Lease on or get your own authority?

Checked October 2026

The short answer: leasing on means running under a carrier's authority, insurance, and customer contracts, for a share of the pay. Your own authority means your numbers, your insurance bill, your customers — and all of the pay. New drivers often lease on for the cheaper start; established drivers often take authority for the freedom. Neither choice is permanent, and neither is stupid. The math below is how to choose.

What leasing on gives you

Work from day one-ish: the carrier has the contracts — final-mile routes, store programs, expedited freight — and puts you on them. Their insurance covers you under dispatch, so your own policy shrinks to a fraction of the full stack. Their office handles billing, collections, and often fuel cards and plates programs. In exchange, the carrier keeps a share of every load — commonly in the range of 10 to 30 percent depending on what they provide — and the work, the schedule, and the customer belong to them.

What your own authority gives you

Every door in this book, direct. You keep the full rate, choose your loads, and build a customer list that is yours. In exchange: the $300 filing and three-to-four-week wait, insurance at $1,000 to $2,085 a month in year one, the BMC-91 filing, the safety record in your own name, and the slow clocks — brokers paying net 30, Amazon Relay wanting 180 days before it talks. Our authority guide lists every step.

The money, side by side

Run one honest comparison on a $780 load. Under your own authority you keep $780 minus your costs and your wait — and you paid the insurance that made it legal. Leased on at a 20 percent share, you are paid $624, faster, with no authority costs behind you — but the $156 difference, load after load, is the rent on the carrier's contracts and cover. At one load a week, authority costs more than it earns. At ten loads a week, the lease share costs more than the authority. Volume is the hinge.

How drivers actually decide

Drivers with no company list and no reserve usually lease on first — it converts an empty calendar into a running truck while the insurance clock is cheap. Drivers with doors already warm — companies that told them "get your authority and come back" — file. Many do both in sequence: lease on in year one, take authority in year two when the insurance penalty shrinks and the customer list is real. What does not work is the middle muddle: authority paid for, insurance burning, and no doors knocked on. Whichever path you take, the knocking is the business. It starts in this book.