Being A Trainee At Prime Is An Awful Experience.

I gotta say though, Errol...the Swift incentives you're touting there are even skimpier than I'd been offered, heard or surmised. The payoff after 30,000 miles is a bird in the bush...an unhatched chicken. I trained a guy, he upgraded...I don't want to hear that I'll be paid for that 3, 4 months down the line. I should get it on my next check. As for the miles...the trainee is going to be driving most of the miles...it's not like you'll be spending a month teaming, making double miles. Your miles will be roughly the same...you'll just be in the passenger seat, and with a lot more responsibility and stress than you'd have in the driver's seat. So no financial incentive to train there. So that leaves us with, as a here and now cash benefit..........100 bucks a week. Far short of even the 15 percent I was talking about. Hell no, thanks. If that's their offer, I think negativity is a very reasonable response to it.

Evidently you aren't with Swift. I went though Swift's Academy, Orientation and Mentor ride. The training is by hours worked, so the driving time by hours is for the first 50 hours, the Mentor sits shotgun (and can get really bored). After that, for the next 150 driving hours it's full team, 50% student miles, 50% mentor. So for Mentors they get the double miles in a way.

Finally, the so-called "delay" payments is an incentive for mentors to do good work. You know an extra $Grand or Five Bills in a paycheck is nothing to argue over.

Half full? Half empty? You decide!

Nope, never worked for Swift, so I'll accept that their trainers might do a bit better than I imagined . But I sure wouldn't be sleeping too soundly behind a guy with only 50-odd hours at the wheel, alone up front and expected to take me 4-500 miles. And then I'd probably be something of a liability on my shift at the wheel as well. I know where I was at that point.....50 drive hours, a week 10 days into training...way too much of my attention was still focused on just trying to shift correctly, having little tantrums as I failed to do so, and then dreading the next time I had to shift. I might have been closer to menace than merely a liability. I'm very glad more and more drivers are training and working on automatics now.

It's been a while but I think trainees only ran as a team the last week of training in my first company, and even then didn't do real team type miles...probably 4000 or so. Anyway...no need to get real bogged down in the details...we'll agree to disagree a bit... I just think training is grossly undercompensated, maybe a quarter full on your diagram. And though I get an idealistic twinge now and then I'm generally a fair bit over on the mercenary end of the spectrum.

Anyway...no need to get real bogged down in the details...we'll agree to disagree a bit... I just think training is grossly undercompensated, maybe a quarter full on your diagram. And though I get an idealistic twinge now and then I'm generally a fair bit over on the mercenary end of the spectrum.