Sooner or later every CDL-A driver is offered the next step. Lease a truck. Buy a truck. Stay where you are and take the miles. The pitch usually arrives as though there is an obvious right answer, and there is not — there is only the one that fits your situation this year.
The three arrangements are not better and worse versions of the same job. They are different jobs with different risks, and the money is only part of what separates them.
About this article. It is about how these three arrangements work in the industry generally, not a description of any one carrier's terms. Ours are linked at the bottom.
Driving: the simplest version of the deal
You drive, you get paid by the mile, and the truck is somebody else's problem.
That last part is doing more work than it gets credit for. A blown turbo is a phone call, not a $4,000 decision made at a truck stop on a Sunday. Insurance, plates, permits, the IFTA filing, the annual inspection — none of it reaches you.
What you give up is the ceiling. Your rate moves with experience and performance, but it moves in cents, and there is a point past which it does not go.
It fits you if you want a predictable Friday, you do not want to carry a business on top of a driving job, or you are new enough to a carrier that you have not yet seen how they operate when something goes wrong.
That last reason is underrated. Anyone can look good for six weeks.
Owner-operator: you are running a business now
You own the truck. You carry the costs, and you keep a percentage of what the load pays instead of cents per mile.
The percentage looks enormous next to a mileage rate, and then the costs arrive. Insurance, plates, permits, fuel, tyres, maintenance, the engine fund you should be building whether you feel like it or not. A good month as an owner-operator beats a good month driving by a wide margin. A bad month can go negative, which is something a driver on mileage pay never has to think about.
What you gain is that the upside is yours, you choose your own maintenance, and the equity in the truck belongs to you.
What you give up is the floor. There is no such thing as a quiet week when a truck payment is due.
It fits you if you have a cash reserve that can absorb a major repair without drama, you are comfortable reading your own numbers, and you have been on the freight long enough to know what it actually produces.
Ask any owner-operator what their fixed costs are per week. The ones doing well answer immediately.
Lease purchase: the road between the two
You run the truck as if you own it and pay it down out of your settlements. At the end it is yours.
Lease purchase has a bad name in this industry, and a lot of that reputation is earned. The arrangements that burn people share a pattern: a payment you can only make on an exceptional week, a balloon payment waiting at the end, and freight that was never going to produce the miles the arithmetic needed. The driver carries all the risk of ownership before owning anything.
The arrangements that work look different. The payment survives an average week, not just a good one. Everything is in writing before you sign. And you can see the freight before you commit, because you have already been running it.
What to establish before you sign anything:
- The weekly payment and the length of the term.
- What happens at the end — what you owe, and what you own.
- Whether there is a balloon payment. If the answer is vague, treat it as a yes.
- What it costs to walk away if it stops working.
- Whether you can go back to driving on the same freight if ownership is not for you.
A carrier that answers all five on the first call is telling you something. So is one that does not.
It fits you if you want to own equipment but not to put down what a truck costs outright, and if you already know how the freight runs.
The question underneath all three
Every one of these arrangements rests on the same foundation: how many miles a week actually arrive, and how consistently.
A great percentage on thin freight loses to an ordinary mileage rate on a full week. A truck payment is comfortable at 3,500 miles and frightening at 2,200. The arrangement you choose changes how the money is divided, but it cannot create miles that are not there.
So before you compare three offers, ask each one the same question: what does a typical week look like for someone in this position — not the best week, the typical one. Then ask to see it on paper.
How much does an OTR driver actually make in a week goes through that arithmetic, and how to read a trucking settlement shows you how to check the paper when you get it.
Where we stand
All three run on the same freight here, which is the point — the question is only which arrangement suits you, not which freight you get.
- Driving pays up to $0.80 per mile with 3,500+ preplanned miles a week, paid weekly, and nothing held back: no escrow, no security deposit, no truck deposit.
- Owner-operators keep 88% of gross, with every cost published on the page rather than saved for a phone call.
- Lease to purchase starts with three months of driving first, so you see how we work before anyone signs anything. No balloon payment at the end, and the door back to driving stays open.
And you do not have to take the mileage claim on trust: we publish real weekly settlements — actual documents, only names covered.
Driving for a carrier that holds nothing back
Up to $0.80 per mile, 3,500+ miles a week, paid every week. For drivers: no escrow, no deposit, and no chargebacks for normal wear and tear.