Prime Tanker Experience So Far...

Buy all the cheap fuel you can, when you encounter it inroute. The price of fuel is so volatile that you can't just buy a little and hope for the best. Another thing people do is to not buy fuel just before cutoff on Tuesdays... running for the short term on a long term lease is futile. The fuel will be billed on the week the trip is payed against, so not buying cheap fuel on a Tuesday won't do squat for you.

The best way to find cheap fuel stops is to use the fuel price by state page on the website. Subtract the state fuel tax from the listed pump price (the corporate discount is already taken off) and use that figure to find the cheap prices. You can get your fuel costs down quite a bit by playing the state fuel taxes off since the oil companies will depress their price to keep things competitive between different locations across state lines.

Macro 27 is great if you're in a hurry. Prime will sometimes load the dice though, if they need to increase the volume of the sales at a given location to meet their contractual obligations at a certain fuel stop... you may not be getting the lowest price. Also, macro 27 is built to keep the company drivers from running out of fuel, so it's rather conservative about where it selects a fuel stop. You can do better working your own fuel plan.

http://www.thetruckersreport.com/truckingindustryforum/prime/182163-leasing-at-prime-7.html#post2731540

 

Stuck in Decatur Indiana, seems the freight dried up for the week.i got time to checkout the fuel by state thing I guess.

 

Question for you. In the reefer div atm bit am definately interssted in switching to tanker. However I live in the SE and hear tanker only runs NE. Is that true?

 

Are there any company tanker drivers in the tanker division? Can you take the truck home for time off? I don't live near a metro area and I've looked at companies that want you to leave the truck at a terminal. That would be quite a drive for me.

Thanks

 

Yup, we have company tanker yankers... remember it's more a regional deal like Gunmetal mentioned in post no. 25. I believe that tanker division probably holds to the same protocol for home time that reefer and flatbed uses. They find a load that delivers as close to your home as possible - you deliver, drop the trailer at an agreed-upon location, and then bobtail home.

 

Thanks, I'm about 4 hours Northwest of Chicago or 3 to 4 hours south of Minneapolis in a more rural area. If it was acceptable I could probably drop the trailer or leave the truck at a local farm co-op. I'm still in the looking stages with companies.

Thanks for the reply.

 

There are several tanker shippers around Chicago and a lot of cranberry juice comes out of Wisconsin.

 

Does prime haul both food grade and chemical? It's hard to find tanker jobs that take newbies. From what I've seen from Schneider I'm too far away from where they need drivers. I'm on the opposite side of WI away from the population. The west side is much more scenic though.