Guide

Lease-purchase trucking: run the program, then track every lease

A lease-purchase program turns trucks into income and drivers into owners. It also creates a second set of books inside your settlements: weekly fees, escrow, chargebacks, and trucks that are company trucks one week and leased the next. Here is how it works, what the rules require, and how to see whether each lease is actually making you money.

By Djuro Kolundzija, founder of Nerivo. Started his own trucking company in 2012 and grew it past 100 trucks.

How a lease-purchase program works

In a lease-purchase (also called lease-to-own) program, the carrier, or a leasing company tied to it, leases a truck to a driver for a set term. The driver runs loads under the carrier’s authority as an independent contractor, often called a lease operator. Each week his settlement pays him his share of the loads and takes back the lease payment, fuel, insurance and other costs. At the end of the term, after a final balloon or buyout payment, the truck is his.

There are usually two agreements: the truck lease agreement (the equipment, the payment, the buyout) and the independent contractor operating agreement under which the driver leases the truck, with his services, back to the carrier. The second one is where the federal Truth-in-Leasing rules apply.

What the truck lease agreement has to say

The truck: unit number, VIN, year and condition at the start.
Term: in weeks or months, with the start date. The end date follows from it.
Payment: the weekly or monthly fee, and any per-mile fee on top for each mile the truck runs.
Maintenance: who pays routine maintenance, tires and repairs, and any exceptions (major engine or transmission failures are often split).
Escrow and deposit: how much escrow is built up, how much is taken each week, and any deposit at signing.
Buyout: the balloon or final payment and when the title transfers.
Insurance: physical damage, bobtail, occupational accident: who carries it and what is deducted.
Ending early: what happens if the driver returns the truck or walks away, and what the escrow covers.
Chargebacks: every cost that may be deducted from settlements, and how each amount is calculated.

The federal rules: chargebacks and escrow

When the driver leases the truck back to you to haul under your authority, the lease must meet the Truth-in-Leasing requirements in 49 CFR 376.12. Two parts matter most for a lease-purchase program:

Chargebacks (376.12(h)): the lease must list every item you may pay first and then deduct from the driver’s pay, and how each is calculated. The driver is entitled to the documents needed to check each charge.
Escrow (376.12(k)): the lease must state the escrow amount, what it may be used for, and how you account for it (on each settlement or in a monthly accounting). The driver can demand an accounting at any time, you pay interest on the balance at least quarterly, and the escrow must be returned no later than 45 days after the lease ends, less what the lease allows you to deduct, with a final accounting.
Copies (376.12(l)): both parties sign; each keeps a copy, and one rides on the equipment.

This is a summary, not legal advice. Read the regulation and have your agreements reviewed.

Is the lease making money? The math per truck

A leased truck makes you money in two places, and they have to be counted apart. On the loads, you keep your share of what each load pays. On the truck, the lease fee and the chargebacks have to cover what the truck still costs you: its payment, insurance and plates, the fuel you put on your card, and any repairs the lease leaves to you. Collecting every weekly fee does not mean the truck side pays.

An example: one leased truck for one year, an $800 weekly fee against a $2,950 monthly truck payment, the lessee paid 75% of each load. The truck sat parked 12 weeks of the year and ran 40 (100,000 miles).

One leased truck, one year	You
On the loads
Load revenue, 100,000 miles at $2.60	$260,000
− The lessee’s 75% on his settlements	−$195,000
You keep on the loads	$65,000
On the truck
+ Lease fee, 40 of 52 weeks × $800. The 12 weeks the truck sat parked had no settlement, so there was no fee to deduct.	$32,000
− Truck payment, 12 × $2,950. Due every month, parked or not.	−$35,400
− Insurance, 12 × $300. On your policy and never charged back to him.	−$3,600
− Plates and registration, $200 a month. In your name, paid up front, never deducted.	−$2,400
− Fuel: $80,000 on your card, $74,400 deducted. The other $5,600 never came off a settlement: weeks his settlement was too small to take it all, and fuel nobody matched to his truck.	−$5,600
− Repairs: shop bills you paid on his truck (tires, a turbo, a few road calls) and never deducted from his settlements.	−$6,000
You lose on the truck	−$21,000
Profit on the lease	$44,000

The loads make money, as they should. The truck is where it leaks. On paper the fee covers it: 52 weeks at $800 is $41,600 against $41,400 of payment, insurance and plates, $200 a year to spare. Then the truck sat 12 weeks, and that is $9,600 of fees that never came in while the payment kept coming. On top of that, $11,600 of fuel and shop bills were paid by you for his truck and never deducted. The lease still shows $0.44 a mile of profit, so nothing looks wrong, and you are paying $21,000 a year toward the lessee’s truck.

That is why the truck side has to be watched every week, not at year end: fees due against fees collected, every fuel charge and shop bill on his truck against what came off his settlement. A charge caught on Monday can still be deducted on the next settlement; found in December, it usually can’t. Try your own numbers in the truck lease calculator.

