Lease Purchase Plans Strongly Ridiculed By FMSCA
The final report filed by a federal panel with Congress and the Department of Transportation slams the current lease purchase system.
A task force of the FMSCA filed a final report concerning lease purchase plans.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration task force didn’t hold back when they reported their findings to Congress and the Department of Transportation regarding their findings while studying these plans.
FMCSA’s Study And Findings On Lease Purchase Plans
To illustrate their conclusion, the FMCSA had this to say about their findings:
“TLTF’s findings are clear. The current lease-purchase system harms drivers and creates an economic advantage for individual carriers at the expense of the industry’s health and highway safety. Undoubtedly, action is needed and long overdue. All stakeholders, i.e., the government, carriers, drivers, and advocacy groups, have a responsibility to protect drivers from these predatory programs.”
In addition to this, they went on to say that it had “formed a consensus to recommend that such arrangements, whereby a motor carrier controls the work, compensation, and debts of the driver, should be prohibited. Lease-purchase programs are regularly established to enrich motor carriers at the expense of drivers. These programs promote a race-to-the-bottom in driver compensation and treatment, pushing qualified drivers out of the profession. Currently, there are no effective checks on these programs or remedies for drivers harmed by them.”
Furthermore, as to what the task force recommends, it had this to say:
“Congress should ban CMV lease-purchase agreements as irredeemable tools of fraud and driver oppression that threaten a safe national transportation system and diminish the number of truck drivers attracted to and who stay in the trucking industry. Such a prohibition would be the most efficient and effective remedy to stop the damage created by lease-purchase programs.”
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