Well, I am here in wonderful ol' Springfield, MO. I tell ya, this training is effing awsome. Everything is straight forward and easy as hell as long as you study your ### off on the CDL manual. Everything has been great. It get's tiring during classes but worth paying attention to. If this company and their training doesn't do it for you, then I don't know what to tell you because it doesn't get any better than this guy's and gal's. No other compnay is going to treat you like these people do.

Rules of thumb:

Don't be late for class. They have a zero tolerance and will send you home.

Study your CDL manual before you show up and it will save you a lot of BS studying staying up late hours for the permit test on the second day here.

Do what they ask and what they say and everything will go smoothly for you.

Make sure before you leave home that you do NOT have any health promblems. Even a slight mishap with your blood pressure will get you sent home.

Take care of any fines, tickets, or outstanding anything's before you get here and make damn sure you have a full release from your doctor for any kind of past injuries or they will send you back home to get it taken care of.

This is just a few things you should follow because the ride on the Grey Dog sucks the big one. If you apply listen carefully to everything they tell you and follow everything in the email they will send you right before your prehire when you get the number for your bus ticket. Do NOT show up a day early or you will be paying for a day in the hotel plus your own meals until classes start.

Other than that all I can say is that this..... is the ####! <----(all caps) It doesn't get any better and those I hear dogging Prime.... Well, if you ask when you get here, they will tell you why a lot of guy's don't make it in the L/O business and have a bad time here. The rest are just talking crap that they heard from someone else. This is the best company I have ever witnessed nose to nose and it's a really good company so I recommend giving it a hard look.

__________________
"I'm not a truck driver. I'm a non refrigerated load relocation engineer".

So, what you heard at the CDL school from people working for Prime, and what you've experienced of the CDL school makes you believe these people are telling you about why guys "don't make it"? Please do update this thread in 3 months and tell me if it's still true.

From what I have heard from actual Prime drivers it must be true. Well over 40 drivers asked and only one complaint. And she was happy until her boyfriend did something to tick of the fleet manager and miles went in the tank.

Most people who go into L/Oing go into broke. That's the first mistake. You can't do that and expect to make it. Keeping your foot out of it and running between 58-60mph is the next issue. A lot of these people get their truck and run the #### out of it thinking miles are going to compensate for the fuel cost. No it won't. Money management. Stop buying all that crap that you really don't need and not shoping around for fuel in advance before you get to your fuel destination. Preventive Main. A must. If you take care of it right the first time it'll save you the trouble later. Loads.... Work your ### off and run hard. Try and ask you FM for some better loads if he finds that you are working hard and he/she will help you. They don't make money when you don't make money.

Another big thing is these guy's wanting to be home every couple weeks. Never gonna happen. You'll go bankrupt. Home time has to be planned out at least a couple months in advance so the truck payment for the time off is taken care of and you don't have to worry about the money not being there to pay it even when your not rolling. It takes business ethics to run your own truck and a lot of people don't have it. Me, the only thing stopping me from L/O is fuel. Sure, I know how to conserve but this really isn't the time for it. Some of these other guy's and making it and doing really well. One lady brought in $2,800 after taxs and everything was paid, truck payment and all including fuel. Most of the guy's on the Prime drivers website are very successful with more than one lease.

But they also have another thing called COMPANY drivers! This is where I'm going, into RTC Division for now.

__________________
"I'm not a truck driver. I'm a non refrigerated load relocation engineer".

Well, I'm working on my third load with my instructor. Everything has been great and no surprise's yet. I'm really thrilled. Yes, do stay away from the lease program. I've heard one guy admit to not running himself bankrupt because he couldn't keep his foot out of it while on the way to drop him at the greyhound station on the way back to the hotel.

__________________
"I'm not a truck driver. I'm a non refrigerated load relocation engineer".

hey i been lookin in to prime trucking my self but i getting my CDL thew another schooling (not the trucking companies) do you kno the cpm rate and the mile average a week is cuz i can not find any info on that ... can anyone help...??

