prime inc

At least what you've written is true to this point. "Sometimes I hear?" Where was that? At the truckstop???

If you're going to reply to threads like these, at least reply to the ones that you can speak to through EXPERIENCE. There's a huge difference between truckstop Bravo Sierra, and actually having driven for a carrier.

So... you're "experience" includes training at Prime then?

Then you'll know that it's some of the best training in the business... at least as judged by those who have gone through it. You might want to ask U2_exit or Sazook about that - they're trainers who post here. Or perhaps OpenRoadDreamer, or Dix, or many of the other student respondents who are actually going through that training now.

Lets see... "company slave for a year." Since just about every local company requires a minimum of 2 years driving experience for insurance purposes, then you might actually want to show some of that experience at one company?

How about the fact that if you stay at Prime for that year, your CDL instruction that would cost you thousands of dollars at a private school or community college is totally free, except for about $150 dollars for the permit fee and initial DOT physical - that you would spend at said private school or community college.

So... you know this because you spent how many years at Prime? It may be true at other carriers, but I and many others have found that statements like this aimed at Prime are total Bravo Sierra. My recruiter never lied to me - in fact I found that everything she had to say to my direct questions was absolutely truthful.

Yup, Prime is an OTR company in the business of moving refrigerated freight. OTH, any time I requested home time I got there when I wanted to with one exception... that time I was one day late.

In fact, to honor a request to be home at Thanksgiving one year, they paid me to drive bobtail from North Platte NE, to Denver CO. That's right. I said PAID me to go home.

From my hazy memory, because its been awhile since I was at this point...

If you get your CDL instruction through Prime, you're provided cash ($200 per week) to live on while on the road during instruction via a personal account on your fuel card - repaid at $25 per week once you're hired. You don't become a Prime employee until you've received your CDL. Room and board is provided for while you're in Springfield.

After you're in the training phase, its $600 per week before taxes, as long as you're available for dispatch - or 12-cpm over 5,000 dispatched miles per week.

As far as home time is concerned, yup, you can take it during training. However, most folks choose to finish their training before taking home time in order to get it done. You just have to coordinate that with your trainer and Fleet Manager.

If you come to Prime with a CDL as an inexperienced driver, you'll be paid $500 before taxes for the first month, before getting the bump to $600/12-cpm. They had a tuition reimbursement program for folks who went to a CDL school... it was a fixed amount - $750 if I recall correctly.

Once you've gone solo, the reefer division starts out drivers at 33-cpm solo. I'm not sure how that works with team drivers - never drove that way on the company side myself. There are differences in the payscale for flatbed and tanker division drivers, as well as other incentives. Company drivers are paid a fuel bonus for achieving anything over the 6.75 mpg minimum, on a sliding scale.

Very true... but if you get your training at Prime, that won't be a problem.

As mentioned, this is just to verify that you've got a chance to make it through the full background check. DON'T try to shine them on about anything. Prime uses professional investigators who are very good. And yeah, like BigJohn said, many folks are sent home for things that don't ring true.

They do a full employment verification - 3 years for folks new to the industry, motor vehicle records, criminal background. Just be very straight and up front with the recruiters about anything in your past. Also, you will have to complete the application again in pen and ink once you've arrived at orientation, so make sure you have any materials you need to refresh your memory with you. this needs to match your online application.

You'll drive 10,000 miles during CDL instruction - so 3 or 4 weeks say after orientation, you'll be back in Springfield to take your CDL drive test. That's done by the Missouri DOT. You'll receive a MO CDL, that you'll need to transfer back to your home state. That's a fairly painless process in most states.

After that, its now 30,000 miles with a trainer before you come back for the upgrade process to get your own truck and go out solo. Say 6 to 8 weeks depending on freight, holidays, etc.

