Shaffer or Prime?

JBS Carriers has a good reputation.
Here's a Texas regional ad:

Pay and advantages:

• .45/mi (all drivers)
• Typically 1 night home per week (varies) - not guaranteed to be on weekend
• Additional stops $20
• Detent & Layover pay
• No per diem
• Local Pay varies based on site and situation (generally $160/day)

 

Here's the primary running area for JBS Carriers OTR division, from their website:


[h=2]Hiring safe, qualified OTR drivers now[/h][h=3]Regional positions possible![/h]Running Region: Primary: CA, AZ, WA, OR, UT, NV and ID

 

I would advise staying away from both of them. Shaffer and Crete Carrier are together. Shaffer does the reefer side and Crete does the dry van side. Prime will offer you to lease a truck. 40% of Prime drivers don't fulfill their lease. You will not know if you are one of those 40% or not. Don't know much about JBS. I would suggest J and R Schugel out of Minnesota. I heard they were good outfit. I would go to layover.com or cdlpro.com. Hope that helps. Best of luck to you. The thing about Shaffer. You will run good one week and not do good the next week at all. Again, best of luck to you. Please stay away from any lease unless you have a lot of revenue put back for hard times.

 

I can tell you, I work for Shaffer. In my experience, they have been keeping me going. I get home when I want to, I am on the 21 day fleet, but stay out as long as I wish. The equipment is in good shape and they do take care of it. Both companies haul alot of the same freight, I see Prime trucks almost everywhere I go. I have a friend who works for Shaffer also, and he talked to Prime a couple months ago. After 1 phone conversation, the recruiter was already lining him up for orientation and pushing him to buy a truck.

There are some out there, that have had different experiences than I have and will probably be along to beat Shaffer down. I have been here for 12 years and never had a problem getting home, and get the miles I want. They do alot of Northeast though, and will try to leave you up there as long as they can. With the large population base up that way, you have to expect that alot of freight will head there. More recently I have been doing alot of Midwest to West (meaning Ohio to Utah and Texas to California). Rumor has it they just started a new Northeast Regional Fleet to handle most of the Northeast freight. I know they took my dispatcher and put him on that fleet. My opinion would be Shaffer over Prime easily.

 

How about these then, refrigerated outfits that run West Coast:

Tyson Foods - 70 mph trucks and all good reviews from drivers.

Navajo Express(new KW's with APU's) and Southern Refrigerated Transport - good and bad reviews; just depends on what the driver wants. Both do lots of Western states.

I'm neutral, just throwing ideas out to you.

 

I think Navajo Express was bought out by Swift.

 

No, Swift bought Central Refrigerated.