Lease-purchase plans are the only way for some owner-operators to buy a truck. Use a wary eye to assess contract terms and do the math to see if it’s really a smart deal.

Jesse Russell’s first lease-purchase contract in 2005 started out well, she says. But halfway through the final year of the three-year agreement her miles began dropping. Fearful of being able to make her truck payment and pay other bills, she found outside financing to pay off the balance and signed on with another carrier.

“Their lease was set up better and they weren’t in charge of my miles,” she says.

After two years in U.S. Xpress’ lease-purchase program, Roderick Jones opted out of the contract. “Over the last three years, I made pretty good money and saved some,” he says. The program gave him confidence to go out on his own, Jones says, and he plans to buy a truck, finance it through a bank in his hometown of Richmond, Va., and either lease to the carrier or get his own authority.

 A few months into a lease-purchase plan in 2009, George Mills was told his carrier had been bought out and he no longer had a company to drive for. Operating under the same lease-purchase contract, he was referred to another carrier.

“My friend and I thought it was going to be a good deal, but it didn’t turn out,” he says. “The pay was terrible and I was not getting the miles or getting home.” On his third carrier with the same contract, he’s says he’s making good money, receiving a fuel surcharge and getting at least 2,700 miles weekly.

Russell and Mills are owner-operators who learned first-hand some of the pitfalls of acquiring a truck through lease-purchase. While such plans are popular paths to truck ownership, some carrier contracts make it difficult to generate enough revenue to meet payments. Appealing to nascent operators who have few financial resources or bad credit, the contracts often require high weekly payments, maintenance accounts or end-of-lease balloon payments.

Carrier lease-purchase programs generate the most controversy for practices that favor the company at the expense of the independent contractor. Common complaints include mileage manipulation in the latter stage of the contract and unadvertised fees and charges.