all right good friday morning today is friday january 14 2022 and this is your friday driver meeting my.

    Name is dennis davis i work in the safety department here at prime the safety department is loc

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ated in the z building ground level right in the center of the room right.

    Next to the pillars so if you ever have any questions comments or concerns don’t hesitate to stop by or if you’re out on the road and you have a question and comment or concern don’t hesitate to give us a call and we’ll do our best to get you taken care of we try to do this meeting every friday morning try to be as transparent as we possibly can we’ll answer questions concerning safety as well as some other uh areas of interest in the company today you know of course with uh winter storm izzy coming down we’ll talk a little bit about weather and some winter weather driving but we’ll also talk about another a lot of other stuff this morning so breakfast is free so let’s give our folks over there that’s helping us out a round of applause to them thank you and we are broadcasting live on on youtube and facebook live so welcome to all our folks that are that are tuning in live and that i’ll watch a little bit later because they’re doing the same thing and and.

    Not having a handheld device in their hand so let’s see who we got live with us on the east side uh is it we got rick this morning in pittsburgh good morning how’s everybody doing out there all is well good morning tell us what’s.

    New and interesting out east oh you know it’s uh we’re coming into a.

    Nice cold weekend this weekend down below zero this week uh friday saturday sunday and uh looking for some snow sunday into monday seems to be the going theme you know uh anywhere east of the mississippi river going to be looking forward to some snow sunday into monday you know rick i know you used to drive a little bit give me give me 15 seconds of winter weather advice uh slow down increase your following distance uh limit the distractions in the cab and do.

    Not drive over your ability i really like that last one good deal good deal so with the weather coming in you know if you if you look out that back window there then you guys got a little bit of construction going on are we going to be affected delayed any idea what the situation is it’s it’s kind of on the standstill right.

    Now it’s been so cold they can’t dig in the ground it’s it’s uh it’s it’s on hold okay delayed but.

    Not denied so if you guys have any questions comments concerns don’t hesitate to jump right on the microphone and we’ll get you on we appreciate you guys thank you all right let’s go west troy you’re excited you guys are high [.

    Applause] good morning how are you doing great.

    Never disappointed to hear some excited folks bright and early in the morning in salt lake city tell us what’s.

    New what’s going on out in salt lake city you know it’s a beautiful uh it’s actually been a beautiful week out here we’ve been in the 40s we got another five days or so of sunshine and there’s snow in the mountains a little bit on the ground it’s just gorgeous in utah is that your way of rubbing it in or i mean yes it is yeah it’s yeah we’re getting all the way up to 40 out here man i don’t know about that zero stuff out east you know they deserve it out there but shots fired so you know um you guys are always real lively real excited you guys got a big class in there this week or what’s the situation we do we’re we’re getting a ton of.

    New drivers in here every single week and uh you know we’re just trying to get through them and trying to get as many students in through the system and you know get some more trainers out here you know to pump out some.

    New quality prime drivers all right well excellent you know we will go through some things we may even throw it back to you on from a spontaneity standpoint give you some more time you know on camera but if you guys have any questions comments or concerns don’t hesitate to jump on it we’ll get you right on great thank you very much all right right back here in springfield missouri how you guys doing this morning we have an absolutely packed house here in springfield missouri with me this morning we’ve got one of our safety supervisors mr david white good morning dave more than this man you’re ready to roll always i didn’t know how this would start for sure this morning you seemed a little bit off when you woke him in about an hour or so ago that’s that’s that’s where i am every morning i know but man you’re kicking.

    No that’s how bill is that’s.

    Not that’s.

    Not you but.

    No that’s good good to see you’re doing well and we’re good we’re i’m doing well too man so uh it’s another friday morning all right let’s talk to these.

    New folks what do you got for them yeah i tell you what what i’d like to do first we’ve got a lot of.

    New folks here if you’re.

    New to prime this week this is your first week of orientation if you could stand and be recognized we’d love to give you a round of applause all three terminals stand up [.

    Applause] all right go ahead and have a seat thank you very much and thank you for attending and more importantly thank you for coming to prime and joining our family because you are a family.

    Now you know we’ve done our background checks on you we’ve i’m sure you’ve all been interviewed you went through that and got a good physical and you feel all comfortable with that and you know drug tests and all that fun stuff that goes along with being a truck driver and that’s what it’s about right there and uh but more importantly i hope you investigated us as well and checked into our training program see how good we are i see a.

    Number of heads shaking out there so that’s good because you know what we like to sometimes think we’re perfect but we know we’re.

    Not and we can always get better and that’s one thing you hear around here i should say you will.

    Never hear around here is that we are perfect and that we’re always correct because we’re.

    Not we can always get better day to day hour by hour and uh you know that same with uh you know with everyone i think in particular so you know let’s uh keep that in mind and uh you know if you.

    Need help you.

    Need something many of you will be teamed up with some good trainers we got here we got the best you’re gonna get the best training out there what’s so important about starting this time of year you’re gonna get that winter training and that’s uh you know that’s great this is what you want to be with another veteran driver out there on the roadways what to do what.

    Not to do when to shut it down but you know just like it was said before by rick up there in pittston you know drive your truck to your ability and to the conditions so you may see another prime truck you may see another company uh maybe a martin or schneider or whatever pass you and the weather conditions are a little iffy that’s okay they operate their truck to where their abilities you operate your truck to your abilities you remember that you don’t have to keep up with anybody you just do what you can do and what you feel safely doing your life is more important than anything out there on the road so is the motoring public we don’t want you getting caught up in any accidents accidents aren’t fun that includes the ones that we even get hit because when we get involved in accidents we’ll talk about that here in a little bit we’re gonna have cami from our claims department up here and she’s gonna go over her accident seeing what to do what.

    Not to do but the biggest thing is.

    Not getting involved in accidents and so later on in the program too we have sam messick up here as well sam’s going to come in here he’s in our accounting department extremely bright guy even though he’s from canada but we don’t hold that against him but uh and you know you may hear an a every once in a while from.

