Prime Day Four

Well, we are ALMOST done! After we finished our classes today we went over and picked up our contracts. All we have to do is get ours signed and return it in the morning. The truck is ready for us to pick up. When we sign the contract in the morning we will pick up our key. Then we will have to get the rest of the stuff that we need from Drivers Lineup, go to Walmart and get a few things, come back to the hotel and get the truck packed, and then we will be ready. We have our first load already. It is picking up at Kraft here at 1800 and then we will take it to Fort Worth. That works out good for us because we will be able to pick up Bandit and get by the house to pick up the rest of our stuff. We will figure out the particulars later. LOL!

So we are exhausted but tired. We still haven't seen an actual reefer trailer. I have to say that I feel that the training is really lacking in that department. For those of us that have no idea about pulping product, setting temperatures, covering the holes in the trailer when you have a freeze load and other stuff that only reefer drivers would know, it is really necessary that we are trained to operate these things before we leave. I feel that they dropped the ball on this and that it could be greatly improved. Tomorrow one of the drivers from our class that used to be a Prime Trainer (he just came back) has offered to show us how to work these. I will admit that the people are extremely nice, for the most part, and that we have been lucky with the ones that we have dealt with.

Oh, looking at our contract, our fixed cost will be $943 a week I think. I added it up but didn't write it down. It was right under $950. I do remember that because we were doing all of our figuring at $1000 a week so I was happy to see that we were definitely under that amount. We met with our Fleet Manager (hereafter refered to as FM) and he seemed nice. Showed us some things on his end and how he handled things. Said that he tries to get teams 2 coast to coast runs a week with a short 1000 mile run or so at the beginning or the end on one of the coasts. That will work for us. He also showed us a comparison on his computer of two of his drivers and how one is getting 4.84 mpg and how the other is getting 6.27 and then he was able to show us from the report how much time they are spending at what RPM's and at what speeds they are running. Very cool to see that. I believe the info he showed us is what they will pull off of our truck once we have been out for 5-6 weeks and we come back for the ACEII class. I like that they have that access on hand so we can just call and see how we are doing. He said that those reports are pulled weekly. (Not sure if I heard that correctly though.)

We are really excited and ready to get started. We are finishing up laundry right now and are then going to head to bed. Next time I blog, it will probably be from our new truck! We keep forgetting to get pictures, so we will make sure and get them tomorrow when we pick up the truck and I will get them posted!