Progression As A Rookie

I have talked with my dm about my goals in the past. Could it be me expectations exced what the company can offer me. I have only been driving 9 months however been crushing it. I just can't believe I could hit the ceiling in just a short amount of time. Other than talking with my dm who else is there?

Talk to the boss of the boss. Keep moving up the chain until you're satisfied that you have reached a conclusion that works best for you.

Make sure you have all you facts and figures straight, though. Things such as "I've driven XXX miles in XXX days, using XXX hours. I was available to drive XXX more hours, but there were no loads." "For XXX month, I drove XXX miles, in XXX hours, for an average of XXX mph. My average length of a trip was XXX miles/days/hours. I used XXX gallons of fuel. My days off were XXX." "I should be given more miles because I have a proven record that show I can handle it."

Miles, responsibility and a proven track record of positive accomplishments equals more responsibility, more miles, and more money.

Hit them with cold, hard statistics that cannot be disputed.

That's the type of response I was looking for. I didn't think about using that approach. Thank you for the insight...

4k miles for a team is not good miles at all. Are you guys on some type of dedicated loop or something?? I understand the weekend thing. My company is like that, if your not planned on friday for the weekend, your dead in the water. Transfering may or may not work out for you. Steve drives for them and transferred to gardner and it didn’t work out so well so he transferred back. Take a good look at it before leaping into it. Hopefully Steve can help you more since he has first hand experience.

Another question comes to mind. You seem to be doing well, but is your co driver?? The company is looking at the truck productivity as much as the individual driver.

I hear this a lot from new drivers at Prime. Sorry to tell ya... but your 9 months of crushing it is nothing. There are drivers and teams out there you are competing against who have been doing this for years and decades. You feel you are crushing it and have proved yourself, but 4k a week is the kiddie end of the swimming pool. Also, it isn't long enough to have built a true relationship with the DM. The DM is still feeling you out.

It is also possible that although you brag about not taking home time in 9 mos... they may see that as a negative. Some.people who don't take time off get burned out. We had a newbie here on a very tough dedicated account who had 3 accidents in 10 weeks. She hadn't had home time, but she wasn't fired because the head of safety felt she was too new for that account and had stayed out too long without rest. She was ordered off the account and to take hometime every 5 weeks for 6 months. She has now been at Prime about 3 years.

At Prime if I have a lot of time on a load, I can drop it at yard and get another load. During Feb & March, the average load for teams was 4500 miles due to covid starting. I was running 5000 to 5500 because I was dropping at yards and getting my next load.

Still your numbers don't add up. 1000 per day, only a couple hours in docks at 5 days... should be 5k per week. How long are your loads? Are you running 2 loads per week or 8? Just curious. Cause shorter loads are gonna cause you more dock time... whereas a regular OTR team situation could have you one one load for 3 days. It sounds to me that you are running "super solo" loads.. not true team loads. But that is a guess

This is typical of how my drive shifts go. Yes ever since getting off My trainer truck.first two weeks was solo driving and did 4000 miles myself each week with crst expedite. Not even close to being burned out. I have had my own business over 10 years almost solo so I have a good understanding of what burnt out is. This is nothing.

Drop the arrogance for one. If you get an attitude with the DM he will never help you.

Some of those days you have 2+ hours of on duty time... that could be an issue. How much of your 70 are you burning? If you are using 1 to 3 hours of on duty per day you are burning up 5 to 15 hours of drive time each week. Go off duty or sleeper while sitting in doors.

And it looks like you are driving the night shift by those numbers... the first day you only drove 300 miles (30 miles before midnight 270 after)... is that normal? And if you stopped driving at say 0500 that night... your hours would be back by 1500. So that means you didn't drive again until about 2200 to have 114 miles on that day. Why? Was it because you burnt up almost 3 hours of on duty? What did you use that for?

This is my co driver shifts and they are typically how he runs his shifts. My dm transfer to pegasus when we transfer from crst and pick us to take with him. Was told that he only took his best teams. So I believe he has trusted the truck. Before covid I would fly my girlfriend out when I knew that I had a reset due. We would stay at nice hotels and explore different places. So I have had " home time" without being home or taking time off. Each week off cost me missing out of 1k a week off every 90 days would be 4k a year I don't get.

I do the first shift 5 or 6 am till my clock is up. He takes the night shift. 7/5 was a Walmart run to stock up. 7/6 was stuck outside of Cincinnati on the highway gridlock 3 hours getting to the pick up. They took 2 hours to load me to drop off a load before picking up the next. 7/7 was picking up the load but delivery date changed and we shutdown to wait for my co driver shift to stay on schedule.