Prime's lease deal. The math gets done.

Dave Ramsey owed $1.2 Million short term (Tennessee real estate) I figure his bankruptcy is way more.

Point: Many of these financialist have gone into bankruptcy and never paid. Suzy Ormond etc.

Pay off or limits those debts since the interest rates are only going to get higher with our inflated Obama dollar.

 

My fathers loan was unsecured - but then again, he had something most people don't - a 20+ year relationship with the same bank.

Credit cards are not a substitute for good planning period - if you get someone you is smarter than you... and you should... telling you something like "now is not a good time" or "you need to do this" listen. But this is a "I want it now" society that's why credit cards succeed.

You could tie up a lot of "future" money in those credit cards you think are so good for a bailout...

Let's see Minimum Monthly Payments compared to a $278 (I called and asked hm) a month Small Business Loan / Line Of Credit that doesn't increase because you had to take some more money... hmmm, by all means use the credit card.

Your credentials make me want to run in the other direction. You're doing the "use what you have" small business loan instead of a sound plan.

 

Sorry it appears that way. The several pages of text to demonstrate otherwise would make for a very long and boring read on a truck forum.

But also I don't see anyone making much progress in general if they will not use what is actually available to them. There are a lot of young entrepeneurs out there doing very well (and 4 times that many losing their butts of course), and not everyone has a small bank they deal with. In fact most don't by definition of a large bank.

 

Maybe they should.

 

I'll give Prime, Inc this. It is the best place to send new student drivers. Much better then the other BigBox companies. The newbies get put with a trainer in about 5 days, and they learn in a real-life application. To me, this makes much more sense then going to a school for 5 weeks, and come out not really knowing anything but how to pass the test.

I have sent friends to Prime, and so far, they have been treated very fairly. One of these friends has just returned from overseas duty in Iraq, and is a hero with a medel. Prime does not know anything about it.

 

The minimum someone should be with a trainer is somewhere in the 6-8 week range, and only after attending an accredited school. The only exception I see to shorter training is if, only if, they were in the military and had driven the larger vehicles for a while...but even still, the military uses Allison automatics and travels in convoys, and doesn't have to deal with some of the PINTA facilities we see here. Plus they don't go mono-e-mono with a pack of 4 wheelers or trying to maneuver some of the city streets looking for the customer. I take my hat off to anyone that has served time in the military, especially those that have seen action in a hostile country taking fire. They are true heros in every sense of the word, but that doesn't prepare you anywhere enough for this job. It may help you keep your cool during stressful times where you have to think and react fast, but that's only a part of this job.

Having experienced the joy of working for Robt. Lowe, I wouldn't recommend his company to anyone. But that was 6 1/2 years ago, it may have changed. But I don't think a leopard, even a rich leopard, would change his spots.

 

That would be the time that a new driver spends in the classroom prior to getting into a cab, and with a CDL instructor in individual instruction, on the job at Prime. After that there's a minimum of another 12 weeks with a trainer, but the time varies in all cases since the training milepoints are based on mileage.

How about someone whose driven a large commercial vehicle for say 10 years?

You've made your point about Prime, and I'd say that one can find someone who has a problem with every transportation company out there (go check out the Swift threads.) I've also found that for every dissatisfied worker, there's at least one person who will tell you the same company is a joy to work for. In the case of Prime, I know of hundreds of satisfied drivers.

You posted last week that you only managed to net something like 14.7 cpm driving for Prime. What did you do to end up with that bad a showing?

 

You guys would love Watkins-Shepard. 10 days training then solo. Off you go.

 

Having started driving right after getting out of the military I can tell you first hand the 2 have nothing to do with each other. I drove a bunch of different things while I was in for 8 years from the jeeps before they were gone to the HEMMITS, big ### 8 X 8 vehicles, and a bunch of tracked vehicles. The only thing driving did in the military was teach me to show respect for the size of the vehicle you are driving and use caution around the other idiots out there.

I don't ever remember having backed up to a dock with any of them, most are side loaded / unloaded anyway... nor do I remember having to find a customers building in downtown LA during rush hour while I was in...

Driving a bus in Berlin did teach me how to put up with a huge bus (one of those that pivot in the middle) in little streets though.

I appreciate those that do / are serving, but I hate the "he/she was in the military" catch phrase like it means they are some sort of "trained for everything" super human.

The ones that "freak out" about a situation and get vocal about it get put on KP duty, so you learn not to react to anything... being shot at and protecting your life does not translate into the ability to drive a truck or any other job except maybe a police officer...

 

As for the training time, I was mostly talking about student/trainees. If you have 10 years, even if it was a long time ago...it's like falling off a bike, once you learn, you never forget. The only difference is getting use to the new HOS regulations that have taken effect, that is if you've been gone since before they changed.

As for my bad showing, freight rates were at rock bottom. It wasn't long after 9/11 when I was there, and the economy was down. I did everything imaginable to encourage my FM to get me better paying loads, but it wasn't as if he was sticking me on these loads on purpose, there just wasn't that much good paying freight around. That coupled with the fact I live in FL...(a freight desert) didn't help. The closest load out was the OJ plant in Bradenton... which paid $.60/mi total, minus Primes percentage.(that's the average the gross pay broke down to) Occasionally you'd get a seafood load out of Jax, or Savannah, GA. But the only way to get to better paying loads meant a Loooooong deadhead. Then that good paying load, became a bad paying load because on percentage you aren't paid for empty miles. It was so bad, I often stayed out 6 or 8 weeks, just to try to get a good run so I could afford to take a couple days off.

I have spoken to many drivers where I work now that came over from Prime even recently... According to the stories I've heard from them, it isn't that much better now than when I was there. Unfortunately I have to dig up the old pay-sheets...somewhere in the bottom of the file cabinet, so I don't have exact numbers.