Comments By Greenhorn Trucker

To me it is death, taxes, and pulling the muscle in your knee at a very bad time. It is almost like I am not meant to have knees that work properly, or the fact that moles are the devil.

PS... I would be all over getting you if it wasn't for the cigs :/. Maybe this is a sign to quit smoking haha

See I could deal with the smoking thing since I am a former smoker, and most smokers are pretty good about keeping the windows down while driving. But I am an anomaly LOL

Yeah Dave I went to the place and was told no by the owner himself that they do not hire any drivers without 2 years experience. From what I gathered talking to some of their drivers it has to do with some issues they had back a few years ago, although I do not know what exactly happened. I do have another place I have to call in the morning that does local only flatbed and they are willing to train to help get you a CDL, and they only run instate so it will be good practice of backing skills since I will be in and out of places.

If you come to prime with no cdl and go thru the PSD program I can assure you that you'll do the PSD with a reefer. At least you will REALLY WANT TO. Prime won't let PSD's drive loaded tanks so you can only drive them empty. That means taking 2-3x's longer to get your 75 required hours of driving time to test. Then you can do TNT with a tanker trainer. Not very many of those so you may wait awhile to get one. Also prime doesn't have alot of tank loads coming thru Springfield so if you come here and get your cdl thru the PSD program, you'll likely either : ride with another driver to meet your tnt trainer. Or they may bus you to them. I talked to one tanker driver that prime rented him a car to drive to Georgia to meet up with his TNT trainer.

So it sounds like going flatbed or reefer might be a better alternative then. Yeah right now I do not have my CDL other than my class b permit that I could upgrade to an a, however I dunno how much that would help honestly. Thanks Terry I guess that I will consider the other ones rather than doing tanker, I would rather be out there than waiting around or playing the shuffle game.

Whether you should get your permit or not is sometimes state specific. Ask your recruiter. Mine recommended getting my permit before I come and I'm from Oregon. They will make you redo the physical so, getting a physical now is really just for your own peace of mind. The transfer fee isn't as expensive as the permit itself. You'll transfer it to the state you train in.

See in MI, from what I was told when I got my class B permit, I had to have the physical in order to get my training permit, it is an odd system in this state so I guess it might be different everywhere. I am almost considering upgrading my permit to an A class with tanker and airbrakes as it might help in the long run, but I dunno if it will help or not. If I can just upgrade my permit once I get to Prime that would be half the battle right there, and I am sure it would be much cheaper as well (maybe). It should only cost me out of pocket here $30 to upgrade everything to get to that point, but I am not sure how much it will cost to get the hazmat cert and background check for that as well.

The first 10,000 really isn't 10k. It is 75 driving hours. I just finished that part. I didn't get to 10k. By the time I got back to test out I was well over 100 hours driving. We got allot of long runs in the beginning which didn't give me much backing practice. The last week we got put on a dedicated wall-mart account which got me allot of backing. Don't know why they tell you 10k miles when only 75 hours is mentioned after orientation.

I believe they say around 10k miles as that is about 75-100 hours worth of driving give or take, most likely it is whatever comes first the hours or miles. A lot has to do with how your trainer feels you are doing on the skills, this would be a good guess since if you are doing poorly the train will request that you do more than the 10K to help you learn. All this is speculation of course and I could have it completely wrong, just making an educated guess as to how most places I have contacted have done things.

I knew they did food grade tanks exclusively but just didn't mention it when I made the post, late night plus being tired made my thought process a bit scattered. Although I am not entirely sure why that should be should be overly important, unless it is limited loads? There is a local company, called Carry Transit, that is a local tanker company however they want minimum 2 years experience before they will even consider you, to me that is hurting them as there are trucks just sitting in the yard but that is their rule I guess. My thinking is that if there are a lot of folks going to Prime for just flatbed or refer and they are waiting for trainers that maybe going into tanker might be the better route to go and switching if I feel the need to get more miles, if that is even a problem at all for that division and of course provided I can switch after a certain time. Just mulling over thoughts in my head right now and seeing what sounds like the better option. Thanks for the insight!

I am wondering if the tanker division the Prime runs still only do the Northeast or has it expanded to more areas? I guess for me "based" in Michigan I would be considered Northeast so that wouldn't be a problem, however I would love to have some long hauls as well then be limited to just the same areas all the time. I cannot say I have seen Prime in my area but since I am in the middle of nowhere it does not surprise me either. I only put it down as a choice because I wasn't 100% sure what I wanted to pull yet, so I guess that makes it easier to change my mind now than later.. maybe not.

Man you guys all had real jobs and stuff.

I was working at Papa John's pizza for five years, and the only reason I am driving a truck now is because I got fired from that job. Talk about an income shock, I am now making over three times what I made delivering pizza all those years.

I is strange to say that my last job, in all honestly, did not pay all that well considering the length of time I was there, and doing the college thing has kind of demoralized me a bit since to me it was a waste of time now. Oh well time to move on to bigger and better things!

Until recently I was going to college for medical billing/insurance claims but got burned really hard by the school to where I couldn't finish, lets just say I was getting the run around while others, girls in the same field, were getting passed along without issues. Before that I worked 7 years in an eye glass laboratory owned by Ziess Optical, but driving four hours round trip plus working 8 hours was really kicking the crap out of me. Also with that job during the holiday we would typically work 7 days a week (exceptions of Christmas and New Years Day) 10 hour shifts. As far as before that I held the odd job here and there in the small town I grew up in doing mostly retail and food industry stuff, but I took the time to learn things on my own outside of work to keep me mostly entertained (AKA kept my nose clean). I had a dream long ago of owning my own video store but netflix came along and ruined that idea.... stupid netflix.