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Yes they do. But, there trainer/trainee matching system is not the best.

They won’t force you to train with someone if you don’t get along which is good. The amount of horror stories out there about this is high.. I could explain further and give examples but I’d rather not post what I’ve seen happen to other students. It’s not my place.

In my training diary blog you could read more but I turned down my first trainer from the matching system and I’m glad I did. For many reasons. I ended up finding a trainer just by talking to random drivers in the terminal. He turned out to be awesome. If he was flat bed I would stay him with but he is reefer.

But yes.. that’s usually how it goes. It’s just not the best system, unfortunately.

My name isn’t Ed Bamberger I’m currently in the TNT phase of Prime Inc CDL training program. At this point I am looking for a flatbed trainer to take me on for my last 20,000 miles of TNT training. Being from PA I’m looking for a trainer that mostly does the northeast, lives in the northeast and/or does a dedicated route in the northeast since that is what I want to be doing once I upgrade and go solo. I’m currently training in the reefer division and going home for thanksgiving. I am looking to get picked up by a flatbed trainer at the Pittston terminal that following weekend. If there are any flatbed prime trainers on here looking for a student that is a hard worker and willing to learn send me an email at edwardjosephbambegerjr@gmail.com.

Well.. my last post was a little over a month ago and I had just passed my CDL license and was about to leave out for my TNT portion of my training.

A lot has happened since then.. I will try and summarize everything in this post.

Here is a list of my 01’s and 90’s this past month:

Springfield, MO to Newark, NJ. I went home for 1 week. Pitston, PA to Oakland, CA. Salinas, CA to New Haven, CT. I went home for 2 days to transfer CDL. Hazleton, PA to Burlington, NC. Rocky Mount, NC to Louisville, KY. Louisville, KY to Newark, NJ. Newark, NJ to Indianapolis, IN. Champagne, IL to SLC, Utah. SLC, Utah to Findlay, OH. Findlay, OH to Springfield MO. Springfield, MO to Kent, WA. Kent, WA to Springfield, MO.

I apologize on not doing daily and weekly updates like some people do.. I just felt like I had zero time to type and update anything. My days consisted of driving, finding time to eat, and trying to sleep on my 10 hour breaks. One thing I can say is that I am definitely not interested in ever becoming a team driver in the future. Ever.

I’ve driven in high winds, fog, smog, rain, sleet, ice, I’ve spent whole shifts driving in snow. Out of all of these conditions I’d have to say driving in the heavy fog is one of the most scariest scenarios.. not being able to see anything in front and around you just sucks.

I currently have about 20,000 miles in on for my Prime Inc TNT phase. Im doing 40,000. I’m also back in Springfield because my current Trainer is upgrading his truck so I decided to make the best of it and take the Prime safety course and also a class on driving these automatics since my trainers new truck is an automatic.

It’s now Friday night 11/10/17 and I’m just relaxing the rest of the weekend and having a physical on Monday for my medical DOT card. Then I’ll be back in the road to finish these miles. I also decided to go to the flat bed division so hopefully after thanksgiving I’ll be switching and finishing out my miles in that division. The plan is to hopefully have all my miles done and ready to upgrade before Christmas.

I will try and update again when I switch to flat bed otherwise I will update again once I go to upgrade in December. Like I said it gets tough to find time to update this blog when this phase is just go go go.

At this point I am looking for a flat bed trainer to take me on for my last 20,000 miles of TNT training. Being from PA I’m looking for a trainer that mostly does the northeast or a dedicated route in the northeast since that is what I want to be doing once I upgrade and go solo. I’m going home for thanksgiving and am looking to get picked up by a flat bed trainer at the Pitston terminal that following weekend. If there are any flat bed prime trainers on here looking for a student that is a hard worker and willing to learn send me an email at edwardjosephbambegerjr@gmail.com.

Stay safe out there drivers!

Awesome to hear your doing well.

I'm sitting here outside the Northstar grill in the Millennium building waiting to head over to Prime East in an hour for our PSD group to start meeting instructors. Really hope I'm fortunate enough to get one today.

