The Prime Flatbed Thread

Should've hit springmo by now I imagine, how's the accommodations? I've always been super jealous of the trainees at prime because the hotel and food was so good compared to what I had to go through to get my CDL. But then there's loads of guys complaining about it.

 

People will complain about everything. We got to the greyhound terminal at around 1300, the campus inn at 1320-ish.

We checked in, picked roomies, or were assigned roomies. Did our paper applications, and had the rest of the day to chill by 3.

Our room was swealtering because the heater was turned up to 90. But it was clean and neat. They gave us a pick between ham and turkey hogies. I'm happy. That's more than most companies would do.

 

Wow, a load of brick.
Covered up the hole with some gorilla tape. Wasn't really expecting it to stay on in the cold and the wind, but it did.

 

The motel isn't exactly 5 star but it was clean, the food was good for being free or cheap, and there are plenty of dining and shopping options nearby in addition to fire & ice and the cafe at the terminal. I can't say I've experienced training elsewhere but I can't think of many things to complain about with Prime.

Now that I think of it, the first day or two of orientation is pretty fast paced and the people who handled my first drug test screwed up and forced me to wait an extra week to start training. They yanked me and one other guy out of a class to get retested, initially making us think we screwed up somehow. Overall a good experience though, plus they reimbursed me for the ~1000 mile drive.

 

They used to reimburse up to the cost of a bus ticket and I've heard they only do like .10/mile now.

 

These are really soft and inadequate for protection on hard edges. I wouldn't pay for them...

 

They're good for a couple things. Namely running them under chains on coil loads to get around chain guards. Also it's generally advisable to pick up a dozen or so plastic chain guards as they make life much easier in steel loads.

 

Plastic chain guards? What do they look like?

Where do you put all that stuff?

 

The headache racks at prime are massive. My current setup I have a covered wagon so I built some storage space in the front of the trailer to hold all the gear I don't use regularly. I actually put a rope through the plastic chain guards and tie them up to a rib in the middle of my covered wagon and leave my chains and binders on the deck since they're not at risk of falling off.

 

Hey Prime board. Researching which company to start my CDL career with... Heard a lot of good things about Prime.

The Major bonus for me is that i now found out that Prime takes new drivers into the Flatbed division.

I really think i would greatly enjoy the extra challenges and work of straping, chaining, and tarping! Being that im a contractor now, i really dont shy away from hard work...

I do have a question, For each of the Company and L/O, O/O about hometime. Say about a year after training is complete, what does hometime look like? Any chance of being home weekends?

My 2nd question is are there any main terminals in the Chicago, North of Chicago, maybe even Rockford area?

Appreciate all the input and advice guys...

As many good things as i have heard about prime... the one negative that keeps coming up is hometime....