Company Teams Only At Prime

Prime announced incoming compamy drivers may only go team at this moment.

IF you come in, you may be able to go solo on a "minifleet" after upgrading. These are trucks owned by Prime drivers and you would get all Prime empployee benefits. Pay is negotiated by you and the owner however you are paid throigh Prime so no chance of getting scammed.

Wow, that's really something to hear from a company like Prime.

Back in the day, they were almost 100% lease drivers and owner-operators. It seems things are so rough out there that they're able to round up enough lease drivers to return the fleet to almost 100% lease again.

Have you heard any numbers about the total size of the fleet at this point? I'd be curious to hear that.

The economy is so much worse than the government has stated. I dig into the economic picture daily and have for many years, and our economy is a train wreck at this point.

This is an interesting developement. I would love to hear the reasoning.

Brett your very correct the real state of the economy is being kept under wraps to the extent possible. I read daily and it gets bleaker and bleaker. I see the rates daily and hear all the experts talk about how it can’t get any worse, and then it does.

Werner and JB Hunt released their Q’2 reports and it doesn’t look good at all. Several of the mega’s are using owner ops now where they never did before. I get weekly emails asking if I’m interested.

I’m very glad that I have all but retired. I do an occassional special trip like I did last week up to your neck of the woods, otherwise just local stuff a few days a week.

Wow. It's been clear for a long time now that Prime favors lease ops, but this is a "doubling down" on that business model. Let's just squeeze as many dollars as we possibly can out of our drivers.

They are essentially a used truck dealer, selling off the lease returns for huge profits after duping the poor lease op into purchasing the truck for Prime through lease payments.

To top that off, they're now forcing incoming company drivers to team up, doubling the profits on that end too.

Times, they are'a changing...

The "gig economy" is playing right into the hands of trucking companies. Many people nowadays have resorted to working for themselves through places like Uber and Lyft, AirBnB, Doordash, and Upwork.

That will translate to way more lease drivers and owner-operators as people give up hope of finding a job and start their own business. Of course that will be catastrophic for most who try, which will only make things even worse for our lower and middle classes.

It won't show up in the jobs numbers, because these people will not be on unemployment, but they won't be able to pay their bills either.

Not to mention, most of the jobs out there are government jobs, which drains the pockets of Americans through taxation but produces no wealth for our country:

Job Openings Unexpectedly Surge, Driven Entirely By Government Jobs

So we'll continue to see the statistics show that our economy is strong, while we sink deeper into the mess that started in 2008 and still hasn't been resolved.

It's really ugly out there.

My mentor/friend who's driving with CRST, almost 10 years, now had told me CRST is more solo than teams now. And of course they also still do the lease op thing....He said out of 2,000 trucks, now, ONLY 130 are team trucks still, for now. And of course the past year or so they no longer train drivers, or contract with the schools they used for it.

I think the Megas in general really in a sense were trying to combat the change in the market, but did too little, too late.

I do wonder if they and the Ata will pressure lobbying to have them subcontract drivers closer to the way the construction world subcontracts labor. If leasing the truck in order to get the labor remains too expensive for most drivers, which it foreseeable is, then it would make sense.

It's always a smaller labor cost and regulatory burden to run subcontract labor compared to in house labor. I think if they keep displaying the same behaviors they have been though, they will hold on to outdated modes for too long and not make changes quickly enough.

Well that was short lived. The Director of Reefer Division stated that it was only a temporary move due to equipment and slot availability. Drivers are once again able to go solo.

53:00 Mark you will hear Director say it himself

Well that was short lived. The Director of Reefer Division stated that it was only a temporary move due to equipment and slot availability. Drivers are once again able to go solo.

I think the change back was a more "we have received overwhelming negative feedback" situation.