A 2012 Prime Endeavor

Since feedback indicated that Prime would have no issue taking someone residing in the state of Maine for their apprenticeship program, my husband went ahead and "made the call". I'll use this topic to post his progress through the process and through Prime.

Warning: I am verbose. I also don't type in text speak. This will likely make for long posts. You have been warned.

Background: After a long time of doing industrial maintenance, husband left his job. Circumstances uprooted us from our former place of residence in southern NH and we ended up here in midcoast Maine. Absolutely friggin' lovely (no, really. It IS!) but one small thing: jobs - real, living wage jobs -- are awful hard to come by. Not a lot of manufacturing around.

Despite this, he interviewed a lot this past year. Good interviews too, made one feel very hopeful.

And every job went to Another Candidate.

With the last of those disappointments having happened right after Christmas, we decided perhaps another career path is in order. CDL drivers, right now, are in steady demand and all research suggest that the demand for drivers (need for freight to get from point A to point b) outstrips current supply.

That's not the case in a lot of career choices and while diving into a Brand New Career in one's late 40s is a bit scary, well, this is one career where maturity might well be appreciated. He is in fairly good physical shape, doesn't have any motor vehicle violations, period, like EVER, doesn't do drugs, drinks only rarely, doesn't smoke, grounded in reality, doesn't have a chip on his shoulder, is mild-mannered, intelligent, and has a excellent work ethic with references to back it up -- basically, a guy a company can trust to learn how to take freight from A to B and actually get it there reliably.

Being Swedish, being on time is like a religion to him too -- if he's not early, he feels late.

[Trivia Nuggets: "Truck" in Swedish is "lastbil". Bilar (cars) are a car-shaped gummy candy his mom sends in the birthday and Xmas care packages from the Nordic Homeland along with a fish paste (cod caviar, they claim) in a tube that he really likes on bread or crackers. Bilar are quite tasty. Fish paste, not so much.]

So yeah, trucking looks interesting and like a good fit. New Year, new career! Get 'er done and all that.

We prefer that he get trained "on the job", rather than deal with the effort of trying to get financed for a CDL school via Fedloan or Workforce financing or what have you. (aka: We're broke and the more we can have someone else pay for something, the better it is for us.)

And frankly, why not let a company do it? Sure, we then owe them a year, but BFD -- a year or two commitment to a job is pretty normal in the Big Boy and Girl professional world. Few companies want to invest in someone and not see any return on their dollar. That'd be a bad business model.

We know truck will be lonely and hard work, but once he has a year or two under his belt, he'll have the experience he needs to further a career and better it, either by staying with Prime or moving elsewhere. There are a few trucking outfits up on our neck of the woods looking for drivers with experience.

Long term potential is worth the short term expense/sacrifice.

We made our short list of contacts. We did want to pick a company that actually hauls freight in and out of the state.

First we tried Swift, but they don't take people from Maine. Well, they do, but not for training, despite advertising for Students in their Monster.com ads (the reason we called them first).

CRE and Schneider also advertise up here. I don't believe for a moment there is no redeeming value to CRE, and that it's training somehow isn't on par with what Swift and Prime offer, but with so few positive stories from trainees to go off of, and the emphasis on leasing that seems to come from there, it's just not a company that seems a good match for us. We may end up going the leasing or owning route *someday* -- my degree is actually in Small Business Entrepreneurship -- but it's not something we're interested right now. I get perfectly while it works out well for the company and why it can work (or fail!) for the person holding the lease, but it's not the avenue we want to pursue in our near-future vision.

Schneider doesn't seem to train so much as take folks fresh from CDL school and we're more interested in the whole package.

Next, we checked out Prime. I did not find an advertisement, I based it on information about who hauls up here and who offers a training program that seems solid and comprehensive.

While there's plenty of the "Prime iz teh worss company EVAR!!!111!!!" screaming to be found, I was impressed by recent trainee feedback, information from drivers who've been there a while, and how they go about training (lots of wheel time).

Husband gave the recruiter a call. No, living in Maine is not a problem. She didn't promise the sky; I don't think she gave him a sales pitch at all, actually, just took down the info she needed as the online app doesn't let you put in work history that isn't trucking related.

And she'll get back to us once they verify employment history, etc.

Now it's sit and wait time. It's a bit anxious of a wait; one envisions all the ways one can be told "no thanks". Husband had a sudden worry he left an employer off of the three year history, so he gave a quick call back to make sure, and all is well.

He's killing the time by studying for the permit, watching a hella lot of videos, reading these forums, and so on. He's the type to throw himself into something whole-heartedly. I am already being regaled with trucking facts and tidbits from the CDL manual. It's only a matter of time before he finds a podcast to listen to.

So here's hoping I'll be able to continue this thread with future events: the you're-good-to-go letter, class, training, CDL achieved, more training, going solo, and so on. It is a big step in a different direction, both intimidating and exciting.

We really, really hope it pans out.

TLDR: Husband applied to Prime. News as it happens.

 

Nothing too terribly new to report. Prime did fax his current employer asking if it were true that he left them on the 1st; yikes! They called him in confusion: "Are you still with us?"

Oops. He called to clear that up. It's not a job he gets many hours for, but it's still a few bucks per week. He's not quitting that one *yet*.

A question, probably a bit of an off-beat one. Husband has a nervous tic. It is probably a mild form of Tourettes (no, not the variation where you randomly shout obscenities. Google it!). It manifests in what I can best describe as twitchiness. His head, shoulders or arms will sort of twitch or jerk. It's not an impairment -- he's got a driver's car driver's license of course, worked with machinery and electricity, etc. It's not constant. Mostly it happens when he's nervous, happens for a few seconds and then goes away. It's nothing like a seizure or spasm where he'd be jerking the wheel, or something would go flying. To others, it might look like he's suddenly shrugging his shoulders a lot I guess.

We didn't think about it because we're both so used to it by now, but it has occurred to me that since we're considering a commercial license, maybe he should be proactive in getting it cleared DOT physical wise. (Still happily assuming he'll clear the Prime pre-hire checks and they'll offer to train him -- who wants to get sent home to get a doctor's note!)

Has anyone had or known someone who has had a tic/twitch/whatever you want to call it and did it affect your ability to pass the DOT physical?