Leased On Owner Operator Settlement Checklist

When you are leased on, the carrier’s settlement statement is your paycheck, and nobody checks it but you. Most mistakes are small — a percentage taken on the wrong amount, a deduction that grew, a load that slipped to next week — but they repeat every week. This is the checklist an owner-operator can run in fifteen minutes, with the federal leasing rules that back each step.

What “leased on” means

A leased-on owner-operator owns (or leases) the truck and drives it, but hauls under another motor carrier’s operating authority instead of their own. The relationship is set by a written lease between you (the lessor) and the carrier (the lessee), signed by both, and the federal Truth-in-Leasing rules in 49 CFR Part 376 say what that lease must contain (49 CFR 376.11, 376.12). In practice:

• For the term of the lease the carrier has exclusive possession, control and use of the equipment and takes complete responsibility for operating it (376.12(c)(1)), and the truck is marked as the carrier’s under FMCSA’s identification rules (376.11(c)).
• The lease states how you are paid (376.12(d)) — commonly a percentage of the load’s revenue — and who pays for fuel, fuel taxes, empty miles, permits, tolls, plates, detention, loading and unloading (376.12(e)).
• The carrier finds or approves the freight and bills the broker or shipper; you get a settlement statement and are paid from it.

With your own authority, by contrast, you are the motor carrier: your own USDOT and MC numbers, your own insurance filings, your own broker contracts and invoices, and you keep the whole rate. The trade-off is paperwork, insurance cost and finding freight yourself; the new MC authority checklist walks through what that involves. Being leased on is the usual way to run your own truck without that overhead — which is exactly why the settlement deserves a careful read.

Before you start: have the lease and the loads in front of you

You can only check the statement against something. You need the lease (it lists the fee and every deduction the carrier can take) and your own list of loads for the period: load number, pickup and delivery dates, and what the rate confirmation said the broker pays, including any lumper, detention or TONU added later.