    No you don’t know.

    No sam’s good he’s solid on our fuel he’s gonna talk about fuel optimizer and optimization and routing and and uh you know making sure you take care of your fuel out there on the road as well this time of year is extremely important after sammer of jason seymour from our operations department he’s our reefer supervisor whatever reefer up supervisor jason does a great job one of his tasks he’s been put with is handling the covid and that is a big test especially right.

    Now those.

    Numbers are jumping up i know you all may have experienced a little bit there in orientation you’ve got to wear your mask and all that and that’s so extremely important we’ll kind of step back a little bit hopefully we’ll get through this.

    Next surge and we’ll be able to re relax some of those uh requirements but uh extremely important groups of people make sure you wear your mask you know there’s.

    No doubt about it and finally towards the end dennis we have chase up here again tax time this way everybody wants to talk about taxes this time of year you ready for taxes.

    Nope.

    No.

    Neither am i so but yeah we have a great meeting today hopefully you enjoy yourself if you have questions or anything at all raise your hand we want to hear them so hey let’s get started with the big elephant in the room let’s talk about winter storm izzy you know we’ve got a big storm system coming across out of thanks sam canada that’s going to be going across the the midwest going to be affecting.

    North dakota south dakota minnesota iowa missouri illinois kentucky just about anybody in that that corridor going towards southeast headed toward florida um so uh you know how you folks that are from the southeast or that live in the southeast even if there’s you know heavy rain folks forget how to drive so it’s going to be important that each and every one of you that are in these weather and packet areas start making some some good decisions and and make sure that you’re communicating with your fleet manager you know rick and pittston kind of teed it off for us and gave us three excellent tips you know making sure you’re driving the appropriate speed making sure you’re keeping distance between yourself and the vehicle in front of you and of course as always rain sleep snow sunny at 65 get rid of those distractions in the cab but what we always want to introduce.

    Now started in 2022 is there’s a different.

    Notion is you know consider.

    Not driving consider shutting down before you even start your engine and start your trip planning if there’s inclement weather there’s there’s very little reward at the end you know prime incorporated we’re.

    Not going to pay anything extra hazard pay for operating and inclement weather you know you may even get to one of these customers especially in the southeast where they’re.

    Not used to this weather that may be closed you didn’t you know went through all that risk to get the product there and you get there and that customer’s closed so we have to wait typically what we find is if when we go through a winter storm like we’re going to experience over the weekend if you wait just maybe even another just another 10-hour break the situation is drastically different you know there is.

    No reward when we operate during the worst part of the storm if we wait just another 10 hours we give those local jurisdictions the opportunity to deploy their snow plows and get their roads treated you give all those other folks the opportunity to get on those interstates and highways and get all that snow and ice and all that other junk moved out of the way so 10 hours later when you get on the road you’re good so consider.

    Not driving just communicate with your fleet manager don’t go ghost on us make sure you’re communicating with with who’s ever on duty and most importantly make sure you’re taking care of yourself make sure uh you’re somewhere where you’re safe you’re comfortable you’ve got access to amenities restrooms shower food whatever the case may be if you you know make sure you have these things on your truck we’ve produced a lot of speakers up here that’s talked about that we got some videos out on the app that talk about the same thing but you know this is this is go time this is what you train for all right and again you know we want to have an accident free weekend we don’t want to get that call that you know john doe or jane doe has uh been into inclement weather that we’ve been affected by some pile up you know stay away from the packs you know that’s a bad idea you know we don’t trust even another prom driver that much with our lives in our hand that we’re going to operate blindly based off what they’re doing in front of us it’s just.

    Not what we want to do so i just want to get that message out definitely consider.

    Not driving please please please make sure you’re communicating with your fleet manager if you have questions call ask there’s.

    No uh unnecessary and stupid or whatever question we want to make sure that you guys are safe we want to make sure that our customers product is safe and we want to make sure that every everyone on the motoring public is safe so all right good information any questions on that or any comments from anybody all right let’s move on guys let’s look at inspections this past week had a 109 eot inspections 78 of those were cleaned so a 72 clean rate so yeah give yourselves a round of applause [.

    Applause].

    No doubt this year we started out with a bang last week was 78 this week 72 let’s talk about some of the violations that we kind of.

    Need to really work on it some of those fall underneath the unsafe driving basic underneath csa and one of those is a ferry to obey traffic or to control uh device traffic control device back to talk so yeah uh so what is what are we talking about though we’re talking yeah obviously your stop light stop signs things like that but also to make sure you obey the signs for like parking if you’re illegally parked somewhere i know even if you just want to run in and use a bathroom or something they can write you a an inspection and put a violation there majority of times we don’t see a lot of citations on them but we do see inspections if there’s inspections with a violation for that.

    No parking or uh you know rolling through a stop sign or something that does hurt your score on the safety side hurts our score as a carrier but underneath the csa basics so let’s watch those let’s keep an eye out watch what we’re doing out there also you know missing scales things like that know where all your state scales are the permanent ones you should have a motor carry atlas book we got them right down here in the company store i think they’re like 15 or 20 bucks they list where all the scales are and they list them with the dots and you can see where you’re coming up so if you’re heading westbound out of here and heading to california on 44 first when you get hits down here in joplin there’s a permanent scale then it goes from there you hit another one down in oklahoma and continue on through.

    New mexico so anyway make sure you get that motor carrier atlas second area that we’re kind of struggling on to is speeding and that’s six to ten over speeding um you know watch your speeds out there.

    Now our trucks set at 62 for companies 65 for lease but we’re talking about here speed limits lower than that so 45 50 55 you know granted some of us like to think and i even do this in my own truck yeah i can get away with running five over us probably maybe even eight over right here on the interstate police aren’t gonna stop me but they will stop a big truck you’re a professional driver and that’s what they look at you’ve got a cdl you’ve been certified you’ve been trained you’ve been tested by the state once you get your cdl and you’ve been issued a commercial driver’s license and that’s a professional license so your expectations the way you drive and the way you act out on the highway is a little bit higher than mine i’m just a four-wheeler and my pickup going down the road they kind of think i’m an idiot already you know i mean so do you guys you got a higher expectation so remember that when you’re out there you know treat you know act like it uh be professional if you do get stopped if you do get pulled in for inspections we love our clean inspections that drives our safety.

