Pride Transport reviews

Well it's been a minute since I have been on the forum. I have settled in to my new company and wanted to share the info and updates to my daily adventures in this beautiful trucking world.

I have to say I was just about to leave the industry when I left my old mega carrier company. I had some safety issues with my truck that weren't being addressed which almost caused me to have an accident. I returned to the yard and I cleaned out my truck and told them I will call them in 2-3 days. I needed some time to think about my situation and see if there were any other opportunities for me. I had only 4 months driving experience so I thought there wasn't a chance in he'll I would find something better.

After a few days I came across a 500 Truck company called Pride Transport. I called them up and spoke with Steve the head recruiter and he informed me I would be able to come aboard and would need to complete a evaluation course which consisted of 50 hours with a trainer. Once finished I could then test out out with a pre-trip and road test to be on my own. I really like what the company had to offer and felt this was a major step up from my previous company, which by the way you can check out in the Swift section of this forum. Pride has only 1 terminal that is located in Salt Lake City, UT, but they hire from a lot of states.

Swift was decent to me but the quality of life in the truck was horrific. No inverter, no apu, no fridge. Just a bed and a steering wheel. After speaking with Steve this is what he offered to me to come aboard:

Plane Ticket to Salt Lake City, UT

$3,000 sign on Bonus

Tuition reimbursement up to $6,000

1500 watt inverter

Built in Fridge and Freezer

Direct TV w/ 24" TV and DVR

Daily pay when trips are completed

Detention @ every customer after 2 hours. $15 / hour. Except for produce loads. Produce pay $30 per Dock Bump & $100 if not loaded within HOS.

Brand New Freightliner/Peterbuilt

Automatic transmission

Sirius XM

2700+ miles per week

.35 cpm w/ my experience

Brand new Driver Lounge w/ Free Laundry and Detergent / Dryer Sheets Provided

6 Paid Holiday's a Year - $100 per Holiday / $200 if you work Christmas if you work + Mileage.

24/7 Mechanic's - Preventive Maintenance done on the trucks twice a month!

$180 / Week Cash Advances - No Fee Charged

Park My Truck @ Home for Home time

Driver Mini-Van @ Terminal can check-out and run errands

Rider & Pet Policy

I decided to give it a go, and had them book me a flight. I flew American Airlines up to Salt Lake and the hotel shuttle picked me up. I booked into the Sleep Inn on Sunday and got ready for the orientation.

Monday morning came and hopped on the shuttle to the terminal. First thing was Physical and Drug Tests.

They have Dr's and assistants come to the terminal to do this. The physical was pretty standard, and they do both Urine and Hair Folicle Drug Testing. I shave my head so they took hair from my arm. Lunch was provided by a local Deli. They pass around a form and menu and you pick what you would like. Very nice high end product and was really good. Rest of the afternoon was paperwork and some company policy information. At the end of the day we were given keys to the company van and we drove ourselves back to the hotel. We could use the van also if we wanted to go anywhere special.

Tuesday morning we all hopped in the Van and back to the terminal we went. Tuesday was more same old company information and policy's. Safety came in and we practiced the "SMITH" driving system. We watched a video and then we took it to the streets for demonstration. Each one of us had to drive and perform SMITH driving techniques. Very Easy. Next we had lunch from the same Deli place and finished the rest of the day with company information and Health Benefits Information.

Wednesday - Last day of Orientation. We got a tour of the place and introduced to many departments. We were shown the new Driver's Lounge. The last day is pretty much relaxed. We were given our trainers and the people who didn't need trainers were assigned trucks. They do training in two ways. If you have 3-6 months experience you do whats called an "Evaluation". This consists of 50 hours with a trainer to ensure you are ready to go solo. New Drivers with no experience and fresh out of school must do full training of "300" hours with a trainer before going solo. 300 hours is a lot, but it's because the company takes time to ensure the driver is comfortable behind the wheel and ready to tackle any situation that they will come across being solo.

I was given my trainer and he happened to be on a Dedicated Account. We would pickup from the local Albertson's Dist. Center, and deliver to stores in Wyoming/Colorado. Once done we would pickup dunnage and return to the Dist. Center. Pretty nice gig he had. People who live in the Salt Lake area could get on these dedicated accounts if there was an open position.

