Putting it behind me ~ Hello Pride Transport

Here I sit at the Sleep Inn at West Valley. I'm starting orientation with Pride tomorrow. I'm gonna try and keep this thread up to date with my experience with them. Here's what I can tell you already.

They aren't a mega carrier, they have approx. 250 trucks. Took the train to orientation instead of the big grey dog which is a major upgrade right up front over most carriers. Nice hotel room that I don't have to share with anyone. Felt sorry for the guy going to CR England I ran into waiting for a taxi to go to the hotel(Pride reimburses for the taxi too), he's got to stay in a bunk house. It amazes me how two brother's can run their companies so differently(Pride is owned by Jeff England)

Plan for me is to give it till Summer and if I like them as much as I think I will I'll move to SLC.

 

Yes pride is owned by Jeff England who is the brother of the CEO of CR England. But as others have stated they couldn't be more different. Pride has a total of 9 O/O's, they all have show quality trucks and Jeff has stated many times that he will never have a lease program. They also have several show quality Pete's and KW's. The main fleet is mostly Cascadia's w/ DD15's with a few pete 386's, KW T600's, and ProStar's thrown in for variety. The pete's and KW are '07 and are gonna be gone by Q1 2011, they have 6 brand new prostars as a trial but as of now they are getting more Cascadia's.

From what I've seen so far Pride treats you like an adult. For example instead of being bussed/van'd from terminal to motel and back for orientation they ask who's driving and toss you the keys. Everything is direct and to the point, they make it clear as to what they expect from you and what you can expect from them. I found it telling reading their mission statement that mentioned employees four times but didn't get around to the word customer till the final sentence. Another thing that impresses me a lot is that from owner on down, 95% of all management have CDL and at least a year of OTR under their belts.

They have a real wash bay(human's inside of it, who would have thunk it) and you are expected to run your truck thru it every time your thru salt lake, which the way they run seems to be every week to 10 days max. If for some reason your out of the SLC area longer then that they will send you to a truck wash if it's needed on a case by case basis.

From talking to the drivers suffling thru the yard we've met in the last two days miles don't seem to be an issue. I do wish the pay scale was higher but starting at 34 cpm is by no means bottom of the barrel and I think the math probably backs up the fact they have 2-4k more miles per month to offer their drivers makes up for it. Their advance system is a little different to, You can draw $60 dollars at a time and it reloads 3 times a week if you take it before the days it reloads.

On a personal note, I passed my DOT exam just fine and got a 1 year. It was a real struggle to get the sleep center to fax over my sleep study info though, so a word of advice to anyone going to any company for orientation. Get a complete copy of your file from your sleep center if you have had a study done.