    Numbers there’s.

    No doubt but you know hey remember they’re just an officer too they’re doing their job so if they come up and they approach you you got questions ask them if they say hey you got a violation for maintenance back here something can you show me sir can you show me man where it’s at so you understand as well because there’s a big you know it’s a big learning curve in trucking here and you guys are getting into some of you get a totally different realm of work than you ever done before if you’re like me maintenance of my side when i drove many years ago was one of the you know i had a hard time i wasn’t a mechanic at all growing up as a kid my brother was and he used to do all the work on my car so i.

    Never to worry about myself.

    No i.

    Never changed my oil or anything like that and when i did usually my brother ended up finishing the work for me so those types of situations but yeah when you if you don’t understand that make sure you bring it up and make sure you go over that with the officer one last thing i’d like to say we do one another area we.

    Need to work on is seat belts that still continues to be a little bit of an issue with this our seat belts you will see in our tracks are orange anybody want to know why they’re orange exactly so they could see them good one right here yeah so the officer can see many years ago ours used to be tan and our drive we had a.

    Number driver said i had my seatbelt on but that officer said i didn’t i know i did so we moved them all to orange most of us don’t wear a lot of orange on top here and for shirts and stuff so you know that officer can see do you have that seat belt on it has to be over your shoulder and stop against your chest so you can’t have it laying down you can’t have your arm over the belt things like that you have to be wearing it properly so make sure you’re wearing your seat belt heaven forbid you’re involved in an accident that seatbelt will save your life and we’ve seen it many times and uh you know make sure you always wear your seatbelt that’s just that’s just a comment out there that’s what we want you to do and that’s a safe thing to do so any questions anything you want to add dennis thank you you hit every.

    Nail right on the head you know and of course we don’t know well.

    Not they don’t all think you’re an idiot it’s just you maybe okay you want to touch on a million mile before we oh yes one thing we.

    Need to announce to our million-mile dinners we had planned i think we had one million at the end of the month here in january the two three and four million in february they have have been postponed so we’re going to hold off on those and hopefully have them later on this year when the.

    Numbers start coming down a little bit on covid and uh you know we’ll get out of this this uh atmosphere that many of us don’t really like wearing masks all the time but hopefully we’ll get back to that again and get back to some.

    Normalcy so love our million mile drivers though the best we got out there.

    No doubt about it hopefully all of you will attain that too as well that’s what we’re looking forward to so all right let’s keep rolling should we bring up our first speaker our first speaker is going to be kami elder she works in our accident claims department and one of the reasons we invited her to speak you know today is one of the responsibilities of our safety supervisors and anybody in our safety department is take the initial report you know on an accident so we get the driver on the call and you know one of the things that esteems a lot when i hear this oh i’ve.

    Never been in an accident i have.

    No idea what to do okay and and we appreciate the fact that you’ve.

    Never been in an accident in a big truck or.

    Never been an accident even in your personal vehicle but as a professional especially folks that are out here training we still expect you to know what the procedures are to get the accident properly reported and to make sure that we’re able to properly defend you and defend the company so can we take it away tell us what we.

    Need to know good morning everybody happy friday so i know we’re the last department anybody ever wants to speak to anytime i meet a.

    New person here or they don’t know who i am what department do you work in accident claims they’re like whoa we don’t want to we don’t want to talk to you hopefully this is the last time we talk to you so but we are a department of three we are always here to help and answer any questions whether you agree disagree with us feel free to call us we’re here to help you guys that’s what we’re here for so um in your if you’re involved in an accident first and foremost obviously we want you to make sure you’re okay we want you to make sure the other person’s okay that’s first and foremost um the.

    Next steps after that um that we focus on a lot um everybody that sees me pictures you guys can’t do enough pictures for us to see it on our side um we are obviously.

    Not there with you we are behind a desk behind a computer and if we can’t see it it’s it does make our job better if we can see it so um step back take pictures of the scene we get a lot of pictures that come in there’s bumper damage or there’s side damage and this picture is like right up here we don’t know where out on that truck it is so step back give us a perspective of where it’s at where the damage is at we get a lot of drivers oh i didn’t cause any damage well did you take pictures we don’t have any pictures pictures of.

    No damage does more good for us than pictures of actual damage because if you say i didn’t do any damage we have.

    No pictures to prove it they sent in an estimate in photos for two thousand dollars we don’t have anything to dispute to say we didn’t cause damage because we don’t have any photos so those pictures that you can take of.

    No damage or as important as the ones you take of damage um other thing witness information um a lot of times when the police get there they separate you guys you can’t get a lot of information so you guys are definitely the eyes and ears of that first scene anything that you can get witness information pictures that all helps us help you investigate that claim so that we’re paying it properly and doing what we can to help you guys um police reports i mean any of that information when it comes in um you guys all have a deductible as well um i don’t know hopefully you guys all are familiar with what your deductibles are but we are in charge of a liability deductible we will charge that if you are responsible for damages to someone else or if it is a disputed claim and they.

    Need to there’s somebody says i you hit their truck or their trailer well i didn’t do it while we’re investigating it we still have to charge that while we investigate it once our investigation is complete then we will go ahead and refund that at that time um so just because we charge it doesn’t mean it’s an admission.

    Not the same or you’re guilty it’s just while we’re investigating the claim um but pictures that’s primarily that’s the biggest thing um just to document it and so do you guys anybody have any questions isn’t there an app on that uh or a macro on the app that you can go to to walk you through it you can’t that will upload your accident photos and also uh taking pictures uh take pictures of the other driver’s driver’s license insurance yeah get all the information that you can the information um and if it’s somebody that hits your truck you.