Training Pay:

50 Hour Evaluation - $700 / Week - Flat Rate. No matter the amount of miles you drive.

300 Hour Training - $350 / 1st Week - Non Team. After 1st week Truck is Team Status and paid .14 CPM for ALL miles to the truck. (Example - 5000 miles week) = $700

It took about 5 days to complete the 50 hours I needed. It was a Friday so there wasn't anyone available to test out with until Monday. They put me up in the Comfort INN for the weekend, which was even nicer than the Sleep INN. Monday I tested out with Safety Dept. This consisted of a thorough Pre-Trip, Road Test, and Backing Test. The road test was easy if you do what your supposed to do. Read Your Signs, Stop in "Break Check" area's, watch speed limit signs, ect. The backing test was even easier. Simply park between two trailers and done.

The truck I tested out in was actually the truck I was assigned. Man was I happy.

2016 Freightliner w/ 42,000 Miles, LED Lights, Automatic, Chrome everywhere, and so #### clean inside and out. Smelled brand new and already had the Direct TV system and TV installed. Fridge worked great and only needed my inverter to be installed. I drove my truck over to the 24/7 Mechanic Bay and asked to have the inverter installed. About 2-3 hours later the truck was done. Let me also mention that the company does make you pay for the inverter. That is the only thing I was kind of upset and felt deceived about. This was told to me in Orientation so it's not like it was a surprise. The cost is $360 for the inverter and they take out $50 a week from your settlement until paid off. Once paid its yours to take if you leave the company. They want you to use their's because it has a safety feature that kills the inverter if battery gets to low. They had trouble with people bringing their own and killing the battery's and costing the company to have someone come jump the truck over and over.

I met my Driver Manager who was extremely friendly and ready to get me rolling. He asked if I preferred 11 Western Region or 48 State. I asked him to put me on the 48 State Fleet. He also asked if I wanted to go home to get my stuff or go anywhere. I asked to go home to grab my stuff. About an hour later he called me informing me that if I minded taking a load to Ca and back to UT before heading home. I didn't have a problem with that and the load was assigned to my truck and went over the details of it and asked if I had any questions. First run picked up in Salt Lake City and delivered to Southern California, around 700 miles.

Before getting to my delivery another load came through heading back to Salt Lake City. Another 700 miles. 1400 miles in 3 days I was impressed so far. He stayed true to his word and when I got back to Salt Lake City the load was waiting for me to get me through N.M. The load delivered in Texas, but they put so much time on the load I was able to spend 3 days at home. The loads kept coming and coming and never sat waiting for my next one. It seemed there was always something to go get. Sure I might have to wait till the morning sometimes for pickup time, but I was being dispatched right away. I stayed in the CA, AZ, NV, UT area for the first 1 or 2 week or so. I was in Ca when a load came through that picked up in Tracy, CA and delivered in Maryland. This was like 2500 mile run and was blown away that this was given to a solo driver. At Swift I was never given a load more than 900 miles as a solo driver. It seemed all the really long runs were given to Teams. I made good time every day to prove to my DM that I was the man for the job to ensure I would get more of these loads in the future. I got to MD the night prior to delivery and next morning I woke up to my next load. Picked up in Pennsylvania and delivered to Tennessee. While reading the load info another load came through picking up in Tennessee and delivering to California! Wooohoo! Best part was the load weighed 8,000 lbs. Two weeks in a row I had over 3,000 miles.

The loads continue to keep coming in and I keep knocking them out. I am not sure if it's the on-time record that my truck now has or the company, but I really couldn't ask for more. I told my dispatcher I will take anything that he needs, just please all I ask is to keep me moving and he has done just that. Couldn't ask for a nicer Driver Manager. He never bothers me, Micro Manages me, nothing... Hell sometimes I go weeks and I don't even talk with him. And if I do talk to him it's because I have a question. As long as I keep doing my job professionally, he seems to do his.

The company is mainly Refer, but does have a small Flat Bed Division. Their trailers are in really great shape. About 99% of the trailers I have used have all had air assisted Tandem Pins. There has only been one trailer that had that handle you have to pull/lift to release the pins. So nice! They are buying new trailers and it seems I keep getting lucky or the company keeps buying more and more brand new trailers. I have had one trailer that needed to be fixed so far, and that was due to no gas in the refer tank when I picked it up and they needed to charge the battery and Prime it to get it running. Not sure if someone dropped it off without filling the tank or the company I picked it up from left it running.

I am not force routed either. As long as I am not going 100+ miles out of route the company hasn't said anything about my routes. They get Fuel at Loves, Pilot, Flying J, TA, Petro. Mainly Flying J and Loves it seems. All tolls and Scales are paid for. I Just use my Comdata card and pay for scales that way.

If I need a cash advance for any reason (Which I have only taken one) There is no fee either. If I get $60 they take out $60, unlike Swift or other companies that charge you a $5.99 / $9.99 fee for doing this. If needed you can take $180 a week in Advances with no Fee charged.

