crockett

Well reason I stated don't do a school, is the school will cost you anywhere from $5k to $8k on average and "hopefully" the companies that hires you will pay back that cost if you stay a year and have no driving issues like backing into another trailer or whatever (shit happens no matter how careful you are as a beginner). Added to this, while you are training you are getting no pay.

On top of this as a new driver once you get hired somewhere, they are going to make you train with another driver for a while and you will not make much during that time. Then they will pay you less your 1st year most likely.

I went through Prime to get mine.

With Prime as example, you do a week in house at their facility to get your learner's permit. During that time, they feed and house you on their dime. Once you get your learner's permit, you get a trainer which is another driver. He takes you out on his truck and you are driving most of the time under his supervision. You don't get paid during this period, but Prime will advance you $200/week for food if you want it. (it gets deducted from your future pay)

After being out 2 to 3 weeks you come back to test out for your actual CDL. If you pass your 1st try they give you a bonus of $200 if I recall and your trainer gets like $800 so he wants you to pass that 1st try..

The day you pass the CDL, you start getting paid $100/day while doing rest of your training. It's a base $700/week while you do the rest of your training but that's based on X amount of team miles per week ( I think it was 5k miles) if your truck does over 5k miles then you make more. I had a few $800+ weeks while I was in training as example.

Essentially, you drive half the day your trainer drives the other half, usually 10 or 12hr shifts so the truck is almost always moving. Training sucks ass so does team driving. I hated it, because it feels like jail in a sense. This will last about 3-4 months. The truck you're on has to do 30k miles before you can upgrade to your own truck with them.

Meaning if you look at the math.. Drivers school you pay $5k-8k then get hired somewhere where they will put you in training for another 3 months on average with you making crappy money. You then need to stay a year to get them to cover any of your schooling. If they don't you still have to pay the cost of schooling unless you are getting a grant or something.

Meanwhile, go somewhere like Prime.. at the base $700/week for roughly 3 months that's $8,400 that you made while in training. You have to stay a year with them to get the training fees covered but with them, the year starts the day you get your CDL. Meaning by the time you are in your own truck you probably only have 8 months to cover your CDL schooling. If you leave early, they charge you the $4,5k ( I think it is) for the training.

To me, it made more sense to go that way, because I was making more while training and in the end if I didn't stay a year, I was going to owe the same amount or less actually than if I went to a school. (school by me wanted $8k to get you the CDL.)

Now, Prime isn't perfect none of these megas are but IMO they are probably the best mega to go to for training. Some of these other companies like Swift or CRST will try to training you in a week or 2 then stick two brand new drivers in a truck together and wish them well.. (needless to say other drivers don't like these companies)

What I will say though, is Prime is more of a lease company. They do have company drivers, but they are set up as a owner op/lease company if you want to make money.

When I did it, I did my training, I drove company for a month before I turned that shit in and went lease. Lease is a shit deal, but you can make money with it if you run hard. A lot of guy bash it and I do agree with it, but as a new driver if you do it right you can make pretty good money in their lease program.

For my self, I can buy my own truck but I prefer the lease set up because I can turn the truck in at anytime and walk away. (once your 1st year is up for the training). Like right now, I'm home because I got hurt which is a different story, but I turned my truck in, they charge me to clean it, do oil change fix anything that needs to be fixed and I'm free of that truck.. (cost me like $1k because it needed 2 of the brakes replaced which I thought was BS but WTF hard to argue once they do it)

If I go back before 59 days I can just grab another band new lease truck and go back to work like nothing happened. If I wait till 60 days or longer, I have to sit through their orientation again and do a skills test. For me, that's why I do the lease is it lets me go fuck off if I want to then go back bust ass make money again.


Now if you don't want to lease but still like Prime (they honestly have the best terminals in the industry) you can look at a company like WillTrans or Jim Palmer. They haul mostly Prime's freight but not exclusively. They will train you similar to Prime but you get much nicer trucks as a company driver than what you get at Prime but it's harder to get on with them as they are a smaller company.

Maverick also has a good training program but they are mostly a flatbed company, so you'd have to be ok with chaining/strapping down loads tarping them and so on.

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