Prime Inc Power Only experience? Where to go?

How hard is it to find drivers?, And is it profitable still? I'm interested in doing something like this. Leasing my trucks on and hiring drivers.

 

Throw a penny and you'll hit 20 drivers no problem, it's finding quality drivers that's very hard.

Even when they look good on paper that doesn't mean they are a good quality driver. You need to test them, all them to perform tasks to see how they do it, and spend quality face you face time with them.

You seem to have missed the point of this thread though, this is about having your own authority and pulling power only loads for carries using their trailers but under your numbers.

 

But doesn't prime regulatell and dispatch your driver?, And make them follow their rules?

 

Have you thought about working for one of the carriers on the prime advanced fleet side, wouldn't the pay be better than staying on primes company side, even though you have familiarity with the freight?

 

If you're running under your own authority, you're in control of your drivers. Prime will send loads to the truck for the driver to take but unless the driver has some skin in the game you'll end up with crap rates all the time.

Sounds to me like you're looking for a hands off business that you can just make a nice profit off of. This isn't the industry for that.

 

Nah, not quite, but I wouldn't be driving, more less handling everything else, I like the way "Woody" and "Lo Shawn" is doing it right now, I plan on doing something similar, except they drive one of their trucks and put drivers in the others, same concept., but I want be driving

 

Im on flatbed leased onto company out of Spokane WA. Current load I'm grossing $3.50/mile. This is not highest I've had. I've pulled for 5/mile before. Getting out of Spokane is cheap but coming back to west cost I average 2.50/mile on all loads

 

That's nice, are you leased onto a carrier, or do you have your own authority?

 

I worked for prime as power only with my own authority for about 4 months. It pretty much sucks. You would be better off going to work as a company driver for JB Hunt. I think prime gives like 74% of the load nowdays. You work with dispatch, who has a bunch of other trucks besides you. He tries to stick you with loads that make him the most money while costing HIM the least time to deal with. Lack of sleep, frequent crap loads in between decent loads, lots of down time because dispatch is busy with something else or off work and cant fix you up with a load. I worked as a company drivers for different companies before, and it was better than working power only for prime. I also worked with my own trailer before and loadboards, and that was way way better than pulling for prime. Oh, and no, you cant use prime trailers for a fee to book your own loads from outside loadboards. I would see a load on loadboard paying 1300 for like 90 miles, but prime would put me on a load paying like 800 dollars for 400 miles from the same city. I would tell prime, like dam, put me on any of these loads from loadboards and just take your dam 30%, i still would make more money and work less than the load you are trying to stick me with. But alas, prime has to cover crap loads that prime committed to cover with the customer much earlier. So then i quit prime, got a dry van, and did uber freight loads for couple weeks. I made like way more money and worked way less. Then I tried running power only for JB Hunt, and i opened a new horizon for myself and i love it. You book your own loads from jb hunt loadboard, whenever you want. no commitment. But as with most power only, its too hard to find a trailer every time. so you just do drop and hooks and live load unloads while making sure you always have some kind of jb hunt trailer. To start, they usually send you like 100-200 miles to get the jb hunt empty trailer. So the pay is competitive with uber freight type loadboards. But power only loads have a lot of 24 hour pu and 24 hour delivery windows, which is far more flexible than when you run with your own trailer. In addition, while may not be strictly speaking allowed by jb hunt, I use both power only and dry van loadboards of jb hunt. So I book loads pretending i have my own trailer, but pick them up with the jb hunt trailer from my previouse load. This way i have access to more flexible power only loads and less flexible but slightly more pay dry van loads. I still have my own trailer parked in Georgia, but im making so much money doing power only for jb hunt and enjoying flexibility of the 2 very different loadboards, that I am not planning on running with my own trailer anymore at all. I never thought i would pull power only for jb hunt, but it turned out that its a perfect fit for me. So if you are looking for power only, i strongly recommend against prime and i recommend jb hunt. Also, jb hunt is very flexible with their trailers. They seem to let you run with their trailer and havent bugged me once about me running with their trailer while not on a power only load. Oh, and jb hunt is the BEST with TONU and detention pays. They literally always pay those things. I have done probably a hundred jb hunt loads now, and I have never not been paid detention or tonu once. The quick pay of jb hunt is also best in the business, not even rivalled by uberfreight. I invoice a load i delivered at 7am, and get money in the bank for it the next morning, monday through friday. uberfreight i think has twice weekly payout on quickpay. With power only, I also get a lot of empty trailer moves which pay really well considering 24 hour pu delivery and zero weight. Also, jb hunt has a lot of chips loads all over USA, so most of my loads are actually under 25k on weight. Prime on the other hand, has majority of their loads over 44k! Also somehow majority of prime loads take you through mountains, like WV. JB Hunt on the other hand is pretty spread out with much of the loads not going through any mountains. I did the math, and with all Primeś discounts, Prime pay still sucks and i am very good at trucking. And the feeling that you are always at the mercy of some dispatch is just not ok when you own your truck.

 

I know i promoted JB Hunt in this thread a bit. Just wanted to update that in last 2 months JB Hunt went real down the hill. Most of the time when i get to a load that says preloaded trailer, shipper says they didnt have empty JB Hunt trailers and make me wait a long time to live load me. When you need a trailer, JB sends you like 250 miles to pick up an empty trailer that you could take to the shipper for your load. Rates now seem to suck, number of loads sucks. Also trailers are trashy. My current trailer only has pins locking on left side. Right side pins are slightly lower than the holes to lock the tandems and its a freaking spring suspension, not even air ride.