 

When I post this advice that you picked apart, I do it in hopes that the new driver will take it for what it’s worth. It’s not perfect but I put it together to invoke thought and cause research and every single part of it is based on real stories I have read right here on the TTR Forum from drivers complaining about these things. Does it fit every single company? I can’t imagine it does. Does it cover every situation? Hell no. However it is full of information that will lead a smart person to do some research and uncover the facts as they relate to that person and the company that they choose.

Just because the OP, Booman asked about Prime does not mean he will choose Prime. Since he is new to the TTR Forum and most likely the industry I felt it wise to give my advice and let him take it for what it’s worth. I think anyone seeking facts would be wise to get multiple opinions and try and determine the credibility of the ones they are listening to. The fact that you can give firsthand information about Prime is a big plus for Booman. Thanks for sharing your facts and for giving me the chance to defend and clarify my post.

One thing that I should say, since all my experience has been as an owner/operator I have little use for Mega-Companies. IMHO, you are either part of the problem or part of the solution. Mega-Companies are part of the problem in our industry.

They subsidize their operations through training programs, tax credits and lease purchases. Then they cut rates and try to gobble up the competition while barely paying a fair amount to their drivers and lease operators. While you may not agree with what I have said, it is all factual and Prime is a prime example of companies buying up the competition. What is this paying less than 1.00 per mile to lease operators? That is what I ran for in the late eighties. The sad part is we are all starting to accept it since it is so commonplace. Neither drivers nor owner/operators will ever make what they are worth as long as companies compete on rate cutting.

 

You certainly didn't offend me! However, I will take issue with folks who start with statements about training companys in general and focus them on specific companys in particular. Since I have experience with Prime, I tend to stay out of the threads of companys I don't have experience with. I certainly don't take issue with the fact that in general you have credibility here.

In general, folks who take issue with the training companys don't have experience working or driving for them. If I have overstepped the line here, mea culpa.

They certainly have changed in the few years I've been with them. That being said, I can't speculate on why they passed over hiring a driver with your obvious qualifications. You must not have fit their hiring profile. Prime certainly does hire experienced drivers, and values their continued employment. I know many drivers with Prime who have well over twenty years with the company.

That statement is precisely why we are having this discussion. Without any experience driving for Prime, you automatically assume that we are "treated wrong" because there are more than say 100 drivers at Prime? The assumption that any large corporation in America is evil because of its size is rampant. While I may not have 35 years behind the wheel, I've worked for large corporations in the past and I'm quite aware of my surroundings enough to know when workers are ill-treated. I've seen more ill-treatment of workers at smaller concerns than larger ones in my experience.

Indentured servitude? Please! There is a huge difference between economic slavery, and conforming to the requirements of an employment contract. When you make the generic statment that working for a carrier for a year after receiving what is worth thousands of dollars, then imply that this is little more than slavery without knowing anything about the character of that organization, you do a disservice to anyone who reads the post.

Keep in mind that the quality of the education received is dependent on the organization providing it. A poorly run community college can quite easily provide a much worse education than a top notch company organization.

Specifically you make these generic statements in a thread entitled "Prime Inc." without disclosing that you have no knowledge of whether those statements have any bearing on the quality of driving education that is provided by Prime.

This is required information, so that the OP and anyone else reading it can judge the veracity of your statements about Prime Inc. This should have been disclosed as the first line of your original response.

Well that works for you, I'm sure. When I talked to the recruiters, I did the same thing, and found nothing in their responses that triggered the suspicion that they lacked integrity. However, you state that you're not a "Prime Hater," but you didn't indicate in your original post that you may have an axe to grind here.

If you go through the threads in the Prime folder under company DAC reports, you'd find this very discussion. The folks who have joined the company in the last few months all agreed that their recruiters - different people than mine - were completely honest with them.

Now I'll agree with you on one thing... recruiters are sales people selling a company to a prospective employee. And as a group, they generally rate somewhere between used car salesmen and military recruiters for combat arms in a bad war. They've got something to sell, and it isn't pretty. MOST recruiters will tell you what you want to hear. At Prime, the general agreement among most of us on this side of the employment fence is that you will get the straight skinny.