I really appreciate being able to hear success stories from from those who just went through what I'm about to go through.

Thank you for taking the time to share your experience.

PS: And like you I'll be missing my wedding anniversary. My wife keeps reminding me that we're been side by side for 17years and due to my amazing timing I'll be spending our 10 year wedding anniversary on the road!

Hey man, hope you had fun at prime east. That is actually where I found my instructor.. we talked and hit it off and it went really well. Just remember that there is nothing wrong with being picky who you go out on he road with.. you'll be with them for awhile in close quarters.

I turned down the first instructor that contacted me and I'm glad I did. I actually was here for two weeks before I got an instructor. (But that was also because of my BP). What I'm trying to say is you'll get an instructor soon.. if not this weekend then this coming week. Instructors come in daily looking for new students.

I'm actually going tanker but my instructor is Reefer and I'm leaving tomorrow with him to do half of my 30,000 miles with him and then going to pick up a tanker instructor at the Pittston Terminal.

But good luck and let me know if you get an instructor, you may have already for all I know! And get lots of practice on the backing pad before you test for your CDL.. that was definitely the hardest part for me.

I passed my CDL Pre trip test, Backing test, and Driving test! I am now officially a CDL Driver for Prime Inc! The past few days have been so stressful and I am so proud of myself for pursuing this new career and working hard to achieve my CDL.

On Sunday, I had my first attempt at the CDL tests. My anxiety was going through the roof. I have always had a really hard time with memorization so studying and memorizing the pre trip was very difficult for me. So.. I was fortunate enough to be the first one of the day to test. But I was also unfortunate enough to not only have the examiner there testing me but also the DOT Officer which only made my anxiety go even more crazy. I missed a lot on the pre trip.. my mind was going completely blank.. which always happens to me when I take tests. But.. I was good enough on the pre trip to pass that portion of the CDL test. Ok.. I moved on to the backing.. I practiced my backing for a few days before I left for psd and also a few days when I got back from psd.. I personally thought I was ready. I hit the straight back perfect.. then it was offset to the left.. I feel like because I worked myself up so much because of the pre trip it spilled over to the backing portion of the test.. I completely forgot my points and ended up timing out. I ended up practicing my backing some more that afternoon.

Monday morning came around and it was time for me to attempt the backing again and hopefully move on to the driving portion of the CDL tests. Straight back went perfect again.. I got set back to the left and i got it but got a lot of points. I was hoping I was going to get the alley dock.. because I was hitting that with no points in training. But I ended up getting parallel to the right instead. I went through the motions and ended up pointing out.... I had to come back for a third day and try and pass my CDL tests. At this point my anxiety is even worse.. you only get 3 try's to pass your CDL tests. So I ended up receiving the help from another instructor to help me with my backing points. I ended up learning a different way for the set back and parallel backing that afternoon.

9/26/17 Tuesday morning the time has come for me to pass these tests. I memorized all of the points for my backing and was ready to go! Extremely nervous but ready to go. I had the same examiner from the day before and of course he was completely rude to me at first and stated he didn't have much faith in me on passing the backing tests. Who says that!?!? Well guess what.. I completely proved him wrong with only 2 points in the backing portion of the exam!!!! I was pumped.. I even told him.. "you have faith in my abilities now?" I don't think he knew what to say. I love proving people wrong. So I moved on to the driving portion and passed.. I messed up on a few things but I passed! I felt like I had a million pounds lifted off my shoulders! So awesome!

Too make things even better... I passed on my two year wedding anniversary to my awesome wife kerry! With her encouraging words and helping me to remain focused on the end goal I was able to pass all of these tests. I couldn't be happier right now!

It is now Wednesday and I have my sleep apnea test tonight. I honestly don't think I have sleep apnea but maybe I'm wrong? Doesn't matter.. I'm just happy to officially be a employee of prime inc! Then I have my physical to get an updated DOT card on Friday. Then I'll be leaving on Saturday for the TNT portion of my training. I'll be going out for 15,000 miles with my PSD trainer and then getting a tanker trainer for my remaining 15,000 miles.

