Looking At PAM and USA via Driver Solutions

PAM sucks the hometime is not reliable and they will screw you every chance you get yes I am a disgruntled employee but PAM gives you consistently bad miles and expects you to put your entire life on hold permanently never to return to it ever again. ask no more questions about PAM do not work for this company they are a hot mess and don't even consider working for SWIFT either they are number one in shiftyness. Trucking ain't what it used to be it is now a 9 to 5 deadend job like all the rest.

 

In fairness, it is more like a 3 am to 11 pm dead end job

 

I personally worked for PAM. They SUCK!!!!! They are a starter company that brings in about 40-50 new drivers every week!!!! They are probably the lowest paid in the industry. They will force you to run teams for 6 months. This might not sound bad to you, but trust me, it is. I am 44 years old and was raised in the country on a farm. So I have been driving since I was 7. I consider myself a driver that is very seasoned even though I didnt get my CDL until this year. I was forced to team with a 22 year old man that had only been driving a car for 4 years. He decided to be a trucker because his girlfriend thought it was a cool job. Now consider the fact that you have to sleep while this other person, that you dont know, drives. His driving was absolutely horrible to say the least. We spent over 2 hours one night at a shipper waiting on him to get the truck in the dock.

Yes, he spent time with a trainer with PAM......he passed the upgrade test to be a first seat driver....and he still couldnt back the truck into a dock. I worked with him for 2 months before he could. It is not a fun ordeal to try to sleep and wonder if you will wake up or not. PAM is just like many starter companies. Unfortunately, until we have a year of experience of OTR then we are forced to deal with these companies. Driver Solutions is a joke. They will send you to C1 trucking school in Indiana, North Little Rock, Fort Worth, or Jackson Ohio I believe. These schools teach you barely enough to pass the CDL exam. Until I hit the road with a trainer I had never even slid the tandems. I didnt even know how much each hole adjusted the weight in the trailer or the drives. I was very fortunate....I had a trainer that gave a crap. Many are not that lucky.

PAM runs a skeleton crew on the weekend. We sat every single weekend at a truckstop. We would get a load on Thursday or Friday and it wouldnt deliver until Monday. They wouldnt let us drop it at a yard anywhere. We were forced to sit on it the entire weekend. Layover pay for a team comes out to 27.50/driver. I can assure you that you will spend more at the truckstop killing time than you will make. PAM does not care if you stay or go. They have another 40-50 coming in next week. Its a constant revolving door.

I wish I could offer more advice....but I can only tell you what my personal experience was with PAM.

Good luck and Be Safe.

 

I went through Driver Solutions and C1 Truck School in Fort Wayne. Listen, you aren't going to learn anything but how to get your CDL. And that's fine. It's all you need. You will learn the rest with a trainer, and then learn the rest as you go. I went with USA and it was fine. Like any other profession or job, you put your time in and move on up. DON'T GO WITH PAM! Driving teams makes zero sense unless you are married. Why make just as much as a team as you could driving solo?

 

I've *heard* bad things about the companies you're looking at, but don't have personal experience with them. However, as a former Trainer at Roehl, I would tell you to look at them. They're a good starter company that's not out to screw you over. They have a good in house school that cost around $2800 IIRC. There is no contract so you're not married to them after school if you don't like them. I can tell you that if you do your part and learn to operate your truck in an efficient manner, you'll get the miles. I consistently got over 3000 miles a week as a solo driver before becoming a trainer. If you like to hang around truck stops for 12-15 hours and then drive 9 and repeat, Roehl is not for you. If your attitude is the truck should be rolling unless you are on a 10 hr break or getting loaded or unloaded, then they're a good fit for you.

 

On electric logs you really don't want to drive more than 9 hours a day average or else you need to do resets every week. I don't know about you, but I prefer to drive while I'm on the road and not sit for 34 hours. Averaging 9 hours a day driving is 500 miles a day, equals 3500 miles a week. We know most people aren't driving that much.

So yes, Roehl too is fine with you driving 9 hours a day and repeating. Don't be fooled by bad mathematics. And if somebody tells you that you are going to be driving more than 9 hours a day and therefor averaging more than 3500 miles a week solo- you might want to call the bs and think twice about it. Especially when just starting out.

 

I'm with USA and like driving for them very much. I went thru C1 and if you don't get your cdl and pass their school you owe them money. I know this I owe them a thousand. If money is tight look to your states or county unemployment office, as them about program called WIA, government grant that will pay for everything and then you can choose who you work for.

Don't go PAM though a lot of friends did and left early. They'll ask you who you want but then they say well PAM won't hire you because of this, or USA won't hire you which I know to be bs. When I was at their school PAM wouldn't hire me because im diabetic, asked them to try USA, they said they did and USA said no too for same reason but six months after leaving my first job im with USA

 

I shouldn't have used "9" in my statement. You're correct, 9 is a good number to shoot for. I'm always mindful of the HOS. My goal is to get through the 1st week out from off time without running out of hours, then run on re-cap hours for the remaining time I'm out (usually 4-5 weeks). 3000 miles a week is very doable without running out of hours. Thus that was my goal. It made for a decent, and consistent, paycheck. My avg net at Roehl as a solo (before I started training) was around $850.00. That wasn't bad, IMO, for someone with less than 2 years experience.

What I was saying to the OP is that if he likes to hang around truck stops in lieu of driving, Roehl would be a bad choice. They are aggressive on their loads. They give plenty of time, but not if you're a truck stop/driver lounge junkie. Again, the number I threw out was a bad choice. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.