Swift Transportation Company, Inc. - Phoenix, Az.

Bean, I'll add to your skepticism. I don't think Swift drivers are "bad" drivers. Understand that to me, "bad" means something akin to "hopeless". Swift drivers are pretty good if they're trained PROPERLY. Herein lies the "Swift driver" problem. Well, it's two problems really:

1. The truck training schools are nothing but a ruse. Sure, they're expensive, and you may even be able to get a CDL after attending one. But no one learns enough at a school to be a safe driver on the road right after graduation. A school is only phase one of the training process. The only role a mill plays is to fool the government, the students, and the general public that truck drivers are being trained to be safe on the highways. They aren't. When one graduates from a mill, he must go with a trainer when he gets his first job for an additional month or longer for a good reason--he isn't safe yet.

On top of this, I suspect the mills serve as sort of a legal lightning rod to soak up potential legal problems regarding training (or the lack thereof). If a driver has an accident on the road because of inferior training, he is legally dead in the water if he wants to sue his mill. This is because he has the license that more or less proves he can drive. He also has a diploma, which more or less proves he can drive. A jury will see these two items as being "proof that he can drive". The plaintiff will thus lose if he sues a mill. If a company trains its drivers from the ground up, this may give drivers more legal ammo to win lawsuits they file for inferior training. This is just my suspicion, understand.

2. Trainers at companies are questionable these days. Are they competent? Do they know their stuff? Can they teach it to a student? Some can. Some can't. On top of this, many trainers simply don't have the experience to train another person to drive safely. One reason for this is most of the older guys have gotten out of trucking, or at least the OTR segment. The OTR sector, ironically, pays less than the other segments, so when guys get experience, they bolt to higher-paying segments such as LTL.

And those experienced trainers who remain in OTR are protected by their companies. This is because if companies start blaming their trainers for accidents newbies have, every newbie at the company who has either had an accident in the past or will have an accident in the future can sue the company. What a mess this would be. This means trainers don't really NEED to be good. Hell, they have no real incentive at all to be good. The good trainers are those who believe they must train well out of a sense of professional duty. They have no other incentive to train well. And many trainers view newbie drivers as "competition", meaning it's in the trainers' interest that a newbie doesn't learn "too much". If said newbie has an accident down the road (pardon the pun), he gets canned and another newbie steps in. This cycle repeats, the companies keep an inflow of fresh recruits, and the trainers get job security, not to mention a supply of suckers to do their driving for them.

So--inferior training mills and inferior trainers at companies. Is there any surprise so many green drivers are having accidents? Is it any surprise we see so many newbie drivers at only SOME companies having so many accidents? It should be NO surprise. It's the training process that's broken. It's not the students, at least in most cases. The students will be fine if trained properly. The only real surprise is the government isn't looking into this problem.

 

Good post Tip. Well thought out.:smt023

 

Bad training = bad driver, most of the larger companies are guilty of being a bit lax training wise at some point, most learn from the mistake, doesn't necessarily mean they are a bad company or that all their drivers are incompetent.

 

Bad training = Bad drivers = Bad company? Maybe. Maybe not. I don't know if I'd go that far yet. But then again, maybe I would. Most good companies require drivers already be trained and have a year or two experience. This skews the data a bit.

The huge-antics that hire recent grads are the companies having the most problems with green-driver accidents. They hire recent grads because they have to. It's either the newbies or nothing. They're also the companies having the most problems keeping drivers with any kind of experience, which really means, of course, that they SUCK.

Maybe we can make that leap, as in "Lots of newbies having wrecks at a company mean lots of newbies are at that company, meaning they suck so much the experienced guys don't hang around long."

 

Having just finished a short stint with Swift I would like to add this.Swift does have some good drivers,why the good ones stay there I do not know.A good friend of mine who has driven litterally forever,was a trainer with MS carriers for a long time.When the Swift buyout occured he decided to stay on with Swift.He is a truly certified trainer and an excellent driver,who is probably making top dollar with them.I would imagine he feels he would have to take a pay cut to jump ship.There are other good drivers with them as well.First thing I noticed with Swift was that very few drivers had anything good to say about them.Then there was all of the pictures of wrecked Swift trucks on the walls.Swift does have some good freight with good miles,but I very seldom got any of it.Their dispatchers sit around talking like they own the company.But yes they still have a few good drivers,and I am sure JBH has some good ones too.I consider myself an average driver,and getting older every day,(thank God).heading out to orientation again this weekend with what I think is a much better co.Going with Roehl this time,THX to all of you who have made comebacks on my post inquiring about Roehl.Swift and JBH are not for me.For the people who are happy with them and making a decent living I wish them good luck.See ya all down the road.

 

Tip, you are right on about "Trainers". Because a person has the title of driver trainer doesn't mean that he has the best interest of the student in mind. I have talked to several trainers who only became trainers for the extra miles they can get from running the truck as a team. More miles , more money. A lot of valuable training time is lost on the sleeper, and later on an innocent person may pay for the inexperience of the driver. I would hate to think that a person I trained was responsible for a fatality. I think I would have to share in the responsibility.

 

I know a driver who was made a trainer after only 6 months on the road with Werner....now that is a scarey thought! It takes more than 6 months to be a decent driver as we all know how could a responsible company make such choices???

 

I think companies are forced to accept less and less experience from their trainers because of the extremely high turnover rate in trucking, more importantly, these new companies willing to take students. These companies are usually used as stepping stones, and then the drivers move on to bigger and better things. So many of the drivers who work for newbie companies don't have much seniority to speak of. Also, I think the turnover has alot to do with the fact that many people can't stand to be away for 3+ weeks at a time. And as soon as they can, they get that local job that's only 15 bucks an hour, but it's still better than being away all the time. $15/hour for a forty-hour week is only $600 gross, about 30k/year for the mathematically challenged out there. And for a large part of the country, local also means seasonal, which means I don't want anything local in Michigan where I live.

 

Bean, you're wise already.

Road, I've seen those ####y dispatchers at Swift. They act like they own the place, which isn't that big a deal. The problem is they act like they own YOU.

 

The last 2 students I trained had already came off of a 'trainers' truck after 28 days, and didn't know a darn thing. They couldn't drive, couldn't log, had no clue how to back up or fill and file paperwork. And they both stated their previous 'trainers' wanted to let them go early! Half these companies hand out trainer status to people who themselves can't drive. The carrot of additional pay sucks them in, and all they want is a new student after 10 days when the cash runs out. The CDL mills only gaurantee you'll pass the test, not that you'll be a driver. That takes a while longer. One problem with the "old" truckers tho, is we all forget that we had to make our first trip, too. Nobody here was a born driver, but the oldies like to laugh at the newbies, forgetting that once, maybe a long time ago, they too scared the &%#@ out of everybody. When I started, drivers helped each other out. I miss those days.....