I am always on the look-out for other opportunities to advance my career, but I would have to find one hell of a job offer for me to leave the company. Also the company is 100% company driver. No leased trucks here, not sure if that is a good / bad thing. I will be updating this thread just like my old company thread to document my trucking career and also help others with information regarding this company.

If anyone has any questions relating to this company feel free to message me. So far so good!

Two Thumbs Up 

I decided to skip the mega-carriers and go straight to a decent company out of CDL school. That was Pride Transport in Salt Lake City. 

The orientation and training were uneventful. My experience was pretty much the same as in this post, so I won't waste any time. 

One thing that nobody mentioned was the six-month contract I signed before I started training. If I wanted to leave within 6 months of employment, I would have to pay $5000 for the cost of the training. I didn't like that, but I was already in SLC and didn't plan on quitting, so I signed it. I just thought it was a little shifty that nobody told me about it until I had finished orientation and they laid it in front of me. 

Also, having talked to other drivers there, nobody had anything bad to say about the company. I think that's rare. Four out of the nine people in my orientation were rehires. Everyone said I made a good decision by starting at Pride. 

Also, I learned that the notorious driver-facing cameras only have 10 seconds of memory and act as a black box in case of an accident. That doesn't bother me at all: I would prefer to be able to prove that I have my eyes on the road. I wish they had front-facing dash cams too. Most drivers still didn't like them though and put their visor down to block it. 

Training for total newbies is 100 hours or more of driving with a trainer in the passenger seat (Phase 1), then 300 hours or more of team driving with the trainer (Phase 2). Steve the recruiter said that phase 1 usually lasts a month, and phase 2 usually lasts 2 months. But it's up to the trainer's discretion when you leave phase 1 and up to the safety dept's discretion when you graduate from phase 2 (via a road test). 

My trainer was calm and easy-to-get along with. He seemed surprised that I knew how to stay in my lane and back up (more or less). So I got promoted after the first 100 hours, which only took a week and a half. 
So we were team driving and all was going well. One day we were about to get on the PA Turnpike in New Stanton, but it was closed because of the blizzard (in Jan 2016). Pride sets the routes so we requested a new route via the Qualcomm and waited. 

We were still there the next day when policemen came around telling all the parked trucks (now taking up the shoulder and granny lane) to move. As I was driving down the granny lane, not sure where to go at all, I passed a truck (not pictured) who was poorly parked on the shoulder, with his steer tire in my lane. I rode along the left side, but still hit his mirror. 

"Did I just hit his mirror?" I asked my trainer. 

"Yep."

"Was there any damage?" We were only going about 15mph and our mirror had bent on its hinge. 

"Don't know." He smoked his e-cig. "I guess we'll find out." 

There were no truck stops so I didn't know what to do. My trainer didn't either. We hadn't gotten a reply to our request for a new route. 

"Should I take 60?" I asked. 

"You can," he said. "But I won't condone breaking routing. You can never break Pride's routing." 

"Then what should I do? There's no place to park!" 

"I don't know," he said. "Do what you would do if I weren't here." 

So I took a detour and got back on the 'pike as soon as possible. My trainer got a call from the boss man to return to base as soon as possible. Gonna get chewed out I guess. They asked if I hit one mirror or two. My trainer is honest and said one. 

The next day, the training department called my trainer. I was asleep, but he said they asked about my character. "We get along just fine," he allegedly told them. How's his driving? "Good," he said. "He's a cautious driver, which is good. I feel comfortable sleeping while he's driving." 

The safety dept. called me after I woke up a few hours later. 

"Let me ask you one question. Did you have a hit-and-run?" 

"But... but... there was no place to stop! The shoulder was all full! The police were waving me on!" 

"That doesn't matter. You didn't report it." 

"I didn't think there was any damage. We weren't going very fast and our mirror bent." 

"No. That's unacceptable. We're terminating your employment." 

I still don't see how there could have been any damage, unless the other guy's mirror was held on with string. I remember how they had asked if we hit one mirror or two. I wonder if the other guy got fired too. 

Anyways, they left me in Toledo, but at least had the dignity to buy me a greyhound ticket home. 

When I got home, I found that it was a lot harder to find a job with a tainted record. Companies who had hired me a month ago were now turning me down. "If you have an accident-related termination," they all said. "You must have at least 3/6 months of safe driving before we will consider you." I explained what happened in detail, but there were no exceptions. The recruiters I talked to even seemed a little sypathetic ("He was parked in your lane? Were you ticketed? Were there any injuries? And they fired you?") 

