PAM : 7 month report

I must say it has been an adventure. You learn on the ROAD not at school. C=1 was a joke, but they had three really good fellows there. It is the company and PAM in collusion that extract 6 grand from you. NEWBS!!! Go to Community College and get your truck driving license. Its cheaper and you GET MORE Experience driving. !!!!
PAM has good health insurance and that is about it. If you can slog three years in with them, you will probably get a newer truck and a steady Dispatcher/DM. The starting pay is 26 cents a mile, let me say that again TWENTY SIX CENTS a mile. At Swift you get 32 to start with the same problems and same insurance, ect. (My friend Matt works for them). As a NEWB you will be "turfed" on weekends for about two months until you learn to ##### enough to get more miles. Its happenstance also, my team member now, got 1800 to 2400 miles a week, I was averaging less than 1800, very poor pay after your health insurance and taxes are pulled. I have now been teaming for four and three quarter months. The first month was a nightmare with this kid I went to C-1 with. The boy was a pig. Piggy truck, bad habits, stink......luckily a situation came up ( I forgot to renew my temp and had to get a new one, with a two week wait in another state...my fault, stupid) and I got a new partner. Very good guy. We are both the same age and keep our truck clean, we stay up on our paperwork and the pay is increasing (however we are sitting in a TA in VA right now with no new load as a FedEx load was a three day pull and we arrived a day and a half early to find the terminal closed until Mon. A.M.) and even though we have been screwed twice on home time, they have gotten us there and a few "truck repairs" have extended our time. Our truck runs, but she is a 2008 and with nearly 500K, the problems are starting to arise. Our blower motor for our cab heater is out. PAM takes a long time to fix this stuff. We were told to take an overweight load and "burn off" fuel to even the 600 pounds we were over (could have refused but then no miles!), it was late at night so I chanced it. It worked out. PAM will not be your advocate. They give you a piece of equipment, good or bad, and expect you to take your crappy four weeks of training with mostly poor trainers (mine only let me back the truck nine times in a month and on his exit report said "I let you back up twenty times right?" and I agreed just to get the hell out of that crappy mess he lived in, blecch. I personally would not pick PAM again. A friend from HS trains for them and my other friend works for SAIA after his first two years with USA truck and they both tell me about this PAM trainer driving on his students logs, running overweight loads and other sketchy doings. I have met three drivers from PAM who have stayed over three years, they must have gotten the lucky draw I guess as they said they had a tough first year like anyone and just decided to stay. One said he gets dicked on miles all the time, so I took the bulk of what I have heard and have boiled it down to them being a crappy company, even though they have been in the top ten profit makers for three years now. They certainly don't invest in new drivers. The last I heard they have a 38% retention rate for new drivers ( I have spoken with many that leave after/are leaving after six months) and that is getting worse. Team drivers like me make 17.5 cents a mile and a decent paycheck means you have to get at least 3800 miles or more a week. We have started to get that, but after busting our hump on a late load (because of PAM not having empties at the Laredo, TX yard for 15 hours, taking us OFF the load, then BACK ON the load and then a blow out in San Antonio, TX, we finally got on the road). I bribed the dude at the docks with some cash to stay open and unload our stuff. I did it because I have personal pride in getting a challenge done. That cash means I have something to tell the next company, minus some details that I can get the job done. So, we get an "Awesome job guys" on doing the nearly impossible and then get turfed in VA for two days.......that is how you will be rewarded at PAM. Not with more miles, not with better pay, just an "Atta boy". Don't blow big money to work for these people. There are even private companies that will send people to school and train them to work for their company and you will get better pay and steady miles right away. PAM is the butt of many jokes and many truckers have told me "I don't know why you are staying". I want this year clear and TONS of good paying companies will see that I toughed out a year with PAM and their crappy wages, constantly changing DM's, management changes, trimming the weekend staff and generally cutting everyone's throats at the expense of the profit of the company and they will know exactly what I want NOW and exactly what I will NOT put up with. The one thing I will say is that I could break my contract right now with no penalty and have known how to do this for years. If you want to break your contract, you can contact me here and for fifty bucks I will show you how. IT WORKS. In the end, do WAY more research than I did. I let a friend talk me in to a decision I should have been weighing very heavily. I am away from home four weeks at a time, I have to cram all my home duties, chores and relationships into four days and it will be that way until late June. CAVEAT EMPTOR, CAVEAT SUBSCRIPTOR!!!!


CUDA