Without splitting each lease into its loads and its truck, every lease looks the same: fees collected, profit positive, nothing flagged.

What to track every week

Fees due vs collected: weekly fee × weeks on lease, plus per-mile fee × miles run, against the lease-fee lines on the settlements.
Escrow: balance against the target, weekly deduction taken, and what is owed back when a lease ends (and by when: 45 days).
Chargebacks vs what you paid: fuel on the card against fuel deducted, insurance and ELD against what they cost you.
Profit per lease and per mile, on lease days only, against your company trucks and your other leases.
Lease days vs company days on the same truck: a truck leased out mid-month is two different trucks that month.
How leases end: finished, bought out, returned early, walked away, and what each cost.

Where lease programs leak money

A fee with no lease on file. In the sample fleet, one driver paid $18,225 of lease fees on 27 settlements over six months with no lease entered. His truck counted as a company truck, so its cost per mile looked 51% over the fleet and the lease never showed up in any lease report.
Fuel advanced, not fully charged back. Card fuel on a leased truck that the settlement deducted short of what was paid.
Leased days counted as company days. Your cost per mile then includes a truck whose fuel and costs come back on settlements, and looks worse than it is.
Fixed costs the lessee pays himself (plates, permits, ELD) still counted as yours on lease days, or the opposite: your truck payment left out.
Escrow not returned on time after a return or walk-away, which is a compliance problem, not just a cash one.

Spreadsheet or system

With a handful of leases, a spreadsheet per lease works: fee, weeks, escrow, buyout. It stops working when the numbers live in four places: the lease terms in a file, the fees and chargebacks in settlements, the fuel on the card, the miles in the ELD. Somebody has to put them together for every truck, every week, and split each truck’s month into its company days and its lease days.

Nerivo does that from the systems you already run. It reads settlements, fuel cards, tolls, the ELD and your TMS; you enter each lease once (or drop the signed lease agreement and Nerivo fills in the terms); and every truck’s days are split into company, leased-out and owner-operator. You get fees due vs collected, escrow, chargebacks against what they cost, and profit per lease, plus a warning when a driver pays a lease fee with no lease on file. See also fleet analytics: Power BI, your TMS, or connected.

Frequently asked questions

How does lease-purchase work in trucking?

The carrier, or a leasing company tied to it, leases a truck to a driver for a set term, usually two to four years, for a weekly or monthly payment and often a per-mile fee. The driver hauls under the carrier's authority as an independent contractor, and the payment, fuel, insurance and other costs are deducted from his weekly settlement. At the end of the term, after a final balloon or buyout payment, the driver owns the truck.

What should a truck lease agreement include?

The truck and VIN, the term, the weekly or monthly payment and any per-mile fee, who pays maintenance and repairs, the escrow amount and how it is built up, any deposit, the buyout or balloon at the end, insurance, what happens if the driver returns the truck or walks away, and every cost that may be charged back from settlements with how it is calculated.

What are the Truth-in-Leasing rules on escrow?

Under 49 CFR 376.12(k), a lease that requires escrow must state the amount, what it may be applied to, how escrow transactions are accounted for, that the driver can demand an accounting at any time, that the carrier pays interest at least quarterly, and the conditions for returning it. The escrow must be returned no later than 45 days after the lease ends.

What is a walk-away lease in trucking?

A lease the driver can end by returning the truck, without owing the remaining payments. Terms vary: some keep the escrow or deposit to cover damage and unpaid charges, some charge a return fee. Whatever the terms, the agreement should say them, and the carrier has to return the escrow balance, less allowed deductions, within 45 days.

How much are lease-purchase truck payments?

It depends on the truck, the term and the program. Weekly fees of $650 to $900 are common, sometimes with a per-mile fee of 8 to 12 cents on top, while the carrier's own payment on a newer tractor can be $3,000 a month or more. That usually leaves the fee just covering the payment: the truck side breaks even only if every week is collected and the fuel and insurance come back in full.

How do I know if a lease is making money for the carrier?

Split it in two for the days the truck is leased. On the loads: load revenue minus the lessee's share on his settlements is what you keep. On the truck: the lease fee and everything charged back, minus the truck's payment, insurance and plates, the fuel on your card and the repairs the lease leaves to you. The loads usually make money; the truck side is where a low fee or short chargebacks lose it, even when every weekly fee was collected.

Is lease-purchase a scam?

Not by itself; it depends on the terms and on how they are kept. Problems come from payments that are high for the truck, maintenance left entirely to the driver on an old truck, chargebacks that are not itemized, and escrow that is not accounted for or returned. The federal leasing rules exist to make those terms written and checkable.

Nerivo IQ

See which leases make you money, and which only look like they do.

Nerivo splits every truck into its company, leased-out and owner-operator days, then shows fees due vs collected, escrow, chargebacks against what you paid, and profit per lease. For fleets of 50+ trucks running lease or owner-operator programs.

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