Prime Tanker division

I'd be tempted to know, too.

 

The pay's good as far as I know... they recently upped the company per-mile rate for tanker division. There's a lot of dead-head and sitting around, mostly involved with getting a tanker washout. You still have to do the usual driving training that Prime puts newbs through, but there is additional training on the equipment they have on the tanker-yanker-mobiles.

 

You would do most of you training in the reefer division, then go out with a tanker trainer for your last 20,000 miles of training.

 

That's the same thing Prime is having me do. Just finished Day 2 of orientation here in Pittston Pa, starting off in the refer div to get some miles, then switching over to flatbed for the last part.

 

The instructors are all in the reefer division because they want you to be able to concentrate on the things you will need to learn to be a good truck driver, so that you can have that solid base before getting into a specialty division.

 

I know for sure that we have flatbed trainers too. Fellow PSD trained with one and decided he wanted to work for a living!

 

I've driven a Prime tanker for the last year. Drove reefer for them for two years before that. I made a bit more on the tanker side. Maybe 10%? Something like that. The only downsides to tanker I can think are having to climb up on the catwalk when it's really cold. This is mostly just annoying and not really that bad. The other is that you will go to Port Newark, NJ a lot. A LOT. Personally, I hope if/when an asteroid hits the earth that it will hit dead center on Port Newark. YMMV depending on your tolerance level for NJ.

Also, I understand that most of the tanker drivers are lease drivers. I know 3 or 4 who are company but I hear they are the exeption. I don't personally know.

 

Do you know if Prime runs tankers through WV much ?

 

I personally drove through WV fairly regularly. The northern part more often than not.