WASHINGTON — If you’re a truck driver and have a lease agreement with a trucking company, federal regulators want to see your contract — especially if you feel it’s predatory or fraudulent.
The request is part of a data collection that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is requesting on behalf of its Truck Leasing Task Force (TLTF) in an effort to crack down on deceptive leasing practices that can affect a truck driver’s health and safety.
TLTF, stood up by FMCSA last year as part of a congressional mandate, is tasked with “reviewing the terms, conditions, and equitability” of truck leasing arrangements between owner-operators and trucking companies.
“Consistent with the above statutory authority, TLTF will also examine financing arrangements among motor carriers, entry-level drivers, driver training providers, and other involved entities, which may result in new drivers entering the trucking workforce encumbered by outsized debt and inequitable terms for repayment and will identify potential illegal practices to law enforcement or regulators, as appropriate,” FMCSA stated in a notice scheduled to be published on Friday.
During TLTF’s public meeting in January, the panel discussed a list of questions for drivers who may have entered into predatory lease contracts, as well as questions for drivers who have had positive leasing experiences that could help put fraudulent or inequitable agreements into context.
As a committee, “we have to establish a record of data and evidence about what these relationships look like, so having this information will help us with that,” TLTF member Steve Viscelli, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in truck driver behavior, told FreightWaves.
“The ultimate goal is to make a series of recommendations for best practices and advice to policymakers on the effects of predatory truck leasing practices on safety, and what can be done about it.”
Questions for truck drivers/lessees include:
- Could you provide copies of leasing documents and copies of documents for all other financial products associated with your work as a CMV [commercial motor vehicle] lessee (i.e., training debt, maintenance debt, earned wage access, contact from debt collectors, etc.)?
- What were the actual terms of the lease?
- How was the lease-purchase agreement marketed to you?
- Were you able to negotiate the terms? Were you provided any information about other financing alternatives?
- Were you informed of how the motor carrier works with independent contractors vs. company drivers and lease-purchase drivers when business is slow?
- If you took out maintenance debt, were you required to use the title of your CMV as security?
- Were you able to successfully complete the terms of your lease-purchase agreement? How much did you owe at the completion of your lease?
- If you owe a balance on your lease-purchase agreement, are you being contacted by the motor carrier, third-party debt collectors or finance companies? Have you been threatened with a lawsuit to collect these debts? Do collection efforts cease when a driver files for bankruptcy or obtains bankruptcy discharge?
- What have the effects of your lease-purchase agreement been on your finances, employment experience, professional mobility, workplace health and safety, and family’s well-being?
Questions for trucking companies/lessors include:
- If you are or were a lessor of CMVs, what best practices do, or did you implement or recommend to ensure that all leases of CMVs you provide are fair and just? If your lessees are pleased with the terms you provide, please expound on those terms.
- If you lease CMVs to drivers but do not own the CMV (e.g., the CMV is being financed by your company and then you lease it to a driver), how do you determine how much to charge the driver under the lease agreement and how do you ensure the driver can ultimately own the vehicle if there is a lease-purchase agreement?
- Do you have any specific agreements available to drayage drivers at ports relating to the Clean Truck Program or any similar program to decrease emissions from port operations? Do you have any data that would show the impact of truck leasing agreements on the net compensation of CMV drivers, including port drayage drivers?
FMCSA will share question responses with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is a technical advisor to the TLTF.
The agency also emphasized that because the information will be posted to a public docket, personal information such as Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers and personal addresses should be redacted from leasing documents before submitting them to FMCSA.
Comments submitted in response to the notice will be shared with TLTF prior to its next public meeting, Viscelli said, which the task force is planning to hold at the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Kentucky, in March.
FMCSA updates detention study
FMCSA on Thursday updated the status of its planned detention time study and its effect on driver safety and trucking operations.
Two-thirds of the 171 public comments collected last year on how the study should be conducted described a relationship between detention time and driver compensation, FMCSA noted. That relationship is the focus of a separate study the agency is sponsoring for the Transportation Research Board, and the two “will complement each other and provide vital information on detention time,” according to FMCSA.
Also, even though roughly 40% of the comments FMCSA received on the study’s parameters referenced the effect that detention time can have on driver welfare — such as increasing fatigue and causing stress, frustration and anger — those effects will not be part of the study.
“The impact of detention time on driver welfare, while outside the scope of the current study, is an important topic and may be examined in a follow-up study,” FMCSA stated.
JACK JONES
Here is the scam the companies are running on the owner operators leased on….They are lying about the rates they are charging vs. what they are paying the driver. For example: Owner Operator has a 75 percent of the total billed load. They either do not show the rate contract or they run 2 rate contracts. One for the driver and one for billing. So they might pay the driver 75 dollars on a 100 dollar load, but they bill out 200 and keep 125 dollars. Over simple but just scale it up. This is why rate contracts need to be public information or legally mandated for all the drivers to see. And any violation needs to have huge fines and jail time for anyone caught violating. It is fraud. It is deceptive trade practicing and on the civil side carries 3x damages in any awards. Let a few companies pay out years of stolen money for thousands of drivers and face years in jail and it will end very quickly. FREIGHT WAVES NEEDS TO ADDRESS THIS
Janessa Adkins
Please contact me as the company that I was leader in with fired me and so has yet to provide me a copy of the lease agreement. Pretty sure this is something you would want to look into.
Anonymous
To add to my previous post. I have a leasing agreement and settlement statements that I would be more than happy to share from Power transport & LAS Leasing.
michael hill
look at take off fleet in chicago. they charged me weekly for ifta stickers. they stole $6400. they took all of my pay on christmas. they lease as hp frieght and gns. i was asked to call a number to have my elog cooked to have my full 70 hr back. they run roadstar elogs that is also tied to gts transportation
Samantha Taylor
You can see mine of you like. Also to the moron that replied lease drivers can’t read,,try again because I have two college degrees. I am retired military and choose this life.
Phil skaggs
Yes I agree sand haulers of America is the worst the kept my 7500 maintenance deposit and my last 2 pay checks. These companies take advantage of drivers that want to own their own trucks but can’t get the financing so they jack all the truck rates up charge u for everything they can come up with to charge I and give u scraps for pay. The sad part is u can’t do anything about it cause the write ur check. Then when u do leave there is no way to speak with anyone about any of it
ROBERT DAVIS
I have lease agreements I’ve kept from a couple of companies. I’d be glad to send copies to whomever needs them for data.
Anonymous
You should look into Power Transportation, Memphis,TN connected to LAS leasing program. The leasing program requires you to have your own authority. However, they run O/O like a company driver. O/o have full responsibility of high weekly truck note, fuel & insurance. Power transport is responsible for booking your Loads however, they only make sure you move enough during the week to cover your truck note, reimburse them for fuel advance, that 18% per load 1.5% admin fee, 3% Factoring fee each week. You end up upside down every week bringing no money home. It’s basically a pyramid scheme. Allowing their dispatchers in the office to lease trucks w/ drivers while dispatching loads for O/o should be a conflict of interest. Even if they don’t get you enough loads for the week to cover your weekly expenses they still expect you to pay all of your fees and truck note every week. They have at least 180 trucks leased out so even if they have O/on sitting still every other day Power transport & LAS Leasing are still making money everyday but the O/O are not. They tell you that you can run your own loads but when you finally get the groove of doing so they get petty and tell you that you have to come back over to run their loads, so they block you for making your own money. You’re basically a company driver with your own authority and full responsibility. It’s a scam.