Hello? Im heading to Prime

It is more dangerous, I agree... but it is a fact of life in trucking. The burden is on the Trainee. Prime Safety dept. drills this in your head, if you feel you are in an unsafe situation, report it. If you are tired (any driver) pull over. Arrangements can be made.

They like to qoute, "There is no load hot enough that wont cool down in a ditch on the side of the road." Which means there is no timetable on a load that is so important that you ignore the safety of yourself, equipment and load.

These customers/distributors have late night and early appointments so they can process the freight, and get it out to their stores on their trucks first thing in the morning.

A fair way of breaking up the night duty while team driving is 10 on 10 off... That way your drive time will shift a couple hours a day and you still get your 10break... even with fuel stops and breaks its enough of a shift that every couple days you have a full day of daylight, or a full day of night driving, and the rest is a mix.

I think its fair to have a trainee do a week straight of night driving, but first you have to build them up to it. Its something every trainee should do once. Its just like building them up to an 11 hour drive. These situations dont happen everyday or even every week but you will eventually get yourself into one of these situations and you should have some idea of what it is like.

If its a day of straight driving (solo), I like to start at 4am. I dont have a problem with night driving, I do this because it is really hard to get a parking spot at a Truck Stop after 2200 or sometimes earlier.

If your trainer and you dont click or have problems... sure it may waste sometime but Prime will get you another. But if you feel what you are doing is unsafe or illegal its your responsibility to report it.

 

I only did 60k of training. I had already decided to wait a bit before going lease, and I was going to be solo company anyway, I might as well "cut the cord" from my trainer.

I could have accumulated the last 20k more quickly by sticking with my trainer and the advantage to that being company would have got me to .34/mile quicker.

While B, I got .12/mile team pay or $600, whichever was greater. Upgraded to A and got .30/mile base pay (there are a few other pays like fuel bonus, drop pay etc.) At 80k I went to .34/mile.

From here on out there are regular raises based on accumulated miles. I think 120k is the next pay raise.

The fuel bonus is pretty nice and gets me a few more pennys per mile each week up to 4 cents based on MPG.

 

You get 10k credit for the permit phase. I got my CDL the first week of May and was back for upgrade by the second week of July.

Home time will slow your progress.

Now if you have experience, there is a sliding scale at how much time you have to train. Mostly depending on how long you have been out of a truck.

A no lapse between your last driving gig and Prime is usually no time with a trainer.

Last I heard we were not taking any driving school grads with no experience. Something about safety numbers are much better for in house students.