Mims Meat Company

"We turned to leasing when our business exploded," says Dan Mims, president of Mims Meat Company. "We did it to maintain our customer service. If a truck breaks down in Texarkana, that's a long way from Houston. I needed an organization behind me that could get trucks up and running as soon as possible so we could hit our delivery windows."

The PacLease decision took place over about eight months. We looked at a number of things," Mims says. "Good fuel economy is obviously important. We also wanted reliability. Downtime is expensive. When I have a driver sitting on the side of the road, it costs $60-$75 an hour for that truck. When that happens we're losing profit on those deliveries. It's a customer satisfaction issue. Our customers expect us to hit our delivery windows. If we miss them by more than 30 minutes, that's a problem."

Driver safety, visibility, and comfort were also important considerations. The better the equipment you put your drivers in, the easier it is to recruit."