The only companies who've hired me now are PTL and Schneider (I didn't apply to Swift, CRST, or England). And this is with a clean drug/criminal/health/driving record. PTL, here I come! 

I think I deserved a lecture about reporting accidents, but not to be fired. I still can't believe that they threw me out like that. I have nothing bad to say about the company: working for them was just dandy. But now I'm in a much worse situation than when I started. Prospective employees beware!

I worked for Pride out of Salt Lake for 22 months. They were my first company so I went through the training process there. I left a couple of weeks ago due to moving back to where I grew up and getting the job I had wanted since starting driving. Here is my experience there.

I'll start off first by saying that 90% of my time there was running team. I personally have little experience with the solo side of the company. I talked to plenty of solo drivers and my co-driver was solo during my training and currently is solo there so I do know somewhat how it goes for them. So just keep that in mind if you have questions about miles and such because I really don't have much personal experience with that.

I learned about Pride while riding along with my good friend, who would later become my co-driver at Pride, on a trip to New Jersey with a company he hauled produce for. This was before I had a license, I just wanted to do something and get out of CA for awhile. We got stuck in Jersey for awhile and ended up talking to a trainer for Pride in Bordentown. By this point in the trip I was interested in getting my license and started thinking about where to start. Being stuck in a truck stop for multiple days due to circumstances that really don't matter, I was able to talk to a lot of drivers. We all know how it is, 95% of drivers are unhappy and that's all I heard really. We were casually talking to this Pride driver and we both knew little about him so talked to him for a bit. He was one of the few that seemed happy and that's what stuck out to me. Plus, he wasn't trying to recruit, just answered what we asked.

So I went to school and decided to go to Pride. Applying was easy, the usual quick internet application. I had applied everywhere and people were calling me 10 minutes after applying. Pride didn't call me after I applied so I took that to mean they didn't want to hire me since others had. I wasted a good month just because I assumed this and didn't call. I called a month later and within 5 minutes I had a hotel room waiting for me in SLC and was set up for orientation. I had a criminal history and brought that up and my worries of coming up there then being told to go home. When I called an hour later they had already run my background check and said I was good to go which made me feel easier about it. 

Orientation was the typical three day boring thing. Paperwork, physical/drug screen and all that fun stuff. You're in orientation with guys who have experience and won't be training so half of it you don't even understand if you're new to trucking. I remember thinking to myself while they were explaining how to get your POs on the computer, "wth is a PO and why do I need one?" For those with experience, when they tell you over the phone that you will get a truck right after orientation, they aren't joking. You will not be waiting for a truck.

Training there is pretty long. The general process is you go out with a trainer with him always in the jumpseat for 7,000 miles. After that you run team with the trainer. I can't remember the miles for the team mode, but you'll essentially be with a trainer for 90 days total. If you do well, they'll let you out of it earlier, but it still won't be short. If after 7,000 miles they don't think you're ready to team, you will be staying in the solo/trainer in jumpseat mode until they decide you're ready. I've seen a couple guys end up with a trainer always awake with them for 5-6 weeks because they just weren't getting it. They're not going to rush people through that side, they may with the team part, but not on the solo part. I had a great trainer. I still talk to him often, had a three hour conversation him just last week. He was patient, honest and blunt with me, and even when we were teaming I could wake him up if I had problems without him being angry about it. That was the nice part about teaming in training. The driving wasn't an issue at that point but when problems would spring up with shipper/receivers or whatever, I could get help when I didn't quite know what to do. They used to pay by the mile during training but apparently they pay a weekly salary now. I'm can't remember what the solo part was, maybe $400/week, but I think the team portion is $700/week salary now. I could be wrong, it wasn't like that for me.

I teamed with my friend right out of training. He had 13 years experience at the time, so my training really never ended. Looking back, that helped me in my career a lot. When we started teaming, Pride did not have team runs. They had runs a solo guy couldn't do, but to call it a team load would not be correct. You would basically sit around all day to get loaded then get where you were going at least 24 hours early and have to wait to get unloaded. The only way you kept moving was to keep swapping out loads with solo guys that were going to be late or running out of hours. We stayed out 6-8 weeks at a time by our choice so we still made decent money. They had only a couple dedicated runs for teams at the time. We filled in for one team for a week and absolutely smoked the other teams running the same thing. We gained a reputation of being the fastest and were told we'd get the next dedicated run. I actually ran local for about 3 months while we waited on that but got the dedicated and I got back on the truck. At this point, they had began creating a lot of dedicated team runs in a short time so team driving became viable there. We ran a dedicated that we averaged 28,000-30,000 miles/month. Great money there. They lost that contract and we ran another dedicated that we only ran about 24,000 miles/month but we got home for usually 60 hours a week, 48 hours at home minimum. We'd generally get back Wed. night and leave out Sat. morning. The teams are really mostly getting thrown on to dedicated runs now. A lot of them are good for getting you miles and getting you home weekly. My last W-2, I made $50k running team and it was only that low due to not doing crap for the first two months when I was local. I was getting 10 hour weeks sometimes doing that. My co-driver made $60k since he stayed OTR while I went local.

