Prime Training & National Guard

Hello all, long time lurker here.

Iv always wanted to be a truck driver for as long as I can remember and have decided to take the plunge. A little about myself, im currently 20 and enlisted in the National Guard when I was 18 went through all the training and got done with AIT when I was 19 as a wheeled vehicle mechanic. I transferred out to a South Dakota NG unit from my home state of North Carolina and have been working part time and going to an engineering school out here. Iv been making good grades and doing well for myself but I’ve always had my sights on trucking. Since im closing in on my 21st birthday iv decided to do it. I’ve gone through this website and looked at all the different company sponsored schools and have done a good amount of research, and have narrowed down my search between prime and swift, prime being my #1 choice.

Now on to my main question,

Im going to finish out my sophomore year in the spring so I should be done by may 6th, iv talked to a prime recruiter and they told me to apply a few weeks before that date. The only problem I foresee is my two week annual training date which is from the end of July to the beginning of august (26th-9th). How will this effect training with prime? They would have to let me go to AT but when I got back would I have a different trainer? Would my training be longer since I was gone for two weeks? As far as my drills go I can split train so I can do two months of drill in 4 days so my monthly drills are no issue but the two weeks I have to go to AT for seems like it might throw a monkey wrench into things.

Hello William, welcome to the forum! Thanks for what you are doing for us in the National Guard.

As a caveat, I want you to know that I have no personal experience with what you are asking, and hopefully some of our Prime drivers in here will jump in on this conversation, but I recommend you go ahead and get that training out of the way before you go to Prime. Don't worry about putting off when you call them to get started - they will be just as glad to get you started whenever you are ready. It's not like they are going to suddenly stop needing new recruits. There are always truck driving jobs available.

I just think it would be much better for you to be able to stay with your original trainer, stay the course and keep up some sort of continuity in your training. You will benefit from it better if you can keep at it while the "iron is hot".

Thanks for the reply! That was what I was kind of leaning toward, there is a community college out here that has a CDL class A course that takes 6 weeks from the beginning to June to the middle of July which works good with my AT date. Is this worth doing? Getting my CDL then applying for a job at prime? Or would it be better to wait and go through primes school. I just do not like sitting around and not doing anything (besides my part time job) for a few months as I wait to get my AT done.

I think the best thing for you to do would be to talk with a recruiter at prime. Most of the driver's I know are like me and we did our time on active duty. Got out to various careers and then got into trucking.

Would be easy enough to ask a recruiter about it.

Prime is very Pro Military Service, so either way you go (start training with Prime & take 2 week actdutra) or get your CDL through the community college will work just fine. You may not get the same trainer when you get back to Prime, but that is not a bad thing either. Never hurts to get different view points during training.

I actually had 3 different trainers when I went through Prime's training. I believe that for me at least gave me a better perspective than if I had done all of my training with just 1 person.

Ernie

Not sure how it would work with trucking. The off time for the two weeks should not be to much of an issue once you get out of training but during training might be an issue. Talk to a recruiter about it.

Once you go solo that might also be an issue with hometime matching up to the weekends you need off for the one weekend a month training. That means you would drive for 3 weeks and need off at least one weekend a month? Is that right? If that is the case your paychecks will be on the low to mediocre side of the money to be made out here.

The 2 weeks a year thing I would think could be worked in and yes you would still have a job but the biggest down side to that is every year you will loose your truck. Prime or any other company will not allow a truck to set around doing nothing so every year you would need to return the truck to the terminal and clean out your truck and head home from there. Once you returned you would be assigned another truck when you returned.

Unless special arrangements are made, which I doubt they would be, I can forsee you getting whatever truck was left over no one else wants. Since you would be turning the truck in every year I would say you would get high mileage trucks that will be sold once you turn it in.

Trucking is basically a full time occupation with little room left for anything else. As much as companies support our troops and they have to follow the laws the government sets in place for active and reserve military it boils down to money. If trucking companies bottom line is effected by these laws then you can bet, while not doing it opening, will make for a miserable place to work.

It sucks that people put business and making money over our military but that is how it goes.