Western Flyer Express Lied to Truck Drivers About ‘Lease-Purchase’ Program Specifics, Class Action Alleges

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Western Flyer Express faces a proposed class action that alleges the trucking company has made a host of uniform factual misrepresentations and failed to disclose certain material economic facts about its “lease-purchase” program offered to drivers.

The 24-page complaint alleges the misrepresentations and non-disclosures on the part of Western Flyer Express have served to defraud drivers into paying for the bulk of expenses related to transporting goods for the defendant’s customers, including truck rental payments, gas and maintenance costs, computers, variable mileage payments and other expenditures related to the lease-purchase program. 

After paying these costs, Western Flyer Express drivers were often left with “little or no compensation,” and sometimes ended up owing the company money despite working long hours, the lawsuit, filed by an Ohio truck driver and the corporation he owns, claims.

In order to induce drivers into buying into the lease-purchase program, referred to in the suit as the “driving opportunity,” Western Flyer directed and implemented a “multi-pronged fraudulent scheme” whereby the company rolled out a false and misleading advertising campaign, relied on in-house and third-party recruiters and generally distorted and “cherry-picked” the truth about driving for the company, the lawsuit alleges. 

According to the case, phase one of the defendant’s scheme was to get drivers to come to Western Flyer’s Oklahoma facility for “orientation” classroom proceedings, which amounted to phase two of the plan. Once in Oklahoma, every driver was subjected in person to “further uniform false and misleading representations and omissions” before ultimately buying Western Flyer’s driving opportunity, the case claims. 

More specifically, phase one involved, according to the complaint, “literally hundreds if not thousands of essentially identical advertisements” placed strategically on online job boards, social media platforms and the defendant’s website. These ads propped up many of Western Flyer’s false claims, which included misrepresentations of the number of hours drivers would work, average number of miles driven per week, average haul length, average weekly pay and specifics of the defendant’s purportedly affordable truck leasing program, among other falsehoods, the lawsuit alleges. 

Coinciding with its online postings, Western Flyer also brought on in-house and third-party recruiters as agents tasked with securing drivers’ commitment to the defendant’s driving opportunity, the suit claims. According to the complaint, Western Flyer provided recruiters and third-parties with scripted, uniformly false and misleading information with the intent of sharing such to driver candidates as a way to induce them into going to orientation and ultimately buying into the lease-purchase program. Further, the defendant sent to proposed class members emails containing fraudulently positive settlement statements meant to represent what drivers could expect with regard to loaded weekly miles with net weekly incomes and the possibility of buying out of their lease with Western Flyer, the suit claims. 

The truth, the lawsuit says, is that what was advertised by Western Flyer is a far cry from drivers’ actual experiences. From the lawsuit:

“The touted average mileage, income, and length of haul figures in the ads and pitches were simply false and misleading factual representations and Western Flyer knew so at the time it or its agents made them. The settlement statements were cherry-picked and unrepresentative of what Drivers could expect on a sustained basis. Indeed, Drivers that had purchased the Driving Opportunity achieved nothing close to these representations on a sustained basis. Finally, the $1.00 lease buy-out claims were misleading because few, if any, persons lasted long enough with Western Flyer to secure the buy-out.” 

Per the suit, the orientation session the plaintiff attended between November 11 and 13, 2019 had a group of about 24 drivers in attendance. According to the lawsuit, Western Flyer, in “another fraudulent and misleading ‘dog and pony show’ tactic,” had senior leadership come into the orientation and tout the supposed advantages of the lease-purchase program, providing a $1 bill to each driver in attendance and saying they “looked forward to getting that dollar back and turning over the title of the truck to the drivers.”

Ultimately, Western Flyer knew but concealed from proposed class members that most drivers who bought into the lease-purchase arrangement failed within months because they could not make enough money in order to perpetuate the fraudulent scheme, the lawsuit alleges:

“Indeed, Western Flyer knew but concealed that Driver turnover was over 100% annually and that no significant portion of those that had purchased the Driver Opportunity had made a ‘career’ of driving for Western Flyer making the representations noted above and elsewhere, false and misleading. Similarly, the $1.00 lease buy-out claims were misleading because few, if any, persons achieved the buy-out and Western Flyer knew but concealed this fact from all Drivers.” 

The suit looks to represent a class comprised of all current and former drivers who entered into an “independent contractor agreement” or similarly styled arrangement with Western Flyer and a “vehicle lease agreement” or similarly styled arrangement with Timms Leasing (and/or its predecessor or successor, if any) to provide transportation services for Western Flyer in the U.S. at any time within the last three years and continuing through the resolution of this litigation. 

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