Complaint Review: Bennettt International Group

Where to begin. We went down to Georgia to get a lease truck. The truck is leased via Rush. The truck had multiple issues up front. Bennett requires $1,900 down for a lease truck. Bennett gets 33% of the Gross, straight off the top. They do not have an open board that lists all the freight available. You have to call their agents, all of them, in the area. More often than not, any of the small amount of listed freight, that is on the board, has already been covered, leaving slim pickens even slimmer. You are lucky to see a dozen or so listings in a good area. Most areas only have a few. You call the agent, you find they already covered the load. Now you have to call all the agents in a the area you are in. Their agant list is not alphabetized in any order. You spend at least an hour or so compiling a list to call. I have easily called 15 agents to find they have "nothing". Meanwhile, since you have a leased truck, you have to make weekly payments for the rig, insurance, maintenance and escrow. As a note, the maintenance account you have to put money into, will charge you a fee for using it if you have to. It can cost you $200+ just to get $1000 in maintenace because of the fees. They also have to approve the maintenance. 

The weekly costs with plate costs, escrow, equipment, rig insurance and truck lease costs, etc, will run $940+ per week. They let you use their trailer, but they take 10% of your gross for doing so. The average load runs around $800 or less, with a substantial deadhead. You may land on a good load every now and again, but they take a huge chunk. A $800 B/R gross load pays them $264, which leaves you the balance of $536, which you have to use to pay for their fees. You have a hard time even finding loads and sitting is common. Many of their loads are all in, so fuel is already in and guess what, they take their 33% of the fuel if it is included in the rate. We were told it takes several months to "figure out their system". If we keep making 1/3 of the income we need to survive, we will not be anywhere but in bankruptcy in a few months. We are not willing to lose our house over Bennett. 

They say they assign you a distpatcher, but in the weeks we have been there, he has not found one load. If we were not looking at the boards and calling agents ourselves we would not have found the sad paying loads we have found. We are not keeping up with our bills - our personal ones, but we are making enough to make the payments to Bennett. What is the point if you only make enough to pay for the truck/lease, etc but can't feed your loved ones at home or pay the mortgage? 

You get all the hype, but the reality, after you get rolling, is hard and unforgiving. We will be exploring other options. The only benefit of this arrangement is that it is a walkaway lease. However, you will lose all your maintenance funds and all the money you paid into the truck lease is obviously gone. Not to mention, that if you still owe anything for equipment (you can turn in the stuff you bought, but they will give you a reduced buyback rate/cost) they will be sure to pursue the balance. 

If you own your own truck, we highly recommend going to Mercer. Their boards list all freight from all their agents. All their agents are required to list all available freight on the boards. You will not have to be spending all your time calling agents - "Do you have something?" only to find they don't and you have to keep calling. They assign you a co ordinator that actually finds you freight. They are on the constant look out. You don't have to do much leg work. You can buy a trailer for them for a set rate, not percentage of gross. We are going to be working our way back to Mercer, they treated us really well and we deeply regret leaving them. 

Please think long and hard before signing on with Bennett.