Know what you are getting into

I recently had a trainee quit because Trucking was mostly what he expected, but nothing like what his family at home expected.

Many questions are being asked about where Prime customers are, do we go certain places? whats hometime like?

This is entirely from a COMPANY DRIVER perspective/experiance.

You get 1 day off for every 7 under dispatch.
You can take no more than 4 days off in a row (unless its an emergency cleared with your fleet manager)

It was suggested to me by my fleet manager, when I started over a year ago, that some drivers go home for 3 days every 3 weeks.

I like to stay out longer (6-8 weeks) From what I can tell, Ironpony stays out longer than 3 weeks. I dont think either of us can say with any certainty that there are company drivers who are doing this 3 wk on 3 days off with any regular frequency... I havent met any yet.

When you are ready to go home, you notify your Fleet Manager (ours likes to know 10 days out, and I always give a little more notice)

The Fleet Manager works on getting you home for your time off. This means putting together a puzzle of the next load or two, even maybe three to get you close to home. Sometimes its precises, sometimes its within a day or two of your request (my experiance has been always a day or two early)

After unload, trailers are either dropped at the location of delivery (If that particular customer is a location that we do drop and hooks) or they find an alternative customer nearby that does do Prime drop and hooks.

Company drivers will not be going home under load (and this is not under requested time off). If you happen to live in an area and you are passing through, you can expect to visit your family in a truck stop or similar location for taking a break... you are responsible for a load, so you wont be sleeping in your bed.

There is a nice little card (certificate of qualifications) that we sign and keep in the truck the deals with brake adjustment... People fail to read the second part... it ALSO deals with breaks under load

I quote

"In Compliance with FMCS regulation 295.2 you are hearby notified that you are relieved from any and all duty when making meal or routine stops while enroute to a destination. The duration of your relief shall not be less than 10 minutes nor more than 1 hour and 30 minutes. The meal or routine stops may be logged as "off duty" time"

So, while under load, technically any time away from the truck for more than 1.5 hours is without authorization.

Now I dont know if my trainee's family expected him to be passing through more regularly.... seeing how he lives in Chicago he had a better chance than living in 90 percent of the rest of the country... it just wasnt going to happen with any regularity unless he requested home time.

Honestly, the only time you can expect to get home is when you request it (at a minnimum 3 weeks between requests)... you would better suited to operate under this assumption when coming to Prime.

We do have regional and dedicated routes. I dont know much on the regions except the western 11 (thats a lot of space) and I couldnt tell you how to get a dedicated routes... but I do know they dont give out the dedicated accounts to new hires/low men on the totem pole.