Truck Leasing Task Force makes ban recommendation official
The Truck Leasing Task Force stuck to its guns.
In December 2024, Land Line reported that the task force recommended eliminating predatory lease-purchase agreements in the trucking industry. Early in 2025, the Truck Leasing Task Force made that recommendation official.
“TLTF’s findings are clear,” the task force wrote in its report to Congress, the Department of Transportation and the Department of Labor. “It 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.”
The Truck Leasing Task Force, which held its first meeting in July 2023, was created by Congress as a way to combat the problem of predatory lease-purchase agreements in the trucking industry.
It is important to note that the task force’s report does not concern truck-leasing or -financing businesses that are independent of motor carriers and that operate under traditional underwriting and commercial terms. The task force’s recommendations do not pertain to these third-party lease-purchase programs.
Although the purported goal of these programs is for the driver to own the truck at the end of the contract, the task force estimated that in reality, these agreements end in default at least 90% of the time and that hundreds of thousands of truck drivers have been negatively affected. And despite the programs being referred to as lease-purchase, the drivers accrue no equity in the truck as they make payments.
According to the task force’s research, drivers in these programs receive only 22 cents per mile.
Although the task force’s first choice is for Congress to end the programs, it also made several other recommendations for improvement.
Those recommendations include congressional oversight, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration oversight, mandatory disclosures, training grants and enforcement from the Department of Labor, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and state and local authorities.
Now that the report is complete, the ball is in the courts of Congress and federal agencies. OOIDA said it plans to urge lawmakers and regulators to implement the recommendations. LL