Info from L/O at prime, inc.

It'll be slowing down a bit during the holidays. We've been reasonably busy in January the last couple of years.

 

I had a similar situation. I gave my company 60 days notice between the birth of my granddaughter and their departure for Korea for two years (my son-in-law is in the Army) with the date I absolutely had to be in Oklahima City to say goodbye. They assured me over and over and guess what happened? I missed their flight and didn't see my granddaughter or daughter for 18 months - they were sent home early because of a serious North/South Korea spat. I gave them two weeks notice that same day and even with that, it took them 4 weeks to get me home.

These companies want on-time everything each and every time from us, but when it comes to on-time something from them, it's a crap shoot, even when they say "family comes first," like mine did. Family doesn't come first; freight does.

 

I'll bet you weren't running for Prime at the time, were you?

 

No, I wasnt. It was my first company and I made the wrong choice between Prime and..well, them. I regret it to this day.

 

Is it forced dispatch? If not do they give you options to choose from or do the give you a load and if you want a different one they give you another? Which pays more, flatbed or Ref? On the ref is there a lot of live load and unload or mostly D&H? Thanks

 

No, you can turn down a load.

When you turn down a load you go to the bottom of the local dispatch queue. That keeps folks from cherry-picking the best loads, and evens out risk the same way a mutual fund does in the market. FMs do have some say on whom gets which load.

Both divisions do pretty well with the economy not in a downturn. We get some of both live and D&H... we're mostly dealing with food so much of it does have to be delivered immediately, and pulled right off the trailer. How many days do you think fresh lettuce can sit in the trailer yard? We do have an aggressive detention policy, and the shippers/ receivers know that Prime will go after them for it. That gets us unloaded quickly in many places.