Before you sign with anyone
How to vet a carrier. Including this one.
Leasing on is a business marriage, and the diligence takes about an hour. Here's the checklist we'd hand a friend — written to be used on any carrier in the country, and pointed at us at the bottom.
Recruiting pages are designed to make you feel good about a decision. This one is designed to make you check. Most of what separates a good lease-on year from a bad one is knowable before you sign — it’s public record, federal regulation, and a handful of questions with answers that either exist on paper or don’t.
Run it on us. If we can’t survive our own checklist, we’ve earned whatever you decide.
Verify the authority — two minutes, before anything else
Every for-hire interstate carrier runs on an operating authority, and the government publishes its status for free. Look the carrier up on the FMCSA's SAFER system by MC or DOT number: is the authority active, is it theirs, how long has it existed, and is insurance on file? A carrier that won't hand you its MC number has answered the question.
- Authority status reads ACTIVE — not pending, not revoked
- The company name on the record matches the one on the lease
- Insurance is on file (BIPD/cargo), not expired
- The entity isn't brand-new with a recruiter promising a decade of experience
Read the safety record you'll be running under
Lease on and their safety rating becomes the roof over your head — it follows the loads you're allowed to haul and the brokers who'll tender them. The FMCSA's Safety Measurement System publishes inspection and crash history. You're not looking for perfection; you're looking for a pattern, and for whether the number of trucks matches the story you were told.
- Inspection and crash history you can live with
- Out-of-service rates that don't stand out from the pack
- Fleet size on the record roughly matches what you were told
- No pattern of the same violation, over and over
Read the lease against the regulation — clause by clause
Federal Truth-in-Leasing rules (49 CFR Part 376) tell you exactly what a compliant lease must contain. Print the regulation, sit down with the lease you're offered, and check it off. This is the single highest-value hour in the whole process, and a carrier that welcomes it just told you something good about itself.
- The lease is written and signed, and you keep a copy
- Compensation is an amount, a percentage, or a formula you can compute
- Every chargeback is itemized — named, with the amount or how it's figured
- Paid a percentage? You're entitled to see the rated freight bill
- Settlement within 15 days of turning in the paperwork the lease names
- Escrow: what it's for, an accounting on demand, interest, and the balance back within 45 days
- It says in writing that you're NOT required to buy products or services from them
Ask the questions that need answers on paper
Recruiters are paid to be encouraging. That's not a character flaw — it's a job description. So ask the questions whose answers cost money, and ask for them in writing. Anything that matters enough to say is worth writing down; anything that isn't in the lease does not exist when there's a dispute.
- What exactly comes out of a settlement, and what's each line called?
- How is the fuel card priced — cash, cost-plus, or retail — and what are the card fees?
- What happens if I turn down a load? Say it in one sentence, in writing.
- What are the escrow amount, purpose, and return terms?
- Show me a real settlement format — even a blank one
- How do I leave, what does it cost, and when does my escrow come back?
- Can I talk to a driver who already runs here?
Walk-away signals
Six things that should end the conversation.
None of these are about a carrier being small, new, or strict. They’re about a carrier being unwilling to put its own terms where you can read them.
“We'll sort that out at orientation.”
Terms that arrive after you've driven across the country are terms you can't negotiate. Part 376 requires them in the lease, up front.
Pressure to sign today
A lease is a business agreement, not a doorbuster. Urgency is a sales tool; a carrier that's confident in its numbers lets you read slowly.
Fees with no name
“Administrative,” “miscellaneous,” “chargeback.” A legitimate deduction has a name, a basis, and a paper trail. A vague one is a blank check.
You can't have a copy of the lease
The regulation says you keep one. If that's a problem before you sign, imagine it as a problem after.
Guaranteed earnings
Markets pay what markets pay. Anyone quoting you a guaranteed weekly number is selling something that isn't freight.
Defensive about Part 376
The regulation is the floor, not an insult. Watch what happens to the room when you put it on the table — that reaction is your real answer.
Now point it at us
Our answers, in the same order.
A checklist you can’t run on the carrier that handed it to you would be marketing. Here’s where each answer lives.
The authority
MC #1800150 — look it up on SAFER before you call us. That's the whole point of publishing it.
The safety record & insurance
Public on the FMCSA's system; certificates of insurance come from the desk on request. The Trust Center collects the links in one place.
The lease & the settlement
Our settlement format is published as a blank specimen — read it line by line before you're ever a customer. The lease itself comes to you in writing, built to Part 376, before you sign anything.
The questions with paper answers
Program specifics — deductions, escrow, fuel card pricing, load policy — are stated in your lease, and the desk will put any of them in writing before you commit. Ask. Hold us to paper, not to a paragraph on a website.
Checked us out? Then let’s talk.
The application commits you to nothing, and a person reads every one. Still deciding? The assessment gives you an honest answer in three minutes.
Or call the desk, 24/7 — +1 (571) 619-8115