Prime - Only newbies sing the praises

The MB is where management resides and where newbies are exposed to all the glitter prime got. it has a good cafeteria/restaurant overlooking an artificial fountain. there is a free but very small movie theater where the stuff thats shown looks more like bootleg movies. poor resolution. pool tables for pay. nice basketball court, cheap laundry, 12 hr sleep bunkers and other small conveniences. make you wish prime treated you this way forever but only lasts until you leave the building.

 

When I joined this company I was sure it was on the up and up but experience taught me different. If I had a dollar for every time they moved figures from the revenue columns to the expense columns I'd be a rich man by now. I mean paying for reefer fuel and not being reimbursed, thats criminal! BTW the drunken lying hick managing the skid/training pad is Jim Olson. Now there's a card!

 

how many trucks do they have and why do they keep hiring so many people?

 

Prime drivers have their own website/forum. There are several Prime "cheerleaders" on there that claim they are doing real well. "Dr. Zebra" is the website owner and is also a fleece operator, and head cheerleader.

 

do you have their website address?

thanx

 

All I can say to Missouri - is BITE ME.

I'm not a shill - company driver. Getting paid well, having a great time.

No one at Prime is drunk on company time. Office personnel have the option of imbibing any time they'd like after work hours. U2 and I are CDL drivers, and we don't.

The "Millenium Buiilding" is a really nice terminal - lots of amenities. If you like to hang out, there's a gym, pool tables, TV rooms, theater, and cafeteria. The steaks are great. Personally, I'm at Prime to make money, so I don't spend much time there.

Yup, lots of jerks who get big $$$ signs in their eyes, and sign the lease without thinking about how it works. You're running a small business, and a settlement check is cashflow into a business - not a paycheck. If you plan on spending it on whatever that doesn't involve the business, you're sunk. If you do the due dillegence on how the industry is working right now, it's easy to see that freight rates won't support a lease on new truck running solo freight. So if you don't do your homework and screw yourself, then that's your problem. No one hides that fact at orientation.

I've been running 2500 - 3000 miles a week pretty consistantly through the economic turndown. And yup, I had some weeks below that during the last quarter '08 and the first quarter '09. Nothing like the sitting around and low/inconsistant miles I hear from the guys at CRST, CRE, Marten, etc. I get home time regularily - when I want it. So I don't know what you guys are talking about - Prime has always treated me fairly. Training pay beats all the other companies I hear about -and it will take most folks years to catch up to our per-mile rate if you are starting out at Swift or Werner. We're not forced to drive teams like US Express or Trans AM. I've never had to drive a junker, and my maintenance concerns have always been taken care of.

That being said, I can't say if this is a stepping stone to something else, or I'll be here until I retire. This is a second career to me, and I'm enjoying it. So this being said, don't be continuing the personal attacks. I can only attest to my experience at Prime. And when it comes to employment I've been around long enough to know a crap deal when I see one... it's not Prime. Sorry if you are an ex-Prime employee with a bad experience - it can happen anywhere, but I think you should probably look at yourselves and wonder what you did to screw it up.

 

We were up to neary 4000 tractors in all three divisions (flatbed, tanker and reefer) - reefer is by far the largest division. I understand they trimmed the fleet down a bit to around 3500 over the last six months or so.

Including teams thats something like 4500 to 5000 CDL drivers, so if we run say about 20 to 50 people through orientation a week thats a fairly low churn rate. Keep in mind a good proportion of the people brought into orientation won't make it through due to DAC and MVR problems, medical concerns, etc. I recall one gal in my orientation group wanted to go company driver, and left because she couldn't have her dog with her.

We've lost a lot of lease operators this last year - most folks were used to average freight rates above $1.50 per mile last year... that's decreased dramatically, and you just can't support a new tractor lease on $1.00 per mile or less, unless you're teaming.

 

If you had read the lease, you would have seen the clause that says YOU pay for the reefer fuel. BTW... its federal law that all provisions in a lease agreement involving a CMV are disclosed at the time you sign the lease - so you have no one to blame but yourself for not reading it.

 

been listening to this same song and dance all thru the 80's till now.and the fools keep on coming thru the doors

 

And which song and dance would that be, perchance?