    Need to document as much on that as well get all their information their damages that helps we have an apartment it’s called segregation um there’s some other individuals that work in that department and they’re good they’re working on your behalf to collect for damages that are caused to your equipment um but i can’t say enough about pictures every people pass me and they’re like pictures pictures yeah jimmy we still have the accident kit in the truck for the drivers too that provides directions don’t we i don’t think we use that any longer is it all available on the app uh so they’re they’re i think sometimes you know they still produce the the accident the old school accident package that they do but um we do have it on the prime mobile app when you click on your your menu in the top left-hand corner it’s your eighth option down or right there on the home screen right in the middle where it says my load information one of those buttons will say uh report accident you’ll see report claim you know all these other good things but report accident is one of those and that’s where we want you to submit your pictures um if you’ve already made the initial claim let’s say you if something happened and you get dave on the phone and then he’s taking all the information but of course.

    Now he.

    Needs these also important pictures that cami’s talked about just click on that report accident button you can then skip to step.

    Number two which is low pictures you can either take them right there inside the app or if you’ve already taken them and those pictures are in your gallery there’s an option there right there that’ll allow you to choose as many pictures as you want from your gallery when you when you hit send it usually takes about two or three minutes for us to get access to them and of course if there’s damage to your equipment whenever you send pictures via that mobile app to the safety department our road folks instantly get a copy of those two so killing two birds and one stones because of course if you you know of course.

    Need some maintenance work post accident those road assist folks and our assistants there already have that information so another thing too we’ve seen lately is we’ve getting a lot of pictures we’ll get pictures in of just your equipment that’s damaged and we don’t get the other person to be honest with you we.

    Need pictures of their damage we can get pictures of your damage at any time but as soon as you guys leave that scene we’ve lost our opportunity to get those pictures so we just.

    Noticed a little bit of a higher amount of those coming in where it’s.

    Not the claim and stamp we call them appointment the other person we get their photos of your damage but we don’t get pictures of theirs so just always make sure you can’t over dock you can’t over document as much as possible so any other questions video obviously i mean you can you can do that as well um that documents that’s probably easier to document the scene just with a quick little video and have that um obviously if you have a dash cam or anything you know i know some drivers have them in their trucks those help save time as well that clearly shows us what happened but obviously you can uh video as well after if you don’t want to take pictures and send that in all right i think we got a question from online how do you deal with the information and damage if it’s a hit-and-run situation if it’s a hit-and-run those are terrible situations for anybody whether it’s crime or another driver that’s calling us because they’re like a prime truck hit us unfortunately if we don’t have any information to collect from there’s.

    Not a lot we’re going to be able to do um if you guys do see anything if you’re watching it happen you can’t get to them they take off and leave if you can get any information company.

    Name trailer.

    Name um anything like that that we can try to work with because unfortunately if we don’t have someone to collect from unfortunately it falls back on prime and you guys as the drivers so yeah call the police for sure always call them so we have it documented in a police report i’d also say if it happens at a truck stop or any place that happens check your surroundings because a lot of these places have cameras.

    Now and they’ll have video footage of what transpired so yeah and we can also reach out sometimes these truck stops they’ll have video we can reach out to them and just see sometimes the places that you guys park um unfortunately some of those are.

    Not monitored by video but sometimes it is and so it’s always worth that chance that we can maybe get a video of it to get enough documentation so on video as well this is always the thing too is if always remember in this day and age anybody has a video camera they have a camera shippers everywhere has a camera so if you guys actually hit something.

    Nobody wants to deal with that but just own up to it because the chances of us getting a video and it looks better that we already know about it than to get a video in and.

    Not know about it and know that our drivers left or something so just always let us know helps our health helps us out makes you guys look better makes prime look better as well so i have a question over here sure let us get you a microphone in that situation if it’s a hit and run uh-huh uh we asked the driver if we’re.

    Not at fault still responsible for that deductible it would be a.

    Non what we consider a.

    Non-preventable accident meaning you could.

    Not do anything to prevent it but if you are a lease operator yes you would have a deductible that would apply for your truck or your trailer whichever is damaged you would.

    Not have that liability deductible that i was speaking up so your truck deductible is a thousand your trailer is 500.

    so unfortunately we can’t collect the deductible would apply but.

    Not for company drivers uh-huh over here on uh cargo claims is there any way that you know they always want all the paperwork like we send to payroll is there any way that we can send that to both of them at the same time because it seems like it always happens when you got like 20 pages so you’ve got to scan all that into payroll and then you got to turn around and scan it also to claims for a you know over shortage damage whatever that’s a good question and our accident claims in our cargo claims are mutually exclusive but if you hang around after the meeting i’ll make sure that we get you a definite answer for that it just would be helpful sure all right any more questions for cammy before we let her go oh okay uh you do have to send them both because they go different places um so that’s why we do it a different place so if it is a cargo claim that doesn’t go into payroll documents that you get paid from those are just for that claim so that’s why we ask you to do it twice.

    No.

    No way currently you got to do them you got to do them twice sorry all right all right katie so if you don’t mind hanging out until a couple minutes after the meeting if you have a specific question for she’ll be hanging out over here on our left and we’re right across from safety so if you guys ever in the building have a question want to stop by we’re right across from safety okay have a good day good information thank you yeah round of applause.

    No doubt hey so there was a a lot of conversation about the mobile app so one thing i want everybody to do is first and foremost have the mobile app and play with it a little bit you know of course sitting here right.

    Now you’re.

    Not involved in an accident this will be the perfect time to click on that maybe get yourself a little bit familiar with how to load pictures in any any situation so that if and you know when it happens that’s.

    Not the first time that you’re trying to.

    Navigate of course your adrenaline’s pumping you’re upset you know you don’t you.

    Need trying to fumble around and figure out how to do it that’s.

    Not the best time to learn so this time to learn right.

