In The News

Some ex-Arrow Trucking drivers with lease-purchases to get trucks back

Some drivers who had lease-purchase agreements with Arrow Trucking are reporting the first bit of good news in their lives since the Tulsa-based motor carrier shuttered on Dec. 22, 2009.

Nearly 1,000 drivers were told to turn in their trucks to the nearest Freightliner or International dealership. Drivers who had lease-purchase agreements were left in a lurch when Arrow Trucking gave them no instructions about what they were to do with their trucks, which they had a vested interest in keeping.

Frantic drivers said they immediately contacted the finance companies about what they were supposed to do with their trucks, but were told there was no record of them having lease-purchase agreements with Arrow Trucking.

Bill Pelham of Phenix City, AL, told Land Line recently that his “heart sank” when he heard that news. That’s because he showed that he owed less than $1,000 on his truck before it was to be his at the time of the company’s collapse.

However, Pelham said he and seven other drivers who had lease-purchase agreements with Arrow Trucking received some news from the finance company, Daimler Chrysler Financial Services, early this week that their luck may finally be changing.

In early January, Pelham and several others turned in their trucks for the 10-day waiting period while DCFS refinanced their trucks and they received the “repossession titles” when Arrow Trucking filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The bankruptcy slowed down their hopes of getting back on the road with their trucks.

On Feb. 12, the bankruptcy court lifted the “automatic stay” on certain trucks and trailers and determined that Arrow Trucking’s “interest in the fleet is hereby abandoned.”

“With the ruling of the judge, we are now in a position to refinance,” James Ryan, spokesman for Daimler Chrysler, told Land Line on Thursday, Feb. 18. “Contracts were sent for signing this week.”

In fact, Pelham was scheduled to pick up his truck on Friday.

Freddy Newhouse of Dallas, TX, was on his way to the Freightliner dealership in Dallas on Thursday. He said he had already paid nearly $70,000 for his 2005 Freightliner when Arrow Trucking abruptly shut down. He had a three-year payment plan set up with the company and was supposed to have his truck paid off in June.

While Newhouse isn’t thrilled that he has had to refinance his truck for another $30,000, he said he will be glad to have his truck back in his possession.

“I want to put this experience behind me,” Newhouse told Land Line on Thursday. “You wake up one day and you have no job, no truck, no nothing. It’s a bad feeling, let me tell you.”

Vincent McDonald of Jackson, MS, received a call from Daimler that his truck was waiting to be picked up at the dealership where he left it in early January in his hometown.

McDonald told Land Line he had just over a year and a half into his three-year lease-purchase agreement with Arrow Trucking at the time of its collapse. To lower his monthly payment, McDonald said at the time he signed the agreement he put down $10,000 of his own money.

“I knew there were some problems and they had changed some management and things were supposed to get better. But it seemed like it got worse; then it was over,” he said.

McDonald said having his truck hung up in all of this mess was a helpless feeling for him and the other drivers who had lease-purchase agreements with Arrow Trucking.

“I can’t see myself ever signing up for a lease-purchase with a company again. I learned my lesson,” he said. “From now on I am going to have my own truck, my own financing so if the company folds, I don’t have to go through this again.”

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