This man has done his best to cheat and lie his way through life. He not only has been absolutely ruthless in his dealings with employees, he has been cheating the state of California, the US Government and the county of Placer out of every nickel that he can.
I bought an overpriced piece of junk truck from Larry Newman with a lot of promises of how his business was a big happy "family" and that if we all worked together we would all prosper. That all proved to be nothing but a scam so that Larry would have enough money to pay for his antique cars, airplanes, Harleys, and nice new cars as well as his drunken lifestyle.
Larry painted a nice picture about how much money I would make as a sub hauler and that he would make sure that I would get a fair shake on fuel, tires, parts and labor in his shop. He told me that he would maintain the equipment that I rented from him and that it would always be ready to work and be safe to operate. He told me that I would be paying a 25% rental fee for transfer work and a 20% rental fee for ten-wheel work plus a 5% broker fee for both. These fees were supposedly based on what he was being payed by the contractor that asked for the trucks. We had a contract that stated these terms. This contract also stated that the sub-haulers had the right to refuse any assignment that we wanted to refuse.in actuality, none of these things were ever honored by Larry Newman.
Larry sold fuel to us and took the cost of fuel out of our checks with a very nice profit, usually between 10 and 25 cents per gallon, depending on how much money he needed in his own pocket at the end of the month. He also marked up the price of tires, parts and labor. A nice example of the parts markup is that he charged me $300.00 apiece for used aluminum wheels that he bought for $120.00 apiece.
When his mechanic, that I paid Larry $45.00 per hour to help me, made a mistake and did sloppy work, caused severe damage to my truck, Larry told me to fix it myself and refused to help me in any way with the problem.
If anybody refused to truck for a cheap rate, Larry wouldn't dispatch them for anything until they were desperate enough to work way too cheap. I was once told to haul gravel for someone that Larry had a contract with. The job only paid $66.00 per hour and the going rate at that time was $85.00 per hour. Fuel was at about $3.25 per gallon, insurance was about $1.00 per hour and state licenses were about $1.00 per hour also. I was using about 6 gallons of fuel per hour making my out of pocket expenses about $21.50 per hour.
Larry was charging me a 25%trailer rental, which comes to $17.50 per hour and a 5% broker fee which translates into $3.30 per hour. If you can add, the expenses add up to $42.30 per hour on a job that pays a total of $66.00 per hour. I really don't want to work a 18 wheeler for $17.70 per hour in my pocket before taxes and maintenance on my truck. I explained this to Larry and he got very mad because I wouldn't do something unreasonable for his personal gain and was punished for it as a result.
As you can see from my breakdown, Larry was going to make $20.80 per hour and I would be doing all of the work while he was getting drunk at one of the local bars on my money.
When we worked for Sacramento county, Larry would bill Sacramento County $101.36 per hour, pay us $82.00 per hour and deduct 25% trailer fee, and 5% broker fee. Any fool can see that he was making $45.00 per hour off of every truck that he sent to Sacramento County. That was usually 6 trucks that averaged 8 hours per day each. That is 48 hours per day at $45.00 per hour that went into Larrys pocket without him ever lifting a finger, paying an expense or trying to be fair or honest in any way.
When tax time came, Larry would always pad my 1099 form and claim that he paid me more than he actually did. I would always have to call and ask for a new 1099 that was accurate and that would always make him mad because he didn't get away with another scam. He has all of his personal vehicles registered in Oregon so he won't have to pay the California registration fees. He gets away with this because he uses dealer paper plates instead of Oregon plates.
He has done major remodeling on his personal residence without building permits so he won't have to pay any of the fees that the rest of us pay. Nothing that Larry does is up front and flat footed. Everything has a scam attached and if you do business with him, I can promise that you will always come out on the short end of the stick.
0 comments