    Now if you do have any questions we’ve got our technology experts over here to our right richard and brianne can answer any questions that you have technology-wise especially concerning the app so all right good information there one thing i wanted to add to what cami said too if you’re involved in an accident make sure you get out and start taking pictures immediately and i get that information i have we talked to too many drivers say well you know police told me to stay in my track police said this well if the police had time to get there you had time to get out of your truck and start getting information because once the police get there they don’t want you associating with that other driver because the only thing that’s gonna happen is they go south that’s what they’re looking they don’t have to break up arguments and things like that so get out there be aggressive even if you hit somebody and they didn’t mean to get out there and get their information before the police get there and take pictures and document because once they do get there you’re done they’re putting you in the truck and they’re going to do their report and then they’re going to view it the way they they get your information the other person’s information they’ll come up with a conclusion of what happened and sometimes that can go against us so um the officer wasn’t there but he’s going to do his best to come up with an idea what happened on that accident so be the aggressor when you’re out there and you have that accident and if it does happen hopefully it doesn’t but if it does get that information and don’t wait for the police so what do we got.

    Next there dennis we’re looking at your watch are we getting.

    No we’re.

    Not doing too bad and we’re.

    Not doing too bad we got plenty of time left so let’s go let’s go ahead and get get mexi messick up here good old sam up here sam messick a few optimizer routing solutions a little bit about fueling sam’s a good friend of mine he’s actually one of them that follows hockey around here and we don’t have a whole lot in this building but sam does we talk to each other quite a bit about the old hockey scenes yeah yeah definitely good morning everybody um i heard dave i was on the phone but i heard him ragging on canada i think and i’ll admit i was up there for christmas and uh you know you don’t have all these positive memories of being a kid you’re like you know i love the cold you know and then i get up there and i think it was.

    Negative 39 fahrenheit on christmas morning and i’m like i’m ready to go back to springfield missouri maybe my childhood wasn’t as good as i remember it but um just wanted to give you a couple updates this morning speaking of cold weather um one of the things that we do here at prime is we try to make sure that you know we sell fuel at all of our large terminals so pittston pennsylvania salt lake city here in springfield it’s available in the inbound outbound bays in the plaza one of the things that we try to make sure that we do for you to make sure you don’t have to worry about how the winter weather and how it’s affecting your diesel fuels we try to make sure that we’re aggressively treating our fuel in the plazas uh for with winter additive so we’re we treat much more aggressively than you’re going to find at any of the over-the-road truck stops so just to give you an idea we implemented a.

    New program this year where once every two weeks we’re sending off fuel.

    Nozzle samples so fuel that’s coming right out of the.

    Nozzle that’s going into your truck we’re sending that off to a lab for testing just to see how aggressively our fuel is treated so i pulled up the most recent results that we had from a week ago so fuel in pittston is treated to.

    Negative 18 degrees fahrenheit cold filter plug point so at.

    Negative 18 degrees that fuel is going to gel up to the point that it would clog your fuel filter so at.

    Negative 18 degrees you would have to start to worry about that fuel uh gelling up on you and that is very low uh especially for for fuel coming straight out of the.

    Nozzle um in salt lake we’re at.

    Negative 10 and at springfield we’re at.

    Negative 10 as of a week ago we’ve bumped up the treating a little bit to hopefully get that down into the.

    Negative 15 degree range but you really if you’re buying fuel at one of our terminals unless you’re going to edmonton alberta where i was or something you probably shouldn’t have to add more winter treatment into your fuel tanks than we already have so hopefully save you some money we’re already treating it very aggressively you shouldn’t have to worry about about your fuel if you’re getting it from us also wanted to just quickly mention i’m sure some of you are aware we had a couple of issues i’ve been doing this for i think five six years.

    Now we’ve.

    Never had a single issue with getting contaminated fuel delivered to us at any of our facilities we had two issues on the same day totally separate issues one in springfield one in salt lake this last week we have addressed the issues we’ve got the fuel all taken care of the tanks cleaned everything’s good to go salt lake will be fully back up and running on monday so just so you’re aware we obviously take these issues very seriously we’re going to shut down fueling if we think anything’s wrong with the fuel and make sure that we get it addressed for you we want the fuel that you’re getting here to be the best that you can possibly buy anywhere over the road so another thing that i wanted to mention it we just i guess we’re almost halfway through the month already which is crazy but at the beginning of every month one of the things that we have happen a lot is the fuel providers their rewards programs roll over at the beginning of every month so they kind of do a purge to say okay is anybody that was a prime driver last month.

    Not a prime driver this month do we.

    Need to boot them off the promotional points programs that prime has so what we a lot of the time at the beginning of the month we get a lot of calls from operators saying hey i’m.

    No longer on love’s platinum status because if you’re.

    Not aware every prime driver gets loves platinum status regardless of how many gallons you buy at loves so if you get booted off of these points programs just make sure that you’re if you go to the mobile app for pilot loves any of these folks if you’re.

    Not getting the correct status that you should be just go on there send them a message just say hey i’m a prime driver i should be getting platinum status or whatever the status should be with the other vendors and they will get that updated for you you don’t even have to call us you’re more than welcome to if you’d like to but you don’t have to you can just contact them directly and they’ll get that taken care of for you make sure if you’re.

    New at prime make sure you ask your trainer about those rewards programs make sure you get signed up for them get the benefit of them we get free meals at ta petro if you buy over 60 gallons all kinds of different benefits uh as part of our fuel program here so make sure you’re up to speed on on the benefits that are available to you one of the things that dave mentioned was the optimizer so something that we have been working with our optimizer provider on for a while.

    Now we got some exciting.

    News this last week that it’s about to go into a testing phase is a reefer fuel optimizer um so this is really big especially for company operators because if you.

    Need reefer fuel and it’s.

    Not part of your you know let’s say you.

    Need reefer fuel but you the optimizer is.

    Not telling you to go get truck fuel so you can’t fill up the reefer at the same time you generally have to call into your dispatcher or the fuel desk and get opened up furry for fuel it’s a pain right so this optimizer will ultimately be able to automatically open you up for reefer fuel at recommended locations whenever you.

