Prime- only newbies sing the praises 2

This is the toughest business in America - and I'm sorry, but anyone who jumps into it without preparation and who thinks they can just push the hammer lane for all it's worth is going to fail.

Thanks Billsgirl. Good luck to you and yours in the future.

 

Thanks for the good wishes Halfburn.

I grew up in this area and have always heard good things about Prime. I have known a few drivers and also heard about alot of drivers at Prime (through the grapevine) that loved their jobs.

...that being said... I know that every company (not just trucking industry either) has problems. No company is ever perfect, and no company is good for every employee. At any company, there is always someone that gets the shaft. My heart goes out to those folks, and I wish them well in whatever they do next.

I am hoping to get into Prime's training program shortly after the new year. I shoudn't have any problems... my history, health, and such are good. I want to drive for their Company Reefer side.

I will certainly let you know how it goes. Thanks again for the good words.

 

i worked for prime for a while. started out as a lease op. in 2003 - 2005 and made a reasonable living, if you call being on the road for months at a time reasonable. i had a great dispatcher, mr. rillii. then he left the company. so i went and got my own authority and still used prime as my broker 2005 - 2008, BIG mistake!! suddenly i was less of a person. this new fool of a dispatcher would try and tell me that it was profitable to go to florida on a 1.25 load and turn around with one of those .69 loads of tropicana! avg pay = .97. i argued back with the numbers for staying out of florida, usually avg 1.10. how does it behoove me to go to florida. same with newengland states. the good loads existed, i know, i had a friend on "the inside" who could pass info on to me about available loads and i caught my dispatcher several times passing over great paying loads for mediocre loads. when i confronted him about it on several occasions, i got different answerd each time. we NEED to move this load, (then get a rookie to haul it, or a company man) its all thats available (WRONG!! [to myself] my inside man has told me load number 34567890 is here and available) i tried changing dispatchers, but prime wouldnt do it. am i not the o/o? are not the decisions about MY company MY decision? apparently not. eventually they ran me into the ground. i would deliver a load on friday and SIT till monday or even tuesday, then get a load that delivered on friday again. you try and take this to a higher authority within prime and what you get is a conference call with all the big wigs there and having them all back each other up with horse hocky. hell, the dispatcher out right lied about load availability when i knew darn well better. did not want to endanger my "inside man's" job, so i could never refute it.

all in all, prime was a good place to get my class A, but once you got it and put in your one year so you dont have to pay for the training, about $3700, GET THE HELL OUTTA THERE!! and NEVER EVER use them as a broker. find yourself a little mom and pop shop where they call you by name, not a truck number. i have and i am making just as good money as i did there, minus all the B.F.S

i swear they have two people who work there and their only job is to find a way to screw all the drivers out of a nickel everyday. multiply that by the number of drivers over the course of a year and thats a mighty nice vacation for rob lowe and family

 

Well; said driver. well said...

 

You had an "inside man"? Sounds pretty far fetched.

So how do you know your "inside man" wasn't lying about the loads? Or maybe the load was gone by the time your "inside man" got the load number, relayed it to you, and you asked your dispatcher about it.

I'm just saying... you don't know for sure. Why would your dispatcher care which loads you get or don't get?

 

Okay CJ. You're probably right. I'll concede you and Immelmann all of those points. Sorry Immelmann.

I just wonder what benefit a dispatcher would get to play favorites... is it just the "good ol' boy" network that you are speaking of?

If so... I wonder if Immelmann's inside guy was a dispatcher also? And, if so, why couldn't he request to switch dispatchers to get his buddy?

Hell, I haven't even stepped into a truck yet... and I guess I'm already tired of hearing about all of the conspiracies and favoritism and such!!!!

 

Happens everywhere to one extent or another. I hear a lot of griping by the lease-op side about how all "the good loads" are being assigned to company drivers. I hear a lot of griping by company guys about how all "the good loads" are being assigned to the lease-op drivers. Any way you cut it, someone has to haul that load to Florida, and welfare-juice pays better for a lease-op than dead-heading out at your own expense.

It's not so much that one guy or another is getting "all the good loads" as much as it is the economy sucks all over, and everyone is getting tired of it.

 

That is pretty much what I figure... it has gotta be mostly because of the economy... and everybody is testy.