Need Some Help Guys. Keim Or A Local Outfit?

Ok guys I need some help. Yesterday I went and did my pre employment for a local place very near my home with an every weekend home-time. The pay is decent and percentage based. Its literally 30 minutes from my house and for the first week I'm in training I will be home every night. The freight is grain and fertilizer and the like. Now today I got called to Keim TS in Sabetha KS. The pay is better and the recruiter tells me that Id have a good home time of average 36 weekends a year. The trucks are newer Kenworth where the local place has older freight-liner trucks and I wouldn't have my own. They want me there on Monday morning to start training which is $100 a day and id be in training for maybe a month. The question here is does anyone have any advice on what I should choose here? Im trying to weigh my options but being new to the game I don't really know what route to go. Any advice is welcome here. Thank you.

Do you know what the pay is specifically? Keim uses Kenworth t660s with studio sleeper, nice trucks probably but the extra money to buy fancy trucks comes from somewhere...

What i would do, since you have a few days, is sit down with a legal pad and figure what your priorities are. High pay, home time, quality equipment, type of freight you want to haul (Keim is all flatbed i think), vacation time, 401k, insurance cost pet/rider policy, tarping and detemtion pay, good training and so on, whatever is important to you. Then I would pick 4 or 5 items and then assign a numerical value based on how important each one is relative to the others. For me it would look like this:

5 - pay 4 - home time 3 - rider policy 2 - tarping and detention pay 1 - Quality Equipment

Everyone has different priorities of course, these are just mine.

The point system gives you a way to quantify qualitative data, so you don't end up going with a company that gives you a bunch of things that arent very important to you over a company that gives you few things that are very important to you.

So now you just compare them, award points to the company that meets your needs the best in each category.

You should call the recruiters again and get the most specific information you can now that you know what to ask about. Pay for example, ask something specific like whats the average weekly takehome for new drivers in their first six months.

So as an example we'll compare Prime and Keim

Prime pay is higher so Prime gets 5

Keim will get me home more often so 4 goes to Keim

Their rider policies are the same so they both get 3.

Dont know if Keim does tarping pay but Prime charges for tarps so 2 goes to Keim

Keim has nicer trucks so 1 goes to Keim

Prime: 8

Keim: 10

So in this case I would go with Keim. Not a perfect system obviously but if you accurately reflect your priorities it should save you some agonizing.

I know that Earlbacher Bros (the local company) is around 40,000 a year. According to the recruiter from Keim its 45 - 50 grand a year. But i really dont know how accurate either figure is honestly because they both pay percentage not miles so I kind of just put both on equal ground as far as pay. Earlbacher has more home time which is very important to me with the kids and my wife as well. The local company has 15 trucks and the dispatch is the owners wife. The trucks are older and the trucks are swapped between drivers and they get parked at his farm.As far as I know with KEIM I will have my own truck and yes they are sweet. My thing now is I made a commitment to Earlbacher yesterday and did my drug test. When that comes back tomorrow I can start on Thursday. I am a man of my word and I feel that standing by that commitment is important and that it would probably be a nice slow start to my career before jumping into a large company. I also think both places would respect me more in the end and I think I would respect myself more as well.