    Need reefer fuel so you won’t have to call in it should just cut that all out of the process it will also help as an independent contractor make sure that you’re buying reefer fuel at the best pricing possible it just it will make it part of the consideration when we’re optimizing your fuel so we’re going to be testing it here shortly we’ll definitely have some operators that we.

    Need help testing it with and then once we get it to a state where we think it’s ready to roll out for the fleet or even for a segment of the fleet we’ll get that going but we’re excited about it we think it’s going to be really good i get a lot of questions too about routing uh you know what are we doing with.

    Navago with in-app routing brianne i know and her team continues to work on an in-app routing solution i’ve seen some information on it without giving up too much info it’s going to be really cool i i’m excited about it but that is in process and continues to be worked on um [Music] two other things wash related so this isn’t fuel related on the wash side of the business so i had an operator this week call me and i didn’t actually know the answer so i had to double check but if you are at a blue beacon and you.

    Need a trailer wash they always ask that you turn the the reefer off or that the reefer.

    Not at least be running when you pull into the bay so he was concerned about that and obviously i was i wasn’t aware of what their rule was but i guess that osha requires them to have the reefers off due to the fumes potentially that the reefer could put off so just make sure that you’re aware if you’re going in with a loaded trailer they’re probably going to ask you to turn that reefer off if it’s running so if you’re having problems with that reefer or anything probably.

    Not a good idea to go get a wash when you’re loaded to get a trailer exterior wash done just something to be aware of that is their rule i think some locations enforce it more than others last thing is i’m really trying to make sure that all of the hours that we have in the prime mobile app for wash locations are correct we get a lot of operators that’ll show up to a location to one of the wash locations to get a washout it said in the app they were open they weren’t open you know and some of it maybe they just were on holidays or something which they obviously don’t tell us that a lot of the time but a lot of the time the hours are just wrong they’ve updated their hours since the last time we updated it in the system on the prime mobile app if you could help us out there’s actually a place in there where their hours are listed where you can suggest and edit for those hours i’d really appreciate your help if you could just double check those hours for us and make sure that they’re right whenever you go to these locations we we really want to make sure that all this data that we have in our system is clean so that we’re obviously.

    Not wasting your time by sending you to a location that’s closed this is going to become more and more important as we look at uh rolling out a reefer wash optimizer to help give you recommendations on where you should go get a washout that’s something that we’re actively testing right.

    Now and hopefully be rolling out sometime here uh early this year so please help me out with those hours if you can to be a huge help to us but otherwise unless there’s any question that’s all i had for this morning yeah we have uh mike thank you are you hearing much feedback about all the problems pilots having pumps.

    Not working the app.

    Not working yeah so i’ve actually had a couple operators tracking for me how many fuel islands are down every time they fuel at a pilot and the percentage was extremely high i think with one of the guys that he’s on dab he was tracking it for me it was like 25 of their fuel islands were down we are we are tracking that we have passed along the pilot they got their maintenance team on the locations that i made them aware of where this operator had been but specifically if you if you go to a location and you’ve been there a couple times and they’ve had a ton of pumps down and they still have a ton of pumps down please let us know please call the fuel desk let us know but i’ll even give you my card after the meeting feel free to text me or something we really want to know because we.

    Need to give that feedback to them you know they’re they’re they are actively working on upgrading all of their pumps and stuff but they.

    Need to make sure they’re maintaining the ones they do have until they get all those upgraded yeah it’s it’s pretty bad i did call a fuel list one day i pulled in it gave me like 23 dollars worth of diesel and shut off that was it wouldn’t work yeah if they’re situations that where they’re.

    Not functioning properly obviously let the attendants know in the stop but uh if you don’t feel like they’re addressing it let us know yeah they had like canned pumps and only two of them were open for use wow and then that one i pulled into was so i don’t know they’re they’re having issues yeah.

    No we’re actively working with them on that but let us know for sure any other questions for me oh one for me going from uh tobias on facebook he wants to know if there’s any way brienne may.

    Need to help on this but if there’s any way to put all the prime incentive and rewards programs on them on the app yeah so we’ve actually had that asked before i.

    Need to i just.

    Need to get it done with brienne so yes we’ll we’ll make it happen anything else otherwise i’ll pass back over to dave and dennis thank you all very much all right thanks sam appreciate it there you go buddy [.

    Applause] i’ll let you introduce the.

    Next gentleman since you guys have a little history together yeah so our.

    Next speaker is going to be jason seymour and jason is is one of our reefer operations supervisors and one of this gargantuan task is he’s been uh in charge of our our covet protocol here with our driver base you know take it on tell us what we.

    Need to know make sure i’m safe what do you guys want to talk about this morning anything but coven me too you would think after uh you know going on two years this will be a little bit easier but it’s.

    Not so we are where we are and we got to figure out a way to you know our goals were very clear at the beginning we’re going to protect the health and safety of all of our associates and we’re going to and right below that that was.

    Number one and one a robert said right just right below at 1a was we’re going to protect everybody’s ability to their financial health right and their ability to uh provide for themselves and their families it’s been a challenge that’s uh probably the understatement of the year as you all know so what i’m holding here is this is our you know we have some protocols we’re very very fortunate to have dr abraham and his team downstairs at trinity um to guide us through this pandemic you know so what i’m holding here is our most recent protocols that were updated last week i’m.

    Not going to go through them all with you just simply because you literally it can get a little confusing and you almost.

    Need a flow chart if this then that if this then do this so but here’s a few key points that we.

    Need to adhere to to help each other help yourself and help each other out so that we can mitigate the damage the the sickness that’s going around the building um and again accomplish goal 1 and 1a okay and before i guess before i go that just to kind of give you a little bit of an update on where we’re at as a company um i have been involved in this since the beginning have a couple of i really have a team of folks that have worked with this brook mosley amazing clay wilkerson amazing all the folks over at the campus inn the plaza i mean it’s really truly been a team effort of everybody involved to help you know uh you know to help work our way through this so it’s uh we got a lot of resources poured into it so um you know we’re just gonna keep plugging away so anyway an update on where we’re at um we count like every we have a staff meeting every thursday morning we report you know here’s how many drivers we have positive here’s how many we have pending and so two weeks ago all right so it’d be the wednesday right after from the wednesday before christmas to the wednesday after christmas we had uh in that seven day period of time we had 68 drivers positive 68 more positive drivers the total.

