is in important issue FMCSA’s Truck Leasing Task Force currently is investigating. And though the bulk segment is largely “insulated” from “bad-actor” carriers, their conduct can have damaging repercussions for tank truckers. This report includes insights from NTTC’s newly elected chairman of the board and workforce committee chair—and an FMCSA official on ELD manipulation. Please check it out!
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Larry Atkinson, a truck driver from Charleston, South Carolina, thought he was living the dream when he climbed into his new Kenworth T680 as a lease operator with Super Ego after previously driving company-owned trucks. “It was cool,” he recalled. “I felt like I was my own boss, I could turn down loads, and I wouldn’t have to go up north in the winter if I didn’t want to. It was a good feeling.”
But Atkinson says he soon realized he wasn’t in control, and his dream dissolved when he discovered the carrier was altering rate confirmation sheets from third-party brokers to appear lower than the contracted prices, then paying him off the fraudulently reduced amounts. Atkinson confronted a dispatcher who denied his claim, leaving him angry, frustrated—and feeling he had no recourse to right this wrong.
“It rubbed me the wrong way,” he said. “Basically, I felt helpless, like I didn’t have any angles. I’m just a guy who wants to take care of his family, and someone is taking from me—taking from my kids, taking from my family, and taking from my household—and there was nothing I could do about it.
“I could scream and shout—but it was going to happen regardless.”
Transportation attorney says abusive lease-purchase deals are chasing potential tank truckers out of the industry, supressing rates, driving up premiums—and damaging safety efforts...