As far as the office staff, most are great. I had one bad dispatcher out of 5. It wasn't even an attitude problem but she just wouldn't do her job. Simple things like sending emails to customer reps and such. What's the point in communicating problems to you if you don't do your part? Anyways the rest I had were good. A couple there I wouldn't run for. It wouldn't be a problem as far as the work itself or them screwing you or anything, I just know I wouldn't get along with a couple. I would be part of the blame for that and it's part of life, you'll never get along with every person everywhere you go. Management has an open door policy. I've talked to the owner multiple times. The biggest problem talking to him is he's a driver and will want to talk your ear off when you need to do work he's paying you to do lol. When that's your biggest problem, I guess that's a good thing. Most people will know you by name, or at least recognize your face. You can tell when someone remembers you and the majority do. If your pay is screwed up a simple 2 minute conversation will get it fixed. In 22 months, I had 2 payroll problems. One I screwed up, another they gave a PO to my co-driver instead of me, so nothing major. 

I'll throw the equipment and shop together. The equipment is good. Generally, the oldest trucks you'll see are three years old. Unless you're driving local you will not see a truck with over 450,000 miles. In my time there I had a total of 6 days down due to repairs. One time it was something that needed the time, another was waiting for 3 days for Freightliner to even look at the truck then do a 20 minute fix on it. Some trailers have some age but most are in good shape. The biggest problems is guys being lazy and not doing a post trip, or even doing it and not bothering to fix it because it's "not their problem anymore". You'll find dropped trailer with flat tires, bad air leaks, mudflaps gone. It's not like that every time, but this is a driver issue, not the company. Maybe the company should do more to punish guys who do it. Maybe they do and I just don't know since I leave my stuff in good shape, I don't know. The shop is pretty good. Sometimes they can take forever to get you through for even a PM. Most of the guys are easy to deal with, especially when trying to get things fixed on the road. There is one that will act like you're trying to steal from the company to get a bad tired changed but you just tell him it's getting fixed whether he likes it or not and it gets done. All he sees in $$$. You do not have to do any work on a truck or trailer. They are more than happy if you will, but you will not be forced to. Night and weekend dispatchers will often pay you money for getting something done on your own. I've made $100 for getting a reefer someone ran empty running again which maybe takes 20 minutes between dropping and hooking to it and getting it going. 

One of the nice things there is you get paid whenever you turn in a TripPak. They do payroll every weekday. Anything they have by 10:00am you are getting paid for that day. Might not get into your account that day, but you will have an email with your pay stub already that day. You don't have to worry about getting your bills in by whatever day or you're not getting paid next week. When I ran a Salt Lake to Ontario, CA team dedicated we were paid every single day since we dropped the bills at the terminal every day. Honestly, I don't even remember the payscale for solo guys and I was making .38/mile split running team. They have mileage bonuses for hitting X amount of miles every month. My last full month there I had almost $500 in mileage bonus alone. It helped make up for the lower cpm. They do force per diem on you but there is no charge to you. It sucks, but it's not like I didn't know before I started. 

All in all, I enjoyed my time there. Did I get pissed off a few times? Sure. Overall it was good though. I made money, I ran miles and on my last run I got home often at the sacrifice of some miles. I was a little sad to leave, but I had to move on and am at an even better place now. If I had to go back OTR, I probably would go back there. 

Sorry this was kind of long. I'm bored and like to type and I know there isn't a lot of info on here about them.

I did my entire (short) career at Pride, and I have to say, I never had any REAL problems there. If you were a team player (took one for the team once in a while), you got all the miles you wanted. Yeah you sat here and there (North East), but that is part of the OTR lifestyle. Pride never did me wrong, and I would recommend them to anyone who needs to learn the ropes. Yes, the pay per mile can be #### for rookies, but in all my time with them, I never got inspected more than a level 1, and anytime I had an issue with my ride, it was fixed as soon as I was at the nearest shop.

BUT, I was NEVER EVER late, and I was always honest when I said I didn't have the hours (they can see them anyways), and I have a perfect driving record.

In some ways I actually miss having a new tractor every year, and the "tourist" lifestyle.