Profile For Adam B.

Before I got my CDL, I was working at Target making $10 an hour and doing Uber on the side. Between those 2 jobs, I was working 60-70 hours a week just to barely make ends meet. I felt trapped at Target, scared I was stuck making barely above minimum wage the rest of my life. I don’t recall how getting my CDL first crossed my mind but I do remember when I decided to pursue it. I’m not a people person, I like driving, I like traveling, I have no commitments that require me to be home all the time, and between the 2 jobs I was working, I was already working as much as a truck driver. Why not go for it? A local community college here had an introduction class for CDLs. It was about a week or 2 and covered getting the permit and a basic of what the job is like. Did that, liked it, so I jumped in and did the 8 week class for the actual CDL.

TNT was one of the hardest and probobly worst experiences I've ever had. I nearly quit Prime over it. I somehow survived though. After I completed TNT I vowed never to do team driving again, and I told my FM that after he asked me if I was interested in becoming a trainer or doing team loads.

I think the trainer you get makes the difference between a good and bad experience.

Just a heads up, we have a member here who got points for not prooerly logging his fuel time. Rainy, was he using paper logs?

The person Rainy is talking about is me. I got put OOS during a roadside level 2 for not logging my fuel stops and fueling on my 30. I did the math and I think that violation was 27 points on my csa record.

There's really no reason to get an overweight ticket. 2,000 over is alot and I would have ran back to the shipper or messed with the tandems. I think I ran 300 over once and felt nervous about getting caught at a scale.

I heard that new CDL drivers for prime inc have to buy certain gear like chains and locks. Is this true? How much does it normally cost?

It is true for Prime yes. The idea is since it's your equipment, you'll treat it better. The equipment is expensive (especially if you go flatbed) but you pay for it in weekly deductions from your paycheck. You can then sell it off to other drivers or back to Prime if/when you leave the company.

I think all my equipment was around $700-800 for the reefer side. The biggest expense is chains, those cost $500 new.

Where do you live? Milwaukee Wisconsin

With what company do you work? prime

How long have you been at current job? 1 year

How long have you been trucking? 1 year

What division do you work? Reefer

What is something you like about your job other than the paycheck? All the different places I get to see. I love traveling.

What is something you dislike about your job? All the waiting. Waiting to get loaded, get unloaded, waiting to get dispatched on a load. Let me just drive.

Are you a “home time” person or is it not all that important to you? Home time is very important for me. It's my vacation away from the truck.

If you could change one thing about yourself and trucking what would it be? Myself, I would like to have more patience or know what I want to do in life. About trucking, start holding shippers and recievers to higher standards and actually caring about trucker's time.

What do you find most pleasing about trucking? It can be very relaxing driving down the highway and listening to whatever you want.

What are your hobbies while on and off the road? Netflix on the road, video games at home. While at home I'll do Uber driving as well, since you can meet a lot of interesting people that way.

A rollover can be a career ender too. At Prime it's an instant firing.

Park on the street if you can (usually won't trip the elogs if you're quick). If you can't, and this is something I've done, go ahead and drive to the nearest safe place to park knowing the elogs will throw you a violation and call your company to explain. They can sometimes remove the violation on their end.

Even from a common sense perspective, why would you burn your bridges with past employers. Even if that Driver won't return to trucking, that abandonment will follow him to whatever career he goes to. Employers care about employment history and reasons for leaving.

I just don't understand why he didn't deadhead to a terminal, even just empty. Prime would have preferred that instead of sending another driver down to recover it.

In terms of phone service for truckers, I'm finding tmobile not that good if you're OTR. It seems I'm hitting every place they don't have a tower. I'm roaming just about the entire time when in Wyoming and Nebraska for example. Now I know not many people live in these states but I've also lost signal in Pennsylvania and Florida too. I dread the day I have to go somewhere I don't have signal and the shipper/receiver has to call me. If you work in a city, tmobile is fine though.

Leasing is not much different with having small pay checks once in a while. Want to go home? You're still paying for that truck on your home time. Yes your pay checks will be a bit smaller at first but you'll still be taking home $600-1000 weekly company.

You don't need a twic or passport for prime. Sure it opens you up to more loads but you won't see a noticeable rise in income with them.

This is the deductions part of one of my early settlements. The wage advances are for lumpers and prime reimburses those. As you can see at the bottom, I still took home $945 that week.

TNT at Prime is terrible and is one of my big complaints about them. With that said, it gets so much easier once you're solo. You'll be able to run your truck as how you see fit provided you meet appointment times.

Go company if you're just coming out of cdl school. You'll have tons on your plate to handle as a rookie, don't need to add a lease into that mix. If you want to go lease, wait a year or 2.

We are slaves to the freight we haul, and that often means delivering or picking up at weird times. For example, this load I'm sitting on delivers at 2am. My question is how do you force your body to sleep at such different times to accommodate the freight? It seems like I can't fall asleep any earlier than 9pm no matter how tired I am.

People who used to fudge paper logs hate elogs because it's harder to fudge them. That's generally the argument I see on this.

I drive a lightweight. The difference is in the lightweight, your bed is just about against the drivers seat. There is also a bit less storage. The lightweight had 2 overhead storage compartments above the bed and a small netted cubby hole as well. You can raise the bed up for additional storage as well. . The engine is smaller in the lightweight as well. They come with Detroit Diesel 13s as opposed to the 15s in the condo. Basically means climbing hills can be a pain sometimes.

Pay wise, that extra 5 cents added up. I think it ewuals around an extra $6000 a year on average. It gets paid out on per diem.

I'm perfectly fine with the lightweight. I never intended to bring much stuff on the truck in the first place and I like the extra money. My biggest complaint is the smaller engine.

Something I forgot to add is driving a lightweight opens you up to additional freight because you can haul heavier loads the condo can't. I think the heaviest load I've done was 47 or 48,000 pounds.

You don't have to have a lightweight if you don't want to but you may be waiting a few days for a condo if you go that route.

Prime is adding front facing cameras to drivers who have a history of critical events. I don't think they'll ever have driver facing cameras because they said it's a liability.

I have a love hate relationship with Onguard. I like it shows me the speed the car in front is going (helps me plan passing maneuvers) but it has definitely detected bridges and overhead signs and when I hear the double beep I have to hit the brake pedal before it does so I don't get whiplash. It's irritating when the system does decide to break while driving your cruise won't work anymore either.

Missing ND, Vermont, RI, Oregon, Washington.

I was just gonna say, receipt or not. No way are you driving for 2000 miles and not fueling then the industry needs to promote those trucks and buy them all up!!! Haha

I was averaging about 10mpg pulling 40k on I8. It's possible with a bit of luck im sure lol.

Prime wants us to scan fuel recipts into payroll with each trip, other companies may be different.

Just my 2c. After learning this the hard way.. Twice.

If you have a really tight spot to get into. Do NOT slide your tandems until you are lined up with the door.

That tail wiggle is your friend when things are tight.

Does moving them forward all the way help?

It helps in tight backing situations because the trailer turns quicker. The downside is the overhang can hit a truck if youre not careful or don't GOAL.