What a journey this has been!!!

Hey Paul, yeah I agree with G town.. might be time to request a new trainer. He sounds like he is a horrible trainer. You deserve someone better then that.

Interested in knowing what you decided to do.. I think you posted this a few days ago.

Hope everything is going better now!

G-town - thank you for all of the advice!

I just arrived back in Springfield, MO! We were supposed to arrive last night but we hit a lot of bumper to bumper traffic in Atlanta and I ran out of hours so we called it a night about 3 hours from Springfield. We got up at 1am and the truck would not start.. we tried multiple things and it still would not start.. we ended up calling road assistance and a tow truck got to us around 430am. They were able to get us running and we took off for Springfield.. we didn't shut the engine off the rest of the way just incase we couldn't get it started again. And once we got to Springfield we put in an order for it to be fixed in the shop.. plus the APU wasnt working correctly.

As of right now I'm waiting for my trainers truck to be done in the shop. If it's done by 6pm we will be practicing my backing tonight. Otherwise I'll be practicing my backing for 4 hours tomorrow and testing for my CDL on Sunday.

My next post will be on Sunday! I'm going for that trifecta!!!!

So, since I'm finishing up PSD this weekend and taking my CDL tests. I wanted to see if there is any Prime Tanker drivers that could tell me more about driving tanker..? I originally wanted to go tanker but ever since I arrived at Prime 4 weeks ago I've heard nothing but bad things.. (examples that I've heard.. always something wrong with the tanker trailers, trailer tires are worn down too low most of the time, surge is really bad and will knock you into oncoming traffic.. just to name a few). I live in PA and thought tanker would be a perfect fit for me since I live in the northeast region. I've also considered doing my TNT in flatbed instead of tanker.. but would only do that if the rumors about the tanker division are true.

So what I'm asking is if anyone in the prime tanker division could give me advice or more info on the tanker division..? Maybe someone can give me better information on what's going on in the tanker division.. from someone who actually drives tanker for Prime.

Driving into Denver was boring at first but once I started seeing the mountain ridge line about 50 miles out it was a beautiful site to see. We arrived at our 90 roughly 5 hours early on 9/15 but they ended up taking us early so it worked out pretty good. They unloaded the truck which took a few hours then found a flying J to get some sleep for the night. Woke up in the morning and got a much needed shower before driving to Dodge City, Kansas to pick up our next load. This was one of the longest most boring drives of my life.. fields.. more fields.. ghost towns.. and again more fields. But we picked up our load in Dodge city and found a flying j to get some rest for the night.

I tell you what.. I lucked out and got a really good instructor.. we have a lot in common and we get along really well. He's always encouraging and has never yelled at me. Having a very positive instructor is something I'm really happy about. So, for anyone coming to prime.. nothing wrong with being picky in who you pick for your instructor to go on the road with during psd. I turned down the first trainer who called me and I'm glad I did.

It's now the morning of 9/17/17 and we are about to head out on our long trip to our 90 in Columbia, SC.. and then back to Springfield! I'll update again in a few days!

-Strongman Trucker

Well my trainer and I arrived at our appointment time at 0500 to unload our first load together. After we arrived we went over the process with the paperwork and they started unloading at 0600 and finished at 0900. (At this point I've been awake for over 24 hours since we pulled an all nighter to get here on time). I finally got to sleep at 1000 and slept until about 1600-1700. My trainer and I got some food and went over some pre trip inspection. We just got our dispatch for our next load. It looks like we will be leaving early tomorrow morning to Michigan and driving a load to Colorado to drop off on Saturday 9/16. So I'm going to get some good experience in different types of driving these next few days :) after Saturday we will be making our way back to Springfield MO so i can get ready to get that Trifecta!!!

I hope people are reading my blog. If there is anything else someone wants me to add to the blog or if anyone has questions about orientation or the psd process I'd be happy to answer.

Btw.. Prime is an awesome company and I definitely made the right decision coming here!