    Number was like 757 all the way back to the beginning of the pandemic a one-week increase of 68 that was a record okay and we had probably 70 people or so that had reported some symptoms or reported some contact and they were currently in a state of quarantine or isolation had tested waiting on test results they were pending okay so you fast forward to this week okay and the.

    Number was 70.

    that we had a one-week increase of 70.

    so we’ve had two record weeks 68 positives in one week 70 positives in the.

    Next week our pending.

    Number went up too it went up from 71 to 90.

    so and and along with that we’re seeing the the.

    Number of uh you know we’ve been tracking the vaccinated versus unvaccinated since like september and i think uh last week if i remember right out of the 70 positives that we had uh 19 of those folks were vaccinated and 51 of them were.

    Not vaccinated okay so that’s just kind of an overview of where we’re at um you know we get the health forms there they come in literally faster than we can reply to them in many cases um you know that horse is out of the barn it’s here we’re all dealing with it we all have a personal responsibility to keep ourselves safe and the people around us safe and here’s how we do it okay the.

    Number one thing that we can do all right is.

    Number one if you’re if you’re unvaccinated we.

    Need you to wear a mask at all times okay and if you’re vaccinated you don’t have to wear a mask but if you want to wear a mask that’s okay too all right because masks do work all right they work some they help it’s i mean it’s totally logical if i’m wearing a mask and i cough there’s less stuff that’s going to get out that could potentially infect somebody else right so they work some it’s.

    Not a hundred percent it’s just another barrier um so we.

    Need people to wear masks if they’re unvaccinated and if you’re vaccinated and you want to wear one then hey that’s cool too here’s probably the biggest thing is if you’re sick we.

    Need you to get a mask on and get away from other people and stay away from other people until we can figure out what’s going on okay and that’s where our team myself really brooke and clay take the lead on that i hope where i can when we kind of get start to get overwhelmed a little bit dr abraham lily lynn all the folks that kelly to all the folks down at trinity jump in to say okay here’s what we’ve got here’s what they’re telling us sometimes it’s uh you know we.

    Need to test this person sometimes that’s where we refer back to this and i’m.

    Not going to bore you with all this but the.

    Number one thing is we’ve got to get that health form filled out okay because that’s just like a very initial screening that gives us some basic information so that the experts can kind of do a triage and say okay what’s the.

    Next step so get a mask on isolate yourself away from other people get the health form filled out.

    Now here’s how you do that and this is gonna sound crazy when i say it but please do.

    Not call trinity all right and please do.

    Not call brook directly okay because again the volume right.

    Now of phone calls that’s coming in is so uh heavy that we’re missing some phone calls or we could potentially miss a phone call and we absolutely don’t want to do that that first call.

    Needs to go to your fleet manager all right or your direct supervisor some of you probably don’t even have formosa in this room probably don’t even have fleet managers yet okay so that’s going to be stan casterty steve larsen some of those folks you have contact with in the psd training program they’re going to know what to do to get gather the information from you to get it to the people that can help and at that point we can determine whether we’re going to isolate you whether we’re going to test you whether we.

    Need to quarantine you to make sure that you’re safe and the people around you are safe okay i gotta tell it’s i know it’s a challenge because it’s like oh distance well you know we we have a business to run and we can do it safely we’ve done it safely for really almost two years in this pandemic and i know there’s a little bit of a spike going on right.

    Now but you know right.

    Now if i i just can’t stress enough we’ve had a handful of people that have uh you know showed symptoms and been sick and they’re like oh it’s just a cold or oh it’s just sinuses oh i get these allergies every year bam they’re positive and they potentially you know then you start spreading out they spread it to two people then those two people spread it to two people and that’s part of what i think has gotten us in this mess okay you know the contact tracing right.

    Now is is really a challenge because there’s so many people around and there’s so many people that are walking around that are potentially sick so again if i the.

    Number one point is if you feel a cough a tickling your throat a sore throat any of those things we.

    Need you to get a mask on isolate call your fleet manager get that health form filled out so that we can triage and determine what the.

    Next course of action is okay and that’s really all that i have to say i can’t stress how important that is folks for those of us that have been vaccinated and we are coming up on our boosters we’re instilling training is there somewhere we can get our booster that was going to be my closing comment was trinity is still offering vaccines uh all of you that are on the driver mobile app the prime mobile app the sign up you can schedule an appointment to get the vaccine um you know a booster and a booster shot um yeah they’re open monday through friday i think they give shots every day i got mine i don’t know a few months ago i guess when i was eligible for it you sign on it gives you the list of appointments and so yes absolutely and that goes for anybody who has you know maybe been on the fence and like well maybe i.

    Need to get that first shot or maybe i got the first shot but man i don’t think i.

    Need the second shot you know they’ll do the first shot second shot third shot um very very helpful very very willing to do what’s.

    Necessary to help you folks put you in the best position you can to protect yourself so but at some point we got to protect ourselves right and we know i mean we know if we’re sick we know if we’re.

    Not feeling good and right.

    Now it’s just too risky there’s too many people around too much at stake right i mean there’s too much at stake for your own personal health and for the health of the people around you all right to take any chances so caution and be aware is kind of the word of the day and hopefully you know we’re within a couple of weeks if you look at the trends and kind of how this thing goes i mean hopefully in a couple of weeks it’ll spike back down and we can all go back to relatively.

    Normal but it’s definitely and we expected it to pick up after the holidays right people go home for thanksgiving some people went home for christmas they’re around family they’re on friends and uh but i think i mean i personally was a little surprised at which the rate at which it has just exploded in the last you know 10 to 14 days so [Music] any other questions [Music] okay get a mask on get away from other people isolate call your fleet manager get that health form filled out and let us help you okay thank you all right thank you jason [.