Been thur Prime's lease and yes I went broke. Now onto a lease with a diff company doing EXACTKY the same things I did with Prime and making a ton more money. With Prime I couldnt pay my bills at home, with my new lease I just bought a new truck for my son yesterday. Yea all companies claim they know why people go broke. Truth is if they really knew they would never need to lease a $110,000 truck and charge us $180,000 for it would they?

You will have to go through their so called training program, which consists of team driving with a trainer, for an extensive, 60,000 miles at .12 a mile before you can get on as a company driver. Just think of how much money they can make on paying a team driver at .12 a mile. even if you quit at any time they still made money on you, compared to having to pay a regular team driver. Then you go company driver and get about .30 cpm for the next 20,000 more miles above and beyond the 60,000 miles you just finished. After this I think it's about .38 cpm.

As I understand it this company is really designed to put drivers into a L/O; which costs about $800.00 a week for the truck alone, and about $1,000 plus a week all together, not including fuel. You can get out of the lease anytime the way I hear it. Buying a truck would cost half as much and you could make out great with this if you can believe what you read, but would they keep an owner busy? Why would they when they are making a ton of money on the people they lease to. It seems to me the lease guys would get the loads 1st.

Keep in mind that most anyone you talk to at Prime makes a recruitment fee on you if you sign with Prime and use them as a reference. When a driver gets into Prime if they have problems they will be strung along as long as possible, because the longer the driver is encouraged to stay the better the recruitment fee. You will be told to just go to the classes were you will learn....... It doesn't benefit any employee to talk bad about the company.

Read didntitellu's post. There are others to read also I believe; snackbar, notarpsforme, these are all I can think of for now, oh I think turbotrucker also.

I'm not saying don't go with them. I'm saying use your head. Apparently the law allows trucking companies to tell you anything they want to tell you and they are not held to there word. In the case of this company Prime has been successful at getting their drivers to do all the talk'n for them because of the referral fee structure. It's like "Snake Oil".

Plan home time MONTHS in advance??????????????????????


Thats a hoot, and I can promise you there are much better ways to be an O/O than FLEECE/Op like you are talking.

__________________

I went through Prime's CDL school straight up into a truck of my own, it is funny to see someone this gunho about it. They are not as strict as this guy is making them out to be they understand that people are people and you can get waivers and stuff for alot of things and there are exceptions. RTC division sucks you mostly get the leftovers of what the L/O's dont take so you can imagine what that means or where that means. I had my permit before ever setting foot in springfield which is what they recommend but some people are just too lazy to do it before arriving. I was a CDL student with an RTC driver who was very very knowledgeable about driving and the industry as a whole because he had been doing it for 35 years. I was one of the lucky ones because some of those guys just get a student in their to make the extra cash to increase their revenue and you are nothing more then a slave to them. After getting my CDL they placed me with this crack ##### of a man who would wake me up and make me get out of his truck with 1 inch of cigarette ash on the floor and an oversized rotweiler so he could "play" with a lot lizard, suffice to say I did 2 days with this loser and was back to Springfield to get someone decent. I then was placed with this guy who was considered a top earner in the Lease Program, I figured OK he was a hard worker and a military retiree so he was probaly going to be fine well this joker watched gay porn, talked about wearing womens dresses and expected you to drive 12 - 14 hours but fudge your log book to make it just the standard 10 or 11 on paper. I stuck it out cause even though he was a weirdo, a homo, and scary I wasnt going to ask for another trainer because I would be afraid on what they would say. Prime is a good company for the most part, you have to be really business savy and careful about your expenditures on the road if you are a lease operator in order to make a profit. It is not unheard of to make in the high 5 digits or low 6 digits after taxes, expenses, and everything else per year if you do it right. I made a pretty decent living with them and while they are not my company of choice I would not fault anyone for going with them because if you get the right people from the beginning such as instructor, trainer, and then dispatcher you will do well. If even one of them is bad then your going to have a bad run of things. Best of luck to ya