Pride Transport

Well the deal is that if you take your home time in there area if service then you get the 5k sign on bonus paid out over 2 years. So if they give me a truck and a load up to Spokane, WA then they admit that I live in there area of service and I get the 5k. If they fly me home then I get free plane tickets and no bonus. I already signed on with the expectation that I wasn't getting the sign on bonus so either way I will be happy.

 

Well they run mostly in about 30 some states. The only place they don't have loads to is the South. They have a dedicated Southwest fleet, a Western 11, an OTR fleet, and PDS (Pride Dedicated Services). They may have more specialized fleets that I don't know about yet.

 

My paychecks during Phase 2 were from 650-815 after taxes were taken out but the average seemed to be 725 for me.

 

So I finished my training with Pride. My mentor already had planned to get the 31st of October and the 1st of November off for home time so that delayed me a bit. They ended up getting him home midday on the 29th so it was a 3 and a half day delay. During my mentor's home time, which did not count as my home time, Pride was eager to pay for a hotel room for me which was very nice.

So I started my training in Phase 1 on September 28th and finished on November 7th. It went by pretty quickly. My mentor was awesome and Russ, the person in charge of the program, was very good about keeping track of what was going on and answering questions.

I did the written test on the morning of the 7th during my 10 hour break and met my dispatcher about midday. I expressed my desire to get home as it was nearing 7 weeks since I had left. He seemed very nice. So I went out for my road test at 2pm and got back by 3:30pm. By the time I got back my dispatcher already had me 2 loads lined up to get me home on the edge of their area of service. I couldn't believe it. Without even knowing me, my dispatcher had asked the load assigner for a favor to get me home and boom, it was done. So I got a load from Ogden, UT to Ontario, CA then one from LA, CA to Auburn, WA, Kent, WA, then Spokane, WA. 2100 miles and my ticket home.

As to my truck it turned out phenomenally. So I got to try out the new 2020 when they traded my mentor's old 2019 out as I mentioned earlier. It worked great but of course there are pros and cons of a different truck. Anyways, when they gave me my truck number I couldn't believe it... Yep, it was my mentor's old truck! A 2019 Freightliner with 197,000 miles on it. Plus, somebody had been assigned the truck since he traded out, had an inverter installed, then probably left the company. So I got the inverter for free.

Since I get to take the truck home, I got approved for the 5,000 bonus.

When I was in the training program and new that it was going to go well considering how great Pride was handling and I liked my particular mentor a lot. I think that if someone else was in the same situation but got a mentor they weren't compatible with then Russ would definitely get that person a new mentor. Going into solo driving my main concern was to get a good dispatcher who would give me home time then run me a ton of miles. Well, I got everything I asked for there too but I can't promise that all of the dispatchers are great. The three that I know about, mine, my mentor's, and a friend of mine who is a former student of my truck driving school, are all awesome so that's all I know.

So I'm taking 5 days of home time when I get up north then probably another 4 or 5 in late December. But when I get a good amount of solo time in I'll post an update with the miles I'm getting and what not.

Oh one more thing about the cameras in the trucks. So the 2020 had a forward facing camera and when I was doing paperwork prior to my road test they showed one video that it had recorded of me. It had a following less than one second trigger. The video was 20 seconds long so it didn't have any context. I didn't like it because I couldn't tell if the guy had just pulled in front of me before it started or what. I'm assuming he did. Then they rate you a safety score based on how many distance warnings and what not you get. I don't really like that at all either. My safety score was about 179 and should be under 100. How does that number get calculated? I was running the gorge in Arizona every night at least once through the construction zone. That is 1 to 2 collision warnings every time I'm cruising through the curves at 45 MPH and the cones are in front of me. So I'm not a big fan of the cameras except in event of an accident. Fortunately my truck now doesn't have one so I don't have to worry about that for a long long time.