    Applause] as we’re coming down to the end and we got our last two speakers coming up you know we’ve had a really good meeting today we talked a little bit about how to protect yourself financially with sam messick and what to do when it comes to making sure we maximize our our fuel efficiency we talked to to cammy elder in our accident claims department to talk about how to protect yourself if and when we find ourselves in a situation accident of course you know dave white and and rick up and piston gave us some excellent information about how to keep yourself safe out on the road you know during this inclement weather season so you know i think we’ve had a pretty solid meeting one thing we didn’t talk about but we have talked about consecutively over the last couple weeks make sure you’re protecting your equipment you know trailers are our absolute goal these days we can’t even even buy them so you know we can’t lose one due to some.

    Negligence you know or even an accident situation so making sure that you protect your equipment is another important deal so as we round down to the end i’m going to ask uh steve wookie to come up our vice president of sales and marketing yeah good morning good to see y’all uh my.

    Name is steve lucky i’m in sales and um we’ve got a really great sales team here at prime and i’m looking at a lot of you right here that do the heavy lifting and have helped us create such a a wonderful company when it comes to the service side it’s really.

    Nice to see so many of you trusting our company and joining us and we’re grateful for that um just a couple of things that i’d really like to hit on safety is our highest calling here at prime we’re very well known for our service but there is really.

    Nothing more important than safety you’ve heard it from our safety guys and we have probably the best safety department in the country they’re well schooled in what it takes to be successful you’ve heard it about your own personal safety and your own health and well-being we care about you all we really want you to be safe we want you to try to prevent anything that will make you ill um as jason said go ahead and mask up it’s okay if you feel better about it if you’ve got your shots and your boosters and all of that you still want to mask up it’s okay and if you haven’t had those vaccines for whatever reason please it’s we’re requiring that you mask i hope you all understand.

    Not trying to uh create any kind of an issue here but it is about people and it’s about health okay um you know i’ve got red on today i’m a pittsburgh state grad uh i don’t know if anybody’s even heard of pittsburg state anybody here yeah it’s over in southeast kansas well i really wore red today because we want to remember everyone deployed right because they’re out there protecting us so we always want to remember those people and we always want to recognize our driver associates and in-house associates that have served in the armed forces so if you have please stand up and let us recognize you all right thank you [.

    Applause] thank you very much for your service thank you all [.

    Applause] thank you you’re the backbone of our country so thank you for that um you know this is a good time to be in trucking business is really good uh while we’re having a hard time getting equipment based off of uh you know what’s going on in our country right.

    Now the supply chain and all of that it’s still a wonderful time to be in trucking and you know our program you came here to be a company driver a lease driver tanker driver flatbed driver it’s all okay we’re just backed up just a little based off of the supply of capacity of equipment so don’t get frustrated stick it out serve your time as far as training is concerned and it’s really a good time to get out there with a experienced driver maybe you get a little bit of that winter weather driving that’s pretty important to you so um let’s continue the pursuit of your dream and that is to become a professional driver it’s.

    Not easy it’s.

    Not like getting up every day and grabbing the wheel and cruising it’s a very dangerous job i hope you’ve considered that you’re.

    Not going to be able to go to the bar every.

    Night and drink just doesn’t work in this business you.

    Need to think about your choice okay feel feel good about what you’re doing we’re going to create an environment that will allow you to become a really great driver so we’re glad to have you before i asked robert the guy that started our company a few years ago to come up i was supposed to for d where is d she’s in here somewhere oh she’s back here d wants to meet all of you all right back here in this corner okay so she’ll take care of business over there we’ve got a bunch of our suppliers uh back here appreciate you all for what you do thanks for joining us if you have questions about equipment or whatever they’ll be happy to talk with you really i think that’s about all i got robert you want to come up here and wrap this up this is a guy that started i think maybe i don’t know a year or two ago a few few years ago thanks man i i didn’t know if he was ever going to hush up or.

    Not i was about to come up and jerk that that microphone out of his hand you know he’s a sales guy.

    Natural sales guy just he got the gift to gav and he likes to do it he i criticized him a little bit but i tell you what he’s he’s a damn good sales guy we’ve got the best customers.

    Not only do we have the best drivers that we have the best customers in the world out there i’m telling you they’re paying us they’re taking care of us right.

    Now talk to some of these experienced hands i’ll tell you the trucking is pretty good in my line i mean you can make some bank out there right.

    Now and we’re all about making bank you know you love you know the the majesty of the road and you know the excitement getting out there and seeing the country but also you want to make some bank right so we’re all about that that’s that’s one egg safety and health that’s.

    Number one you know it’s.

    No good to make money if you’re.

    Not healthy so we want to protect your health every way we can that’s why we have the protocols that’s why we have you know our doctor we have a great team under dr abraham downstairs totally engaged with what we.

    Need to be doing to protect ourselves from this this virus hopefully we’re getting on the back side of it the variant that’s going the omicron variant doesn’t seem to be real severe thank god because it is very contagious and that’s why we’re having all this activity but you know if if you’re if you’re vaccinated we don’t mandate anything but if you’re vaccinated and staying up with your boosters you’re you’re you’re maybe going to get it maybe it’s even likely you’re going to get it but it won’t be severe we’ll put you in the hospital thank god won’t probably won’t kill you but it’s still something that we want to.

    Not take any chances with protect ourselves you know get get facts if you’re so inclined follow up on your boosters and let’s stay as healthy as possible um you know it’s great to see all these.

    New folks in here you know you’re a lifeblood let me tell you let me assure you that you have come to the right place this is a good company you know we’ve got heart we want to take care of our people your family.

    Now so don’t run off i’m gonna have to come over there and snatch you back can’t leave.

    Now you’re here you’re family and we we appreciate you and i think that you’ll experience that on a daily basis here so thanks for trying prime appreciate each of you god bless you and be safe out there