Of course I understand how "it" works. 75% of what you just stated has nothing to do with the content written by the OP. He was asking about training, not gross annual figures vs CPM gross revenue.

BTW... if you take gross annual revenue and divide it by yearly average mileage, you'll get that gross annual revenue expressed in cents per mile.

You mentioned something about being reamed by an Army recruiter at the age of 17? I'll bet you didn't know squat about how to interview that recruiter at 17 - he could have sold you swamp land in Louisiana and you'd have bought it for the price of downtown Manhattan real estate. Its no different with anyone else - and unrealistic expectations from the trucking industry from young people will continue into the future.

I feel I'm treated well, and as such have not felt the need to move on yet. As long as the needs of this carrier and my own interests are served, I see no need to jump around.

Again, this is why I picked apart your post. The OP and other prospective trainees will see your original advice on a thread marked "Prime Inc." and will assume that they'll never get home again. While one's experience at any carrier can vary from one driver to the next, generally speaking I don't hear many complaints about it. Yet, when one applies the standard BS story, "Oh, you'll never get home," to individual companys without any experience to back that statement up, one does a disservice to the carriers operating with a bit of integrity and their prospective employees.

And that is good advice.

I think one would be well advised to get multiple opinions too. However, when offering advice, I'd thing that it would be valuable to disclose specific experience. And you know something? I've certainly offered my opinion about such wonderful organizations as CRE and Werner without specific knowlege of the conditions there - aren't we all somewhat guilty of knocking the MEGAs? LOL! Maybe we should all take a look here, and post at the beginning of something like this whether we are making general statements or have specific knowlege of a situation.

If I was the traffic manager of a large shipper, I think I might prefer to deal with one transportation concern than 100 knarly individuals. Less hassle. Now that's not to say that I agree with what the JB Hunts, Swifts, SNIs do to trucking - its just that they have a place in the industry as well.

I agree that any carrier that used collections on broken training contracts and lease purchase deals to subsidize their corporate income are total scum. I'm glad that I don't work for that sort of organization. By and large, the trainees that make it past orientation do get their CDL education at Prime. There is an opportunity to back out of the program at Prime after starting training as well - with no financial loss to the trainee. The really bad carriers won't do that. Once you sign the paper you're on the hook for the tution.

And while we're on the subject of those evil lease-purchase agreements, lets just put that one to rest as well. While there is a lease-purchase option at Prime, by-and-far most of us are just in a straight lease agreement. That agreement does specify a minimum gross income around the $1.00-per-mile point - but let me stress this - it is a floor only that you won't sink beneath. My contract states 95-cpm, the new contracts they just started signing are at $1.02 per mile MINIMUM. My year-to-date figure for gross income is $1.737 per mile; that's in the ballpark for what the load boards have been quoting for temperature controlled freight this year.

Lets take this a step further... yup, I know that there are places where I might make more. I also know if I owned my tractor, I could jump around like a flea in a dog pound, and my net would be a heck of a lot sweeter with a paid-off tractor. But for right now, this works for me. When I have my own capital invested in equipment - and that's a lot of money - I want to be able to enter that enterprise knowing enough about the business that I'll have a reasonable chance of success at it. IMO, if you can run profitably here, I don't think I'll have much of a problem elsewhere.

 

yeah well maybe you should be

 

Thanks Ironpony! You are right about an experience disclaimer when posting in a thread like this. I often do that and did not do it here. I will be more thoughtful of this in the future.

You posted a lot of useful information above. I agree with many of your points and see that you agree with several of mine. Maybe we aren't so far apart in our beliefs and thoughts. I am surprised by your YTD gross of 1.737 CPM.

 

I don't know but have seen posts saying that some students took three attempts.

 

